Category Archives: Transhuman News

My oldest brother Orvis recently submitted his DNA to Mountain View personal genomics and biotechnology company 23andMe. Hed been interested in finding out details of his genealogy for some time and finally bit the bullet.

Orvis submitted his saliva samples and got his results back in about six weeks. The cool thing is that he got a special deal where the regular $100 price was reduced to $80. The cooler thing is that brothers unless they are identical twins share 50 percent of the same DNA. Thats close enough for me to pay $0 and get a column out of it.

Here are Orviss test results:

Sub-Saharan African 72.7%European 23.4%East Asian & Native American 2.9%South Asian 0.5%Unassigned 0.6%

The fact that our ancestors were from Africa is not a surprise. The website breaks it down further. The lions share (68.9 percent) of our distant relatives came from West Africa. This is what the website says: Expanding from Senegal to Nigeria, West Africa composes about a fifth of the African continent. West Africans have a long shared history, and were united by large empires such as the Ghana Empire, dating as far back as the eighth century AD.

The great thing about the DNA results is that they can be combined with another chunk of information we already had, a 20-page document called The Wade Genealogy. I got it from a Texas Landman (an intermediary for an energy company) in 2010 whod used it to find me because of a parcel of land in the Lone Star state my late father had owned. Most of its information came from a file in (where else?) Salt Lake City called the wills of San Augustine (Texas, where both my parents were born and grew up).

The first part of the genealogy is rather detailed and the second part is less so, but lists six generations of my family. The names are just that to me, names, but then suddenly there is my grandfather whom I never met, Booker T. Wade. He married Corine Dennis and then it lists their children including my dad, Orvis T. Wade Sr.

I wish I knew more of my relatives, but I dont. One name that jumped out from the document was Carla Nicole Wade, my cousin, whom I know from Facebook.

The first time I saw the names of my brothers and myself in the document it was sort of like the part in the book Roots where Alex Haley changes the tense of the narrative as he entered into the history of his own book. The genealogy has errors and omissions. My youngest brother Scott was not listed and Kelvins name was misspelled as Kevin the story of his life.

I wrote a column about the genealogy in 2010 and here is a part:

My great-great-grandmothers name was . . . wait for it . . . Anarchy. Seriously. Ned and Anarchy Wade were listed together in the 1870 census. Her name sounds like a Marvel Comics Super Villain.

Ned and Anarchy had been the property of a man named Edward Teal and when he died in 1858 he left no will so the courts had to settle the estate. This is what it says in the genealogy:

The appointed commissioners of the courts ordered that the heirs of the estate separate the Negro property into two lots, 1 & 2, and place them in a hat and draw, and whichever one drew that lot would own those Negroes.

That is still horrifying for me to actually picture happening, but it did.

Orvis DNA test results showing our mixed heritage is boosted by the Wade Genealogy. In it, Ned was described as a Negro man of yellow complexion. Ned, Anarchy and their childrens race was listed as mulatto, meaning one-half negro blood.

The .6 percent unassigned made me scratch my head. Pod people? Borg? 23andMes explanation: There is a wide range of human diversity and sometimes our algorithm is unable to assign a region of DNA to a specific population. As we collect more data and update our algorithm, we expect that the amount of unassigned ancestry will decrease.

The ancestry DNA thing is very interesting and informative and I recommend that everyone have their sibling pay for it and then check out the results.

Reach Fairfield writer Tony Wade at toekneeweighed@gmail.com.

Original post:
Wade genealogy info boosted by DNA test - Fairfield Daily Republic

Scientists are working to create yeast that operates with custom-made DNA.

They have long been able to make specific changes in an organism's DNA. Now, they're pushing into the more radical step of starting over, and building redesigned versions from scratch.

Their work is part of a bold and controversial pursuit aimed at creating custom-made DNA codes to be inserted into living cells to change how they function, or even provide treatments for diseases. It could also someday help give scientists the profound and unsettling ability to create entirely new organisms.

The genetic code is like a book written with an alphabet of only four letters: A, C, G, and T. Chemical building blocks that correspond to these letters line up in DNA molecules like links in a chain; genes are made up of specific sequences of those building blocks. These sequences tell the yeast cell how to build particular proteins.

The complete DNA code for yeast, called its genome, contains about 12 million letters. An international scientific team aims to add, delete or alter about a million of the DNA letters.

Yeast DNA is spread across 16 large chunks called chromosomes, which were parceled out among the team's labs to tackle.

So how do you redesign and build a chromosome? We asked Leslie Mitchell, a researcher at New York University. She created a 240,000-letter synthetic yeast chromosome, starting while she was at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Here's the recipe:

1. On a computer, start with the natural DNA sequence of the letters across a chromosome.

2. Tell the computer to make specific alterations, such as:

Every time it sees the letter series TAG at the end of a gene, change it to TAA. Both triplets deliver the same message to the yeast's machinery for making protein, so the change doesn't affect the yeast. But the TAG triplet could be used in a different place to make the yeast produce a protein from building blocks not found in nature, for example.

Delete a class of genes called 'tRNA genes' from their normal positions, where they can impair the process of duplicating the genome before a yeast cell divides. These genes will be relocated to their own, new chromosome, where they can do their jobs without causing trouble.

Insert bits of DNA code that will let researchers rearrange the order of genes on the chromosomes, like shuffling a deck of cards. This way, scientists can experiment with many different reshufflings to see which one makes yeast grow best, or perform best in some other way.

3. Once the alterations are done, break the redesigned code into lengths of about 10,000 letters apiece and have a company create chunks of DNA that reflect each of these segments. Chunks of that size can be easily manipulated in a laboratory.

4. In the test tube, use a chemical reaction to glue three to six of these chunks together into a "megachunk."

5. Take ordinary yeast and use this 30,000-60,000-letter megachunk to replace the corresponding segment of natural DNA. Yeast will do this without much coaxing.

6. If the yeast doesn't grow normally, identify and fix the problem in the megachunk. This is called debugging. If it's fine, add the next megachunk.

7. Repeat steps 4-6 until the entire chromosome has been replaced with megachunks of synthetic DNA.

Mitchell said it took her a couple months to build her chromosome but longer to debug. "The tiniest change in the code can have dramatic effect on growth," she said. "We are learning new rules about how cells operate by building from scratch."

Follow Malcolm Ritter at http://twitter.com/malcolmritter His recent work can be found at http://tinyurl.com/RitterAP

Continue reading here:
How scientists redesign DNA codes - ABC News

(for more about Power Words, clickhere)

audioHaving to do with sound.

bacterialHaving to do with bacteria, single-celled organisms. These dwell nearly everywhere on Earth, from the bottom of the sea to inside animals.

bit(in computer science) The term is short for binary digit. It has a value of either 0 or 1.

code(in computing) To use special language to write or revise a program that makes a computer do something.

colleagueSomeone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.

CRISPRAn abbreviation pronounced crisper for the term clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. These are pieces of RNA, an information-carrying molecule. They are copied from the genetic material of viruses that infect bacteria. When a bacterium encounters a virus that it was previously exposed to, it produces an RNA copy of the CRISPR that contains that virus genetic information. The RNA then guides an enzyme, called Cas9, to cut up the virus and make it harmless. Scientists are now building their own versions of CRISPR RNAs. These lab-made RNAs guide the enzyme to cut specific genes in other organisms. Scientists use them, like a genetic scissors, to edit or alter specific genes so that they can then study how the gene works, repair damage to broken genes, insert new genes or disable harmful ones.

dataFacts and/or statistics collected together for analysis but not necessarily organized in a way that gives them meaning. For digital information (the type stored by computers), those data typically are numbers stored in a binary code, portrayed as strings of zeros and ones.

DNA(short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. It is built on a backbone of phosphorus, oxygen, and carbon atoms. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.

E. coli(short for Escherichia coli) A common bacterium that researchers often harness to study genetics. Some naturally occurring strains of this microbe cause disease, but many othersdo not.

gene(adj. genetic) A segment of DNA that codes, or holds instructions, for a cells production of a protein. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genes influence how an organism looks and behaves.

geneticHaving to do with chromosomes, DNA and the genes contained within DNA. The field of science dealing with these biological instructions is known as genetics. People who work in this field are geneticists.

GIF (short for Graphics Interchange Format) This is a format used to send images, especially movies, on the internet. An animated GIF file is one that can move on the internet, such as a swirling flag or jumping frog.

moleculeAn electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types. For example, the oxygen in the air is made of two oxygen atoms (O2), but water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H2O).

nucleotidesThe four chemicals that, like rungs on a ladder, link up the two strands that make up DNA. They are: A (adenine), T (thymine), C (cytosine) and G (guanine). A links with T, and C links with G, to form DNA. In RNA, uracil takes the place of thymine.

organismAny living thing, from elephants and plants to bacteria and other types of single-celled life.

pixelShort for picture element . A tiny area of illumination on a computer screen, or a dot on a printed page, usually placed in an array to form a digital image. Photographs are made of thousands of pixels, each of different brightness and color, and each too small to be seen unless the image is magnified.

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Scientists hide a real movie within a germ's DNA - Science News for Students

LOVE Island fans noticed Kem Cetinays homecoming bash had two very special guests of honour waiting to welcome him back.

During tonights reunion show, eagle eyed viewers spotted Britains Got Talent double act DNA loitering in the background during a clip of Kem and Amber Davies visiting his salon in Essex.

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Some fans couldnt believe their eyes as they saw Darren, 29, and Andrew,43, mingling with the barbers friends and family.

One tweeted: Wtf! Was it just me who just saw DNA in Kems barbers shop?

Another wrote: Anyone know why DNA were in @KemCetinay barber shop on Love Island?

Darren and Andrew, who made it to the final of Britains Got Talent earlier this year, stayed pretty low key during Kems arrival and didnt speak during the short clip.

It turns out the pair are pretty chummy with Kem, and actually hinted they would be performing with them at a later date.

They told their Twitter followers: Great seeing Kem and Amber! So happy for them, worthy #LoveIsland winners!! Video of us performing on them coming soon! #KemandAmber.

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Tonight's reunion show had it's far share of surprises, with Chyna Ellis left stunned when Jonny Mitchell appeared to dump her live on air.

She got her revenge and later branded him a p***k - filming him secretly on her phone and uploading it to Instagram.

In another shot, she wrote over the smiling reality stars face, What a little p***k.

Jonny and Chyna had jetted off on a romantic break away to Budapest, giving fans the impression they were dating.

When Caroline Flack asked them what was happening however, Jonny denied they were dating leaving Chyna looking stunned.

As Caroline told them it was the most awkward moment of the night so far, Chyna blushed and said the pair were just having fun.

Caroline then quizzed Jonny on why hed taken Chyna on holiday which he had boasted cost 100,000 to which he replied: I just like holidays.

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The show became more awkward when Montana Brown and Alex Beattie tried to persuade Caroline they were still dating.

Since leaving the villa, the pair have tried to convince fans theyre dating despite The Sun revealing the couple had broken up.

A source told The Sun: Montana is keen to follow her dreams as a TV presenter and has been attending meetings this week to get the wheels in motion.

She doesnt like partying and isnt a big drinker so personal appearances in nightclubs arent really her thing.

Instead she is ambitious and very much a career woman her relationship with Alex is going to take a back seat.

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Originally posted here:
Love Island fans spot Britain's Got Talent stars DNA on reunion show but did you see them? - The Sun