Category Archives: Transhuman News

The mystery only deepened in 2013. Another team of researchers retrieved mitochondrial DNA from a Neanderthal-like fossil at Sima de los Huesos, dating back 430,000 years.

The researchers had expected the DNA to resemble that of later Neanderthals in Europe. Instead, the mitochondrial DNA looked like it belonged to Denisovans even though the Denisova cave was 4,000 miles away in Siberia.

Last year, the researchers announced they had gathered a small fraction of the nuclear DNA from the same Sima de los Huesos fossil. That genetic material looked like it belonged to a Neanderthal, not a Denisovan.

Dr. Krause and his colleagues have now discovered new Neanderthal DNA that they believe can solve the mystery of this genetic mismatch.

In 2013, one of Dr. Krauses graduate students, Cosimo Posth, examined a Neanderthal fossil from a German cave called Hohlenstein-Stadel. He was able to reconstruct all of its mitochondrial DNA.

Dr. Posth estimated that the Neanderthal fossil was 120,000 years old and, more important, that it belonged to a branch of the Neanderthal family tree with a long history. He and his colleagues determined that all known Neanderthals inherited their mitochondrial DNA from an ancestor who lived 270,000 years ago.

All the data pointed to a sequence of events that could solve the puzzle that had bedeviled Dr. Krause for so long.

The common ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans spread across Europe and Asia over half a million years ago. Gradually the eastern and western populations parted ways, genetically speaking.

In the east, they became Denisovans. In the west, they became Neanderthals. The 430,000-year-old fossils at Sima de los Huesos Neanderthals with Denisovanlike genes capture the early stage of that split.

At some point before 270,000 years ago, African humans closely related to us moved into Europe and interbred with Neanderthals. Their DNA entered the Neanderthal gene pool.

Over many generations, most of that new DNA disappeared. But the mitochondrial DNA survived, passed down from mothers to their children. In fact, eventually all the Neanderthals inherited it, for some reason discarding the mitochondrial DNA that the species once had.

Dr. Posth said it was possible that early members of our own species moved from North Africa into Europe. Supporting this idea was the discovery reported last month of fossils of Homo sapiens in Morocco dating back 300,000 years.

But Dr. Posth said it was too soon to rule out another possibility: that these migrants belonged to another species in Africa closely related to us that scientists have yet to document.

I feel uncomfortable to give a name to these humans, Dr. Posth said.

Adam C. Siepel, a geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island who was not involved in the new study, said the hypothesis fit the evidence. I think thats absolutely possible, he said.

The new study raises a host of tantalizing implications about human history.

It is not possible to know just how many times these early Africans interbred with Neanderthals. But somewhere in prehistory, at least one female human from Africa must have carried the child of a male Neanderthal.

Now you have this hybrid child, which is probably pretty unusual-looking, Dr. Siepel said. One way or another, this hybrid individual was absorbed into Neanderthal society.

Dr. Siepel warned that the hypothesis hinges on the new DNA found in the Hohlenstein-Stadel fossil. Dr. Krause and his colleagues are now trying to retrieve nuclear DNA from the fossil.

The research at Sima de los Huesos shows just how far back in time scientists can now search for genes. The most revealing DNA might come from the mountains of Morocco.

There, scientists may be able to find genes from the earliest Homo sapiens, which they can then compare to Neanderthals.

These are things that I never thought possible five years ago, Dr. Krause said.

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In Neanderthal DNA, Signs of a Mysterious Human Migration - New York Times

Mr. Charmatz said the idea for 10000 Gestures came to him while watching one of his own pieces, Leve des Conflits Extended, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2013. The idea of Leve was that it was based on limited gestures, so you were constantly circling through the sequence, like a living sculpture changing shape, he said. I thought, what if you flip that, and have a piece where none of the dancers ever repeat a gesture or do the same one as anyone else?

How do you create 10,000 completely different gestures? Over many, many hours working in a group on various themes, Mr. Charmatz explained. The themes included: doing nothing, microscopic movements (raising an eyebrow, flicking fingers), violence, eroticism, dance history, obscenity, and politics a Brexit means Brexit gesture made by Theresa May is even in there.

Each person has a different idea about what an erotic or a violent gesture might be, Mr. Charmatz said, so you get 25 variations on these ideas all happening together.

All the themes come in a specific order and last for a predetermined amount of time, he explained, although the number of dancers onstage and the groupings they create vary constantly. When it was pointed out that structuring the work through changing configurations might verge on good choreography, he laughed. Of course I want it to be compelling to watch, he said. Im bringing all my skills, even the ones I dont have, to this piece.

A major name in the European contemporary dance world, Mr. Charmatz has never followed a traditional path. He made his name when still quite young: In 1993, at 19, he choreographed Bras le Corps with Dimitri Chamblas, a friend from the Conservatoire de Lyon, where both had trained after defecting from the Paris Opera Ballet school to pursue a more contemporary dance orientation. The simplicity, physicality and direct attack of Bras le Corps, performed in a boxing ring with spectators seated on all sides, was a salutary shock in the highly theatricalized world of 1990s French dance.

Mr. Charmatz continued on an iconoclastic path. He did not form his own ensemble or accept commissions for companies. He danced with various troupes and collaborated with fellow choreographers while creating relatively few pieces, which were often more like installation works than conventional dance performances. From 2002 to 2004, he ran a nomadic school for 15 students; he has written a book about contemporary dance and is a co-author of two others.

When he was appointed, in 2009, to lead the National Choreographic Center in Rennes, his first decision was to change its name to the Muse de la Danse. Unlike most of the choreographers who head regional centers in France, Mr. Charmatz has no permanent company, and works on a project-to-project basis. (His term in Rennes ends in 2018.)

Boris brings movement and ideas together in space in extraordinary ways, said John McGrath, the director of the Manchester International Festival, who added that he was keen to make dance an increasingly important part of the biennial event. How do ideas manifest in art? The ambition of this work, the largest he has ever made, and the ambition of the idea felt like something we could really embrace.

The experience of creating 10000 Gestures has been grueling but exhilarating, said Mr. Chamblas, who still dances Bras le Corps with Mr. Charmatz and is performing in 10000 Gestures. It is all entirely fixed choreographically, and you have to be very precise, and switch from one parameter to another extremely fast, he said.

He gave a quick run-down: At the beginning of the piece are the gestures of doing nothing, but very fast, 25 of them; then 15 movements going backwards, then 55 crazy movements, then five rest positions. All of that is about a minute.

Mr. Charmatz said that an important early decision was to perform almost everything at high speed. Whats interesting is to create a storm, like snowflakes coming at you in the light, he said. Its as if we keep running, the piece will hold together. Or like the idea that when you are dying, your life flashes before you. It plays also with the idea, which people are always saying, that dance is ephemeral, that no two moments are ever the same.

The underlying idea of death, he added, felt important, and also the idea of being fully present. Referring to the recent suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert, he said: We are in Manchester, with everything that happened here, so I have used Mozarts Requiem in the piece. And not to be too political, but its easy to feel, especially in France, like you cant move for problems migrants, unemployment, Brexit. In some ways this is also about moving on. Every moment says now.

A version of this article appears in print on July 5, 2017, on Page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: Breaking Down the DNA of Dance.

Excerpt from:
A French Choreographer Who Plays With the DNA of Dance - New York Times

From long-distance running to sprinting is ability down to DNA or effort or both. Composite: Getty Images

Growing up, I was always the dumpy, unsporty one. Matt, my older brother, was the skinny one who did the running, jumping and anything requiring quickness and coordination. He seemed to excel with ease while I laboured away on a sluggish course towards sub-mediocrity. This pattern lasted until our late teens when Matt, being older, beat me to booze. While he was away on a year-long, round-the-world bender, I took up running with a vengeance. It was time to turn the tables.

By the time Matt got back, Id joined the local running club and was training every day. It turned out that becoming a competent runner didnt require special talent, just lots of miles driven on by the sense I was outrunning my former, slouchy self. Matt, visibly shaken by my transformation, threw himself into training to catch up stymied by his three-kilo beer belly.

'The biggest shock is my aerobic potential, rated "low". OK, I'm no Mo Farah, but but surely my aerobic capacity is at least middling'

Well skip the gory details the dozens of races where I beat Matt with ease and fast-forward to 2012. I had been training consistently for six years by now. Matt was swiftly catching up, but I still had a clear edge in any race of more than10 miles, so I decided to step up to the marathon. After putting in the hardest three months training of my life, I came away with a shiny new PB of 2hr 28 min 46 sec.

The point is not to revel in my glory. My time was decent club standard but hardly impressive against proper British marathoners, let alone African elites. The point is, it was amazing for me, given my widely presumed lack of ability. If only I had realised sooner that I had the potential

Imagine someone had tested my genes as a podgy kid and told me: dont worry, youre an athlete inside, its only your Sherbet Dip Dab habit holding you back. What wonderful reassurance and motivation that would have been. But wait. What if they had looked at my results and said: sorry, its not through lack of effort that you are sub-mediocre its down to your DNA. What then?

I was intrigued to find companies offering to do just that test my DNA to determine my sporting potential. Could it really work? I decided to find out.

I got in touch with DNAFit, the leading provider, and asked if they would blind-test my DNA plus a few other samples. To my surprise, they said yes. A call to some friends with connections in elite sport secured a sample from a multi-Olympian and world champion runner (on condition I wouldnt reveal his identity) lets call him Mr Swift and another from pro cyclist James McLaughlin. If their results tallied with their achievements, I figured, DNA testing would be worth taking notice of.

A few weeks later the results were in. Swifts read as follows: Aerobic potential: medium, which qualified as an intermediate VO2max tendency. Yet according to his physiologist, Swifts VO2max is above 77 quite definitely not an intermediate score. Furthermore, the report deems his power/endurance profile as favouring power over endurance by a ratio of 70/30. Swift is one of the greatest endurance runners in the history of the sport. His injury risk, marked medium, is also at odds with the actual evidence. He has had many, many injuries, his physiologist confides. Id say his injury risk is untypically high.

McLaughlins results are similarly at odds with his track record: his aerobic potential is rated medium, with a slight tendency towards power over endurance. It doesnt ring true at all, McLaughlin tells me. My VO2max is very high, nearly 82, and Im a pure endurance rider I fare far better in long, sustained efforts than in sprints.

My own results also suggest a predisposition towards power rather than endurance, 56/47. This flies in the face of my running experience: I am hopeless at shorter, power-based events; the longer the race, the better I do (relative to others). The biggest shock is my aerobic potential, rated low. OK, Im no Mo Farah, but surely my aerobic capacity is at least middling, or how could I have run a sub-2hr 30min marathon?

I owe it to DNAFit to give them a chance to explain after all, they have been generous in blind-testing samples, opening themselves up to journalistic scrutiny. The companys head of sport science is the former Olympic sprinter Craig Pickering, to whom I reveal the disparities between our results and our sporting track records.

You almost certainly cant use genes to tell who will be a good athlete or not a good athlete, he responds. There is no talent identification use in this.

Fair enough, but our world-class marathon runner was rated as having medium aerobic potential.

Thats a great example of how you cant use genetics to tell you what sport youll be good at.

OK, fine, so what can genetic testing tell us?

What the tests and reports do is give you information on which to base your training, to have a better informed programme.

Citing one DNAFit-supported study on a small group of athletes, Pickering says that the results provide enough information to guide training, either towards power (short, sharp) or endurance (longer, slower) sessions. This insight, he says, relates to genetically determined trainability rate of fitness gain rather than aptitude. Yet this wasnt the impression I had been given by the reports, covered as they are with the word potential.

I stress my concern to Pickering that, had I received my apparently bleak results as a newcomer to running, my athletic ambitions might have been crushed. But he thinks I am missing the subtleties. Because you have a low aerobic potential we have options, we can fine-tune and target other areas like movement economy and efficiency.

Low aerobic potential? We know that marathoners rely on their aerobic capacity, so surely this implies that my prospects were limited. No, that isnt what it means, he replies. I accept that potential does imply that. The title should be changed. I often call it your aerobic trainability.

By by this point, I have to admit, I am erring towards unconvinced. My scepticism deepens when I read the Athlome Projects consensus statement on direct-to-consumer (DTC) DNA tests:

The information provided by DTC is virtually meaningless for prediction and/or optimisation of sport performance. There is currently no evidence that existing genetic tests provide information that is useful regarding either predisposition for a particular sport, prediction of the training response likely to occur to a particular training programme, or predisposition to exercise-related injury.

Athlomes founder, Professor Yannis Pitsiladis, is even more damning: These results are pointless, throw them away. There are no grounds for any of it.

According to Pitsiladis, although there is vast, exciting scope for genetics-guided training, the science has a very long way to go: Were beginning to understand that performance is determined by hundreds, possibly even thousands of interacting genes. Even once they are known, we may not be able to make predictions with clinical significance; we will need to take into account the environmental factors as well.

Countering the criticism from Pitsiladis and his Athlome colleagues, Pickering alleges sour grapes: Theyre annoyed that weve done it before them and thats why theyre causing these problems. Their main goal was to sell genetic tests to people, in my opinion. They are frustrated that were one or two years ahead of them.

Pitsiladis doesnt deny having commercial interests in genetic testing but insists he is involved only in areas with demonstrable utility, such as using genetics to create improved anti-doping tests. He draws a sharp distinction between genetically testing elite athletes to assess their shared traits and testing amateurs who are almost as diverse a group as the general population.

Parents whove failed as athletes go buy this stuff, desperate for their kids to succeed Selling direct to consumers is the problem.

That is precisely my concern, too. Cant Pickering appreciate that for people such as myself, starting out as the unsporty sibling with every reason to doubt my genetic potential, my gloomy test results could have snuffed out my marathon dreams before I had even tried a 5k run?

I share your concern, he replies. Its something that, as a company, we try to communicate. Our reports use the word potential, and that needs to change We have to do a better job, and well continue to try.

Make no mistake, talent matters. Athletes such as McLaughlin and Swift are prodigiously genetically blessed. My older brother, too, is a natural. He overtook me and became a far superior athlete, as I always suspected he would. But being the best you can be isnt about biology, it is art as much as science. Talent isnt destiny decipherable from DNA; it waits to be realised through hard work, like a sculpture inside a boulder. So dont let anyone put you off get hammering.

Originally posted here:
Is running ability down to effort or DNA? And can it be proved? - The Guardian (blog)

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) A new set of DNA has been identified among the 85 victims of the AMIA Buenos Aires Jewish Center attack, strengthening the hypothesis that the 1994 attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

The discovery was announced on Monday by the AMIA Special Investigation Unit of the General Prosecution, two weeks before the 23rd anniversary of the bombing that also injured hundreds. The final report after two years of investigation by a forensics team, reveals for first time the existence of a genetic profile among the reserved remains in the laboratory of the Federal Police that doesnt belong to any known victims.

With this information the prosecutors in charge of the special unit are working on the hypothesis of the suicide bomber and have already taken steps in the field of international cooperation to try to match the profile obtained with that of samples of relatives of the suspected individual. The suspected individual isnt mentioned in thereport released to the publicbut is part of a previous report by the special unit, where he is named asIbrahim Hussein Berro, a Lebanese citizen and an alleged member of the terrorist group Hezbollah.

In May 2016, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI director James Comeymet in Washington, D.C., with Argentine Justice Minister Germn Garavano and offered to extendtechnical help to the Argentinean Justice Department regarding the AMIA attack and the death of special prosecutor Alberto Nisman.

The body of a possible suicide terrorist was never found or identified until now. Five Iranians are on the Interpol international police agencys most wanted list in connection with the AMIA 1994 attack, however.

ProsecutorsSabrina Namer, Roberto Salum and Leonardo Filippini have led the AMIA Special Investigatory Unit since their predecessor, Alberto Nisman, who was discovered shot dead in his apartment in January 2015 hours before he had been scheduled to appear in Congress to present allegations that then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner orchestrated a secret deal to cover up Iranian officials alleged role in the AMIA bombing. Fernandez denied the allegations and judges threw out the case; it was reopened one year ago, though no conclusions have yet been announced.

The two years work on the DNA analysis was conducted by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, the Forensic Medical Body and the University of Buenos Aires.The same team one year ago identified victim number 85 of the AMIA attack.

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New DNA identified in AMIA Jewish center bombing points to suicide attack - Jewish Telegraphic Agency