Category Archives: Transhuman News

Macrauchenia patachonica lived during the last ice age. It resembled a bulky camel without a hump, with a long neck like that of a llama and a short trunk for a nose.

The long neck would enable the herbivore to reach leaves on plants and bushes across what is now South America and the open landscapes of Patagonia.

"It was a fairly bulky quadruped, probably not very fleet of foot," said Ross MacPhee, study co-author and curator at the American Museum of Natural History. "Its outstanding feature, however, was its nose. We have no soft tissue fossils, so we don't know whether the nose was developed into an actual trunk, like an elephant's, or was something more like a big fleshy appendage, resembling the tapir's proboscis. It would not have looked very much like anything alive today."

The nasal opening is right between the eye sockets, rather than just above the teeth.

Legendary British scientist Darwin found the first fossil of this creature, as well as those of other extinct animals that fall under the "South American native ungulates" category, in 1834. The fossils were given to Richard Owen, a British paleontologist, to study. Neither Owen or Darwin could clarify the Macrauchenia's combination of features to a modern-day counterpart or a distinct mammal lineage. But they had only a few limb bones and vertebrae to study.

The ungulates group itself is puzzling to researchers because some of them seem elephant-like, while others are more like aardvarks and moles. Owen even used an old name for the llama to come up with the genus Macrauchenia.

"What we knew for quite some time is that there is a large number of species that are put into this group, and many of them looked quite peculiar," said Michi Hofreiter, lead author of the new study and paleogenomics expert at the University of Potsdam. "They are all extinct, and we do not even know if they represent a single group or belong to different phylogenetic groups."

A previous study tried to place Macrauchenia on the tree of life by using ancient collagen. The new study, led by MacPhee and Hofreiter, built on the 2015 collagen study by extracting mitochondrial DNA from a fossil found in South America. The researchers also used a new approach to recovering Macrauchenia's genome, even without a modern analog.

"I'm pleased to see that our ancient protein results for Macrauchenia are verified using this advancement in ancient DNA alignments of a deeply diverged mammal without close modern relatives," said Frido Welker, author of the 2015 collagen study. "Overcoming the absence of a close relative while achieving a near-complete mitochondrial genome is impressive."

Before these studies using protein and DNA, arguments for where the animal belonged were derived from bone morphology, leading to a variety of possibilities.

Macrauchenia now belongs to a sister group of Perissodactyla, which includes horses, rhinos and tapirs. The two groups split about 66 million years ago, around the time a mass extinction occurred when an asteroid struck the Earth.

"We now have found a place in the tree of life for this group, so we can now also better explain how the peculiarities of these animals evolved," Hofreiter said. "And we lost a pretty old branch on the mammalian tree of life when the last member of this group went extinct."

The new study "finally settles who it is closely related to," MacPhee added. "Finally settles that its lineage had already diverged from that of modern perissodactyls as early as the close of the age of dinosaurs."

Next, the researchers want to solve the mystery of what Darwin dubbed "the strangest animal ever discovered": Toxodon. This giant animal is thought to have looked something like a fur-covered rhinoceros, with the head of a hippopotamus .

They tried to extract Toxodon DNA from fossil samples for this study, but it wasn't possible, as is often the case with fossils found in temperate climates rather than cold ones. However, solving the riddle of Macrauchenia has given them hope.

They will also use these techniques to look at fossils of ancient sloths, armadillos, anteaters and their extinct relatives, MacPhee said. The benefit of ancient proteins like collagen is that they contain genetic information and break down slowly.

Without having to rely on close living relatives of ancient, extinct creatures, researchers can use the latest technology to push their fields forward.

"We will eventually be able to recover complete genomes from many kinds of fossil species," MacPhee said. "Then, we can start comparing genes from different species and make inferences about functional differences in gene products. This will have a profound effect on the study of evolution, because it will be fully empirical, not inferential."

Filling in the gaps that these strange creatures left behind also answers basic questions about the history of our planet.

"The vast majority of all species that ever lived on Earth are now extinct," Hofreiter said. "So if we want to understand the history of life on Earth, we also need to study the extinct species."

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Macrauchenia: DNA solves animal riddle that Darwin couldn't - CNN ... - CNN

By Amy Norton

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 27, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- When people work the night shift, their bodies might have less capacity to repair everyday damage to cells' DNA, a small study hints.

The research found that people excreted lower levels of a chemical called 8-OH-dG when they worked at night. That might be a sign that the body's ability to repair DNA damage is diminished.

While this is all theoretical, a number of studies have tied shift work to higher risks of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

The new findings might point to one reason for those risks, said lead researcher Parveen Bhatti, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle.

He explained that 8-OH-dG is excreted in the urine when the body repairs DNA damage that occurs during normal body processes.

"So we think lower clearance [of 8-OH-dG] likely reflects a reduced ability to repair DNA damage," Bhatti said.

"Over time, such DNA damage might contribute to cancer or other diseases," Bhatti added.

And, he said, the whole process might be due to insufficient levels of melatonin -- a hormone that helps regulate the body's internal "clock."

The brain churns out melatonin in response to darkness, and night-shift workers tend to have lower melatonin levels compared to people who work days.

However, a researcher who reviewed the study was cautious about interpreting it.

"The results are interesting," said Kathryn Reid, who studies sleep and circadian rhythms at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago.

"But they didn't link shift work to actual DNA damage," Reid said. And it's not really clear, she added, how melatonin fits in.

"This doesn't show that it's cause-and-effect," Reid noted.

The findings, reported June 26 in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine, are based on 50 men and women who worked the night shift in health care jobs.

Overall, Bhatti's team found, the workers had lower levels of 8-OH-dG in their urine when they worked at night, versus nights where they were able to sleep.

Bhatti said the results bolster an earlier study in which his team followed 223 workers -- including the 50 in this one. There, the researchers found that workers' 8-OH-dG levels were lower during daytime sleep, versus nighttime sleep.

The researchers also saw evidence that lower melatonin levels correlated with lower 8-OH-dG. (The 50 workers in the latest study were those who'd shown the biggest drop in melatonin during night work versus night sleep.)

"We think melatonin might be driving this," Bhatti said.

He acknowledged, though, that his findings so far don't prove that.

"I'd like to do a trial where we give melatonin to shift workers with low melatonin levels, then see if it affects this biomarker," Bhatti said, referring to 8-OH-dG.

But until more research is done, he does not suggest shift workers use melatonin supplements in the hopes of preventing DNA damage.

"I'm cautious about melatonin supplements," Bhatti said. "They're not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. You don't know how much melatonin you're getting, or what kinds of fillers are being used."

Plus, Reid added, melatonin can make people feel groggy, which is probably not a good idea for workers who need to be alert at night.

For now, Bhatti suggested that shift workers be "extra vigilant" about maintaining a healthy lifestyle -- eating a balanced diet, not smoking and getting regular exercise.

Unfortunately, he added, eating well and exercising can be challenging for shift workers.

"That's where I think employers can help," Bhatti said. "They can try to provide access to healthy food and more opportunities for employees to exercise."

WebMD News from HealthDay

SOURCES: Parveen Bhatti, Ph.D., associate member, epidemiology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle; Kathryn Reid, Ph.D., research associate professor, neurology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago; June 26, 2017 Occupational & Environmental Medicine online

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Could Shift Work Damage Your DNA? - WebMD

In 1977, Alondra Nelson remembers lying stomach-down, head-in-hands, in front of the television, watching Alex Haleys miniseries Roots with her parents. I knew that something special was happening because my parents didnt let us watch TV in the evenings, and here, they were letting us watch eight nights in a row, she told a crowd at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic. They wanted us to see it for its historic nature.

The miniseries, which traced Haleys genealogy back to the Gambia, spurred many African Americans to start tracing their own ancestries. And it inspired Nelsons own interest in genealogy and the social consequences of learning about ones roots. Now, as the dean of social science at Columbia University, Nelson has spent more than a decade studying what she describes as a new groundswell of root-seekingone propelled by genetic testing.

Today, there are dozens of companies that will sequence segments of a customers DNA and tell them about their ancestry. When Nelson asked the audience how many had made use of such services, at least a dozen people raised their hands. But in 2002, the industry was a nascent one. To find its early customers, Nelson had to go to old-fashioned genealogy clubs and societies.

The history of genetics as a field is steeped in eugenics and scientific racism. And yet, Nelson says that for many African Americans, DNA testing held a special appeal because many of the traditional methods of genealogy had been complicated by the history of slavery. Records disappeared. Names changed. People were trafficked across state lines. Stories were verboten because they were too traumatic. Ancestry testing offered a way of circumventing these obstacles, and airing stories that might never otherwise have come to light. Its an interesting story about race and genetics, Nelson says. When we talk about African Americans in science, its often a story of skepticism and distrust. But this ancestry-testing story is one of pioneering early adopters who are willing to do something different.

One such pioneer was Rick Kittles, a geneticist and cancer researcher who founded a company called African Ancestry Inc. His service provided only broad inferences about where people came from, but for many customers, that was enough. It definitely wasnt perfect, but many people said that if its a choice between no information or an inference that might be slightly off, Ill take the inference, Nelson says.

As tests became more precise, those inferences often proved to be unexpectedly moving. Nelson once met a group of African Americans whose DNA suggested that they had Sierra Leonean ancestry. They met for a ceremony of remembrance on the Ashley River in South Carolina, at a ferry landing where slaves were disembarked from ships and auctioned off. The actor Isaiah Washington was there. A man cast soil and stones from Sierra Leone into the river and said a prayer.

We talk about the history of slavery in this country and it feels so abstract. But genetic ancestry testing can make it very personal, she says. The ceremony allowed for a social practice of healing, where people didnt just have to sit with the knowledge. Many of the folks I talked to tell very moving stories about new relationships they began in their communities with their genetic test results.

Nelson expands on this theme in her recent book, The Social Life of DNA. In it, she argues that DNA is more than a molecule that defines our identity; it also takes a social life beyond its influence within individual bodies. The communities that can arise from ancestry testing are a far cry from the cutesy images often used to sell ancestry tests, in which bemused people swap lederhosen for tartan. This test was not just about identity in a narcissistic way, but about people trying to reconcile the history of slavery, and scaling up from their ancestry test to what it means for the history of the U.S., says Nelson.

When Nelson first looked at ancestry tests, they were mainly of interest to the 50-plus crowd. But theyre now capturing the interest of a younger demographic who are drawn to the quantified-self movement, and the power of dramatically revealing where you came from, reality TV-style. Nelson knows that power first-hand. I didnt want to do the test, but I thought if I was going to do it, it would be with a big reveal, she says.

It happened in an Atlanta ballroom, with Rick Kittles and Isaiah Washington MCing. At the event, Martin Luther King III learned his ancestry on his mothers side traced back to Africa, while his fathers line traced to Scotland and Ireland. He told a story about how were all related in the end, and spoke about his desire to go to Europe. Marcus Garvey Jr.s son heard similar resultsa mothers line that descended from Africa and a fathers line that came from the Iberian Peninsula. He told a story that highlighted the horrors of slavery. It was an example about how these results, even when theyre very similar, get taken up into these stories that are important to us, says Nelson.

She learned that her mitochondrial DNA (which passes down the female line) traced back to the Bamileke people of Cameroona fact that delighted her mother. She couldnt wait to tell everyone, Nelson says. And then soon after, she developed a close relationship with a woman from Cameroon, whose family would spend holidays with us. Her son had grandparents day at school, and since his grandparents are in Cameroon, he invited my motherthe DNA Cameroonianto be his grandparent for the day.

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How African Americans Use DNA Testing to Connect With Their Past - The Atlantic

After the Austin Police Department was notified of mold on a sexual assault kit, it led to the discovery of more mold in a storage refrigerator that held DNA cases, according to a memo from the City of Austin.

Signature Science, one of the labs Austin hired for DNA analysis while the Austin Police DepartmentDNA lab is suspended, reached out to APD on April 25, 2017 after they found at least one sexual assault kit with mold, the memo read.

The discovery led to an inspection of the storage refrigeratorand more boxes were found with mold on them. The moldy boxes contained cases mostly dating back to the 1990s and early 2000s.

849 DNA cases had some sign of mold on them. A total of 1,629 were inspected, according to the memo.

On June 21, Signature Science concluded "no issues were observed with the samples processed from the case originally reported to have mold."

APDis further researching mold remediation.

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Mold discovered on DNA kits - Story | KTBC - FOX 7 Austin - FOX 7 Austin

1. My suspicion was correct. Genetically, I do have a slower metabolism. Dr. Dan described this in scientific terms as an "efficient metabolism," meaning that I store energy more than someone with a fast or "inefficient metabolism."

2. I also have a gene variation for the FTO gene that is linked to a hormone called ghrelin, which controls hunger. My gene variation implies that I am someone who becomes hungry very easily, therefore creating a higher risk of overeating. Dan said that eating small frequent meals throughout the day to control hunger would be important.

3. I also have a gene variation in the APOA2 gene, indicating that I am sensitive to saturated fats, meaning that it sticks to me more easily! I asked Dr. Dan what foods have saturated fats and he said things like animal products, butter, dairy products, palm oil and coconut oil. Coconut oil?! I ate so much coconut oil because of how often it's promoted as a healthy oil. No wonder I was having trouble.

4. I am someone who would benefit from working out later in the day because my CLOCK gene variations imply that I am a night owl. This made perfect sense because I am definitely not a morning person.

5. I am someone who responds well to "high volume training," meaning high sets and reps of weight training. I always thought that lots of cardio would be the key to losing weight. It turns out that it was going to take a lot of strength training. Dan said that the more muscle I built, the more fat I would burn.

6. I am someone who does not switch from burning carbohydrates to burning fat easily. This would mean that I would need to be eating the right balance of macronutrients: Carbs, protein and fat.

7. Dan also said that I have a gene variation that indicates I metabolize caffeine slowly. This means that I would benefit by having a cup of green tea about 30 minutes prior to a workout for optimal energy.

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I Tried A Diet And Fitness Plan Based On My DNA And Couldn't Believe The Results - BuzzFeed News