Category Archives: Transhuman News

Discovering that your German heritage is actually Scottish and turning in your lederhosen for a kilt thats the premise of a commercial playing a lot these days. It taps into a common human desire: to find out our true identity. Or perhaps, more specifically, to find out were a little more interesting than we thought or that our ancestors were.

Only its not so easy, or precise, as the commercials suggest.

Colleen Greene, Cal State Fullerton marketing librarian, shared advice with a roomful of people on National DNA Day last month on using DNA testing to research their ancestry. She also told them how to choose from among the DNA kits on the market to find the one that best fits their goals and how to save money in the process.

People expect it to tell them their whole family history. Theyve seen the commercials. Theyve seen the guy in the kilt, Greene said. They all want to find out theyre related to William Wallace, the Scottish knight of Braveheart fame, she joked.

Most wont, of course. But Greene related how she started piecing together her own heritage a couple of years ago and has connected with multiple relatives by using the kits and the tools on the websites for Ancestry.com, 23andMe and Family Tree DNA.

Greene, who teaches an online graduate-level genealogy seminar through San Jose State University, stressed that those really interested in going down their personal rabbit hole must combine DNA testing with historical research.

Many in the audience, which included members of CSUFs Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, had already done some DNA testing. A little testing can evidently lead to more testing, more research and more contacts with long-lost relatives; several sites include avenues to email those who match your DNA.

The interest in testing has soared as the cost of DNA kits has come down. What once cost $500 to $1,000 a pop, Greene said, now can be found for less than $100.

Also, the technology has been progressing quickly, allowing more detailed and accurate results. Two books published just last year dont reflect the latest changes, she said. One DNA kit maker recently changed its algorithms, thereby changing peoples results.

AncestryDNA gained more than a million members just over the holiday season, due partly to a heavy advertising campaign, Greene said.

But that increased visibility and the surge in commercials is leading to some confusion, Greene said. Which kit you go with, and from which company, depends on what you are hoping to find out. Do you want to learn the identity of your great-grandfather who emigrated from Scotland or just find out whether you should buy a kilt, like the guy in the commercial?

If you are investing money in a kit, you want to make sure youre getting the right one not the $500 one but the $79 one, Greene said.

The two main goals are to find out family history or ethnicity, she said. Ethnicity is what most people are after when they ponder ordering a kit.

These are the people who really dont care about their family history, Greene said. They dont care about their ancestors. They want to know their ethnicity. This is one of the most consuming things.

Most of us dont know our ethnicity, she said. We just think we know, based on our appearance or what mom and dad told us.But depending on what country they came from, parents and grandparents dont always want to talk about such things. Perhaps they fled a country in revolution or under occupation.

Ethnicities also get a little cloudy due to migrations, such as that of the Sephardic Jews, and intermarriage between groups, such as in Mexico. Some groups just have more meager historical records, such as Hispanics and pre-Civil War African Americans. And others, such as Native Americans, are classified various ways, adding to the confusion.

A lot of family trees online are junk, Greene said. Results for many Latinos dont come back as Mexican, she said, because the kits test race and Mexicans are a diverse race. Also, many names include two surnames.

On the other hand, New Mexico, which has some of the oldest settlements in the nation, has conducted statewide tests to compile a comprehensive DNA database. That wealth of information helped Greene track down some of her relatives.

Those wanting to learn their ethnicity should look for an autosomal DNA kit, Greene said, which is typically the least expensive kind. It goes back only about five or six generations, however.

More distant or complicated searches for ancestors require either a Y-DNA kit, which tests the patrilineal line, or a mitochondrial or mtDNA kit, which tests the matrilineal line. These are more expensive and often require sleuthing out a male or female relative to test, but provide results such as those that confirmed descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings or identified the remains of King Richard III.

Its really fun if you love puzzles, Greene said. You have to weave back. In the case of confirming that remains found in 2012 under a parking lot in Leicester, England, were indeed those of Richard III, researchers had to trace the lineage through his eldest sister using mitochondrial DNA.

Often DNA cant prove something alone, Greene said. DNA results have to be combined with historical records. Jefferson kept meticulous records and journals, for example, which allowed researchers to determine that his younger brother Randolph wasnt near Monticello at the time the children in question wereconceived, leaving Thomas as the more likely candidate as their father.

Greene used obituaries, newspaper articles, and military, border crossing and naturalization records to track down some of her ancestors.

Her own search and those she does for others have taught Greene that DNA testing is rife with the potential for uncomfortable family secrets and other privacy concerns.

You have to anticipate you will find something, she said, especially with searches of family history. Imagine someone finding out her parents werent really her biological parents or a white supremacist finding out he has African American DNA, and its easy to see how things can get messy, she said.

It can be really surprising to get these results. she said.

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DNA science about siblings an eye-opener

Heres a little bit of science for those whose sibling takes a DNA test and think they can piggyback on the findings: Siblings other than identical twins dont share the same distribution of their parents DNA, and so can have slightly different percentages of ethnicity. Colleen Greene mentioned one family in which a man had 17 percent Irish heritage vs. 34 percent for his older sisters. They would call him their almost Irish brother. Think of a jar of M&Ms, Greene said. Toss in half from mom and half from dad, shake them up and take a handful. The assortment of M&Ms that you and your sibling pull out will be different, unless you are identical twins. It really confuses people, she said.

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More on testing

CSUFs Pollak Library website includes information from Colleen Greene on the most popular DNA kits on the market and which to buy for various purposes. Some makers sites include information on genetic health risks or allow you to compare chromosomes of your relatives. Go to Library Guides and search for DNA. Greene plans a monthly interest group for those interested in tracing their family roots and, next spring, CSUF staff will launch a program series on the topic.

The rest is here:
What can a DNA kit tell you? A CSUF expert has some answers - OCRegister

May 4, 2017

A new study in Science from Karolinska Institutet maps out how different DNA-binding proteins in human cells react to certain biochemical modifications of the DNA molecule. The scientists report that some 'master' regulatory proteins can activate regions of the genome that are normally inactive due to epigenetic changes. Their findings contribute to a better understanding of gene regulation, embryonic development and the processes leading to diseases such as cancer.

The DNA molecule carries information in the form of a sequence of four nucleotide bases, adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T), which can be thought of as the letters of the genomic language. Short sequences of the letters form 'DNA words' that determine when and where proteins are made in the body.

Almost all of the cells in the human body contain the letters in precisely the same order. Different genes are however active (expressed) in different cell types, allowing the cells to function in their specialised roles, for example as a brain cell or a muscle cell. The key to this gene regulation lies in specialised DNA-binding proteinstranscription factorsthat bind to the sequences and activate or repress gene activity.

The DNA letter C exists in two forms, cytosine and methylcytosine, which can be thought of as the same letter with and without an accent (C and ). Methylation of DNA bases is a type of epigenetic modification, a biochemical change in the genome that does not alter the DNA sequence. The two variants of C have no effect on the kind of proteins that can be made, but they can have a major influence on when and where the proteins are produced. Previous research has shown that genomic regions where C is methylated are commonly inactive, and that many transcription factors are unable to bind to sequences that contain the methylated .

By analysing hundreds of different human transcription factors, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now found that certain transcription factors actually prefer the methylated . These include transcription factors that are important in embryonic development, and for the development of prostate and colorectal cancers.

"The results suggest that such 'master' regulatory factors could activate regions of the genome that are normally inactive, leading to the formation of organs during development, or the initiation of pathological changes in cells that lead to diseases such as cancer", says Professor Jussi Taipale at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics who led the research.

The results pave the way for cracking the genetic code that controls the expression of genes, and will have broad implications for the understanding of development and disease. The availability of genomic information relevant to disease is expanding at an exponentially increasing rate.

"This study identifies how the modification of the DNA structure affects the binding of transcription factors, and this increases our understanding of how genes are regulated in cells and further aids us in deciphering the grammar written into DNA", says Professor Taipale.

Explore further: Complex grammar of the genomic language

More information: Yimeng Yin, Ekaterina Morgunova, Arttu Jolma, Eevi Kaasinen, Biswajyoti Sahu, Syed Khund-Sayeed, Pratyush K. Das, Teemu Kivioja, Kashyap Dave, Fan Zhong, Kazuhiro R. Nitta, Minna Taipale, Alexander Popov, Paul A. Ginno, Silvia Domcke, Jian Yan, Dirk Schbeler, Charles Vinson, and Jussi Taipale. 'Impact of cytosine methylation on DNA binding specificities of human transcription factors'. Science, 5 May 2017. science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aaj2239

Journal reference: Science

Provided by: Karolinska Institutet

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Scientists reveal how epigenetic changes in DNA are interpreted - Phys.Org