Category Archives: Transhuman News

On May 6, at the 143rd Kentucky Derby, 20 thoroughbred horses will gallop along a 1.25-mile stretch. Even the slowest racer should cross the finish line in abouttwo minutes. The thoroughbreds are not onlyquicker than ancient wild horses, they are also remarkably different from the domesticated animals that nomads rode across the Asian steppe just2,300 years ago.

At some point in the pasttwo millennia peanuts on an evolutionary time scale humans transformed their horsesinto equinespeed demons. Selective breedinghad a price, though, beyond $30,000 vials of pedigreed racehorse sperm. Unhelpful mutationsplagued the animals. The current population of domesticated horses is about 55 million, but at some point in their history, their genetic diversity crashed. The Y chromosomes ofall the world's stallions are now quite similar, suggesting that only a relatively few males were the ancestors of today's horses.

[Why these researchers think humans came to North America 130,000 years ago]

Humans have not always bred so selectively, according to a study published in the journal Science on Thursday. Horse domestication began about 5,500 years ago. Ancient equestrians were not interested in superfast animals. They were more interested in diversity and potential, saidLudovic Orlando, a professor of molecular archaeology at the University of Copenhagen'sNatural History Museum of Denmark and an author of the new study.

Orlando and his colleagues sequenced the genomes of 14 ancient horses: one 4,100-year-old mare and 13 stallions, whichdated back 2,700 to 2,300 years. The stallions, ridden by the nomadic Scythians, had genes linked to an array of coat colors and traits associated with endurance or sprinting, as well as many diverse Y chromosomes.

Orlando and his colleagues chose to sequence Scythian stallionsfor several reasons: The animals livedabout halfway through the 5,500-year timeline of horse domestication. The horses also offered a ready supply of genetic material. To honor their royalty, Scythians sacrificed animals from many different tribes and buried the remains in underground chambers in what is now Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan's permafrost kept ancient DNA fresh. Its like we had a natural freezer waiting for us for 2,300 years, Orlando said. In places, the scientists dug up not just tooth and bone material buthairs. Some horse skulls still wore the decorationstheir owners had created millennia ago.

Scythians had a reputation as bloodthirsty warriors literally. The Greek historian Herodotus wrotethat the Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he overthrows in battle out of a cup made from a humanskull. But skullmugs or no, they were excellent horsemen.They mastered the horse like no others before them, Orlando said.

(The Scythians probably also drank horse milk. DNA analysis of the frozen stallions suggestedthat the Scythians bred some horses for enlarged mammary glands.)

[For some failed racehorses, theres another course to pursue]

Some, but not all, of their horses carried genetic variants seen in today's sprinting horses. Asingle gene mutationcan dictatea horse'sgait how motor neurons connect to muscle tissues allows an animal to amble. Ambling gaits have a four-step pattern, bringing the legs of the same side together for a smoother ride. The scientists could test whether Scythianscared about breeding for a more comfortable ride: The nomads did not.

Among the sacrificed were horses with bay, spotted,chestnut, black and cream-colored coats. The variety of coat colors still found in Kazakhstan today supported what is known as the neural crest hypothesis, Orlando said.

As a rule,domesticated mammals developcoats of varied colors and floppy ears; this is sometimes called the domestication syndrome. In Russia, for instance, a decades-long experiment to tame the fox has produced animalswith droopy ears and shorter, curlier tails. Biologists proposed that a pool of cells called the neural crest, which pops up in animal embryos and turns intotissues like skin and ear cartilage, might explain why different species grow similar traits.

[This 508-million-year-old sea predator had a remarkable mouth]

DNA from the Scythian horses was some of thefirst empirical evidence that supports the neural crest hypothesis, Orlando sad.

What's more, for the first 3,000 years of domestication, horse breeders were able to keep unhelpful mutations at bay. Modern horses have several nasty mutations, Orlando said, thatmake some animals prone to seizures or wounds that won't heal, for instance.

But something happened to horses on the way from the Kazakhsteppe to Churchill Downs: Somehow,breeders swept awayhorse genetic diversity. Orlando istrying to figure out why. He offeredthree likely scenarios for when hyperselective breeding eliminated diversity from the gene pool in the quest for specialized traits.Perhaps it was the fault of the Roman Empire and itshorses. Or perhaps horse breeders in the Middle Ages were highly selective. Or maybe the rise of themodern racehorse in18th-century Britain did the horse genome in.

Orlando is more interested in history than in rewinding the harmful effects of domestication, which he said would be a fruitless effort. We cannot give lessons to modern breeders, Orlando said. Its not like they have a different population to choose from.

And yet the history of horses is no idle thing. It is our history, Orlando argues. I believe horses are the most important domesticated animal in history, hesaid.Without horses, the history of warfare would be different, and therefore the history of humanity.

He cited cavalry, chariots and accomplished equestrians like Alexander the Great who became ancient leaders. Chickens kept us fed, and dogs kept us company. Horses, though, allowedhumans to travel faster and farther, not only spreading our descendants to other lands, but our ideas and cultures, too.

Read more:

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Long-frozen DNA shows how humans made horses faster and more likely to get sick - Washington Post

Scientists have extracted DNA from the skeletal remains of several 19th-century sailors who died during the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, whose goal was to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage.

With a new genetic database of 24 expedition members, researchers hope they'll be able to identify some of the bodies scattered in the Canadian Arctic, 170 years after one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration.

The results were published April 20 in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Led by Sir John Franklin, a British Royal Navy captain, the 129-member crew embarked in 1845 in search of a sea route that would link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The sailors were doomed after their ships became trapped in thick sea ice in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in 1846. [In Photos: Arctic Shipwreck Solves 170-Year-Old Mystery]

The last communication, a short note from April 25, 1848, indicated that the surviving men were abandoning their ships the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror just off King William Island and embarking on a harsh journey south toward a trading post on the mainland. None of them seems to have made it even a fifth of the way there.

Over more than a century, search parties and scientists have discovered the remains of several Franklin sailors in boats and makeshift campsites scattered along this route. The bones bear scars of diseases like scurvy. Some even have the signatures of cannibalism,according to one recent study that confirmed the 19th-century reports of Inuit witnesses who had described piles of fractured human bones. Several artifacts from the HMS Erebus, including a medicine bottle and tunic buttons, as well as the ship's bronze bell , have also been uncovered.

In the latest look at the array of bones, a team led by Douglas Stenton of Nunavut's Department of Culture and Heritage, a territory in northern Canada, conducted the first genetic tests on members of the expedition who died following the desertion of the ships.

Stenton and his colleagues were able to get DNA from 37 bone and tooth samples found at eight different sites around King William Island, and they established the presence of at least 24 different members of the expedition. Twenty-one of these individuals had been found at locations around Canada's Erebus Bay, "confirming it as a location of some importance following the desertion of Erebus and Terror," Stenton told Live Science.

The researchers say their results offer a more accurate count of the number of expedition members who died at different locations. A few of the early fatalities were buried at Beechey Island and their frozen remains, which were exhumed by archaeologists in the 1980s, were eerily well-preserved. The bones of the sailors who died after abandoning the ships, however, were much more scattered, dispersed by animal scavenging and human activity.

Stenton said that, in one case, bones from the same individual were found at two different sites about a mile from each other. The researchers think that an 1879 search party most likely found some of the bones, and then carried them to the new site and reburied them.

Stenton and colleagues hope they will eventually be able to use the database to identify the crew members and better reconstruct what happened in the final months of the expedition.

"We have been in touch with several descendants who have expressed interest in participating in further research," Stenton said. "We hope that the publication of our initial study will encourage other descendants to also consider participating."

Four samples in the study were identified as female, which doesn't fit with the picture of an all-male expedition crew. The authors ruled out the possibility that these samples came from Inuit women because the genetic and archaeological evidence associated with these four individuals also suggests they were European. [Tales of the 9 Craziest Ocean Voyages]

"We were surprised by the results for those samples because in planning the analysis it hadn't occurred to us that there might have been women on board," Stenton told Live Science.

Stenton and his colleagues think the most likely explanation for this discrepancy is that ancient DNA studies commonly fail to amplify the Y chromosome (the male sex chromosome) due to insufficient quantity or quality of DNA, which can result in false female identifications of the dead. However, the researchers noted that it wasn't unheard of for women to serve in disguise in the Royal Navy.

"Some of these women were smuggled onboard [the] ship, and others disguised themselves as men and worked alongside the crew for months or years before being detected or intentionally revealing themselves to be female," the authors wrote.

They cited cases such as Mary Anne Talbot, who served on two Navy ships during the Napoleonic wars of the 18th century before being found out after being wounded. Unfortunately, Stenton said he doesn't think it will be possible to definitively say whether the four Franklin samples are really just false results, but his team concluded that it would have been very unlikely for so many women to be serving secretly on this voyage.

Original article on Live Science.

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Frozen in time: DNA may ID sailors looking for Northwest Passage in ... - Fox News

David Lee Edds being taken into custody on April 27, 2017

U.S. Marshals Hattiesburg

HOUSTON- Investigators say a review of DNA evidence in the 1976 fatal stabbing of a Houston man has led to an arrest nearly 41 years later.

According to the Harris County Sheriff's Office, David Lee Edds, 61, was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals after being found camping in a "wooded area" outside Waynesboro, Mississippi on Thursday morning.

Rene Anthony Guillotte was last seen leaving a bar on May 11, 1976. His naked body was found on a road early that morning.

The sheriff's statement says cold case investigators in 2014 began reviewing the death and linked DNA evidence to Edds, who lived near the crime scene. Sheriff's spokesman Thomas Gilliland says Edds' DNA was in a law enforcement database. According to the statement, investigators interviewed Edds in early 2017 and he "denied knowing the victim, being at the crime scene or having any knowledge of the murder. He could offer no explanation as to why he was linked to the crime scene and to the victim by physical evidence."

According to Gilliland, Edds fled Harris County last week after being indicted by a grand jury. He had family in the Waynesboro area where he was found.

Edds was convicted in 1981 of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years. He also has convictions for burglary, robbery, drugs, weapons and parole violation.

2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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DNA leads to arrest in 1976 fatal stabbing of Houston man - CBS ... - CBS News

Ohio State cornerback and NFL draft prospect Gareon Conley will be interviewed by police on Monday and give a DNA sample, according toAdam Ferriseof Cleveland.com.

Conley is under investigation after being accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotelon April 9, though he has not been charged at this time.

The woman accusing Conley of sexual assault told police she met Conley at the elevator of the Westin Hotel on the night in question and went to a room with him. She said he asked her if she wanted to participate in a foursome but she declined, instead preferring to watch another couple have sex.

She said that Conley instead "grabbed her, ripped her pants off and raped her" before kicking her out of the hotel room, per Ferrise.

Conley's attorney, however, says Conley met the woman at the Barley House on West 6th Street that evening andseveral people told the bar's owner, Bobby George, that they saw the woman at the bar and saw her leave with Conley. George, however, was not at the bar at the time, per Ferrise.

Two of Conley's friends told police that nothing happened between the woman and Conley in the hotel room and she grew angry when he asked her to leave.

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Gareon Conley to Meet with Police, Give DNA Sample in Rape Investigation - Bleacher Report

Cambridge Epigenetix said today it has licensed from Boston Childrens Hospital intellectual property related to profiling and altering DNA methylation, technologies that the company said could improve diagnoses and treatment of cancer and other diseases.

Through an exclusive license agreement whose value was not disclosed, Cambridge Epigenetix said it strengthened its position in epigenetic biomarker discovery by licensing numerous epigenetic techniques used in laboratories. The techniques include the specific and unbiased enrichment of 5-methylcytosine (5mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) via enzymatic glucosylation and the use of ten-eleven translocation (TET) enzymes for targeted epigenetic engineering.

The IP is based upon work by the research group of Anjana Rao, Ph.D., a researcher specializing in immunology and cancer epigenetics who was formerly with Boston Children's Hospital and is now with the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology. At the Institute, she is a professor in the Division of Signaling and Gene Expression, and the Pfizer Endowed Chair in Cancer Immunology and Oncology Dr. Rao is also a member of Cambridge Epigenetixs Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).

Dr. Raos research group was the first to identify 5hmC as an important biomarker for cancer diagnosis that cannot be measured by traditional epigenetic sequencing methodologies. She also determined that the TET family of enzymes generate 5hmC from 5mC and are key regulators of cellular differentiation that are often mutated in cancer.

The continued study of 5hmC and other oxidized methylcytosines is essential to enhance our understanding of human biology and health, Dr. Rao said in a statement. I am delighted that Cambridge Epigenetix has chosen to license this technology and, through my role on the SAB, I will continue advising them on maximizing its application.

The IP covered by the license includes the specific and unbiased enrichment of 5mC and 5hmC via enzymatic glucosylation and the use of TETs for targeted epigenetic engineering. The technologies are intended to robustly profile methylation and hydroxymethylation in limited amounts of DNA (<10 ng), a quantity ideal for clinical samples.

By gaining access to the IP, Cambridge Epigenetix said, it can identify epigenetic biomarkers for noninvasive cancer diagnosis and other clinical applications and build on offerings that include its TrueMethyl oxidative bisulfite sequencing kits for 5mC and 5hmC detection.

"5hmC is fundamentally linked to the expression of genes and to the identity of cells and tissue. This makes it a highly important epigenetic marker with the potential to improve patient outcomes through the early diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as cancer, added Cambridge Epigenetix CEO Jason Mellad, Ph.D. This is a tremendous opportunity for Cambridge Epigenetix, enabling the company to utilize and offer our partners the most advanced epigenetic biomarker discovery technologies available in our key focus areas of oncology and liquid biopsy.

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Cambridge Epigenetix Licenses DNA Methylation IP from Boston Children's Hospital - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News