Category Archives: Transhuman News

DNA Cocktail - The Genius of Life - Dara O Briain #39;s Science Club - Series 2 - BBC
Materials scientist and engineer Mark Miodownik creates a DNA cocktail with the help of some strong Polish vodka, which Dara promptly drinks! Subscribe to th...

By: BBCWorldwide

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DNA Cocktail - The Genius of Life - Dara O Briain's Science Club - Series 2 - BBC - Video

2013 PSE DNA
Just some shooting, trying out a new sight.

By: Sbarkowski

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2013 PSE DNA - Video

Dr. Paul Farmer: New frontiers in tuberculosis care and control: lessons from #39;the delivery decade #39;
, TBResist: An International Consortium for Whole Genome Sequencing of Drug Resistant Strains of TB, ...

By: DNA tv

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Dr. Paul Farmer: New frontiers in tuberculosis care and control: lessons from 'the delivery decade' - Video

AC4 MP - AA - [FEAR] vs. [DNA] FL4m3_ - Saba Island
Thanks for the games 🙂 Intro: http://youtu.be/0BPu5m63_go.

By: AvrilCloud

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AC4 MP - AA - [FEAR] vs. [DNA] & FL4m3_ - Saba Island - Video

#39;Significant step #39; in Alzheimer #39;s disease DNA research

By: rerererer

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'Significant step' in Alzheimer's disease DNA research - Video

LONGMONT DNA has matched human remains found west of Boulder in 2002 with a Denver teen missing since 2001.

Boulder County Coroner Emma Hall said the family of 15-year-old Cristobal James Flores picked up his remains last week, more than 12 years after the boy fled from his Denver home after getting into an argument with his mother over his sexual orientation, according to police reports.

Hall said two hikers discovered the skeletal remains west of Boulder, southwest of the Silver Saddle Motel, on Aug. 30, 2002. Based on the state of decomposition, she said, he had likely been dead for nearly a year.

Nothing at the scene offered any clue about his identity, she said, although sheriff's investigators reported the area appeared to be a transient camp. A forensic anthropologist examined the remains and determined they were those of someone age 17-20. A forensic odontologist agreed with the estimate.

Hall said the remains showed no signs of trauma to the bones, but there was no tissue for examination, leaving little to help determine why he died.

"The worst thing is we can't say what happened," Hall said. "He had no ties to Boulder that the family knew of."

Flores fled his home in September 2001, and his family reported him as a runaway in January 2002. His family asked Denver police in 2009 to open a missing-person case. In 2012, they submitted family DNA and the FBI matched it to Flores.

Once Flores was officially identified, Hall said, Denver police and her office worked to locate and notify his family. His cremated remains were returned to the family last week.

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DNA identifies Denver teen who was missing since 2001

Organisers of DNA Gay Ski Week QT are offering four lucky couples the chance to win a once-in-a-lifetime trip to this years event in Queenstown.

The Southern Hemispheres largest Winter Pride event sees hundreds of gay men and women converge on Queenstown between August 30 and September 6 for a week-long celebration of skiing, socialising and evenings full of fun.

Organisers Sally and Mandy Whitewoods have created four competitions for people to win a trip to Queenstown from the USA and Australia.

Working with event sponsors to create the amazing prize packages, the competitions will run in DNA, Curve, Instinct and LOTL magazines throughout May to July.

To enter people just need to email their details to the participating magazine/s. Links to the competitions will be posted on the DNA Gay Ski Week QT website when they launch later this year.

The US competitions in Curve and Instinct magazines each include return flights from San Francisco with Air New Zealand (value $4600) as well as Shotover Jet rides ($258), Cardrona Day Passes ($198) and tickets to all DNA Gay Ski Week QT events all for two people ($580).

Curve magazine will include accommodation at host hotel The Novotel Queenstown Lakeside in a superior room with full buffet breakfast ($2444) in its competition. The Instinct magazine competition incorporates accommodation at Commonage Villas Queenstown in a one bedroom Commonage Villa ($6,215) making that prize pack worth over $11,500.

Each of the LOTL and DNA magazines Australia competitions include return flights from Sydney with Air New Zealand ($3600), accommodation at host hotel The Novotel Queenstown Lakeside in a superior room with full buffet breakfast ($2000), Shotover Jet rides ($258), Cardrona Day Passes ($198) and tickets to all DNA Gay Ski Week QT events all for two people ($580).

"Its fantastic we can offer people in the US and Australia the chance to experience DNA Gay Ski Week QT first hand. The prizes are just phenomenal," said Sally Whitewoods.

"Every year we attract more and more people from a cross section of countries and were stoked to be able to grow the events profile and reach even further," she said.

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DNA Gay Ski Week QT launches 'trip-of-a-lifetime' comp

We all know yeasts make beer and bread but their huge contribution to science, including helping us understand the nuts and bolts of life itself, tends to stay out of the spotlight. Over the past few years, through studies carried out on yeast DNA, biologists have begun to learn that something that looks like a simple cog in all living things is actually performing an intricately choreographed dance. In the same way that the Charleston differs from the Waltz, the dance displayed by this cog is faster and uses different steps from other parts of the yeast machinery. What's more, the dancers leave tell-tale footprints behind in their DNA.

The team at National Collection of Yeast Cultures at the Institute of Food Research have made a computer app to spot these footprints, and to decode the footprints in order to learn more about the rhythm of the dance and how the dance partners have come together and moved apart. The 'dancers' in question are the ribosomal RNA genes which give shape to the ribosome, a tiny protein-making machine found in all living cells.

If the ribosome goes wrong the cell dies, so its blueprint is highly protected. Not so protected though that small changes in the DNA, our footprints, don't occur. Biologists often use these changes to map various bits of the tree of life, so it's important to be able to track even the smallest alterations.

With funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the NCYC team have now achieved this, using huge DNA datasets to uncover the footprints left behind in yeasts.

"Our app is a very strict judge of the dance steps," said bioinformatician Dr Jo Dicks. "The fast tempo of the ribosomal RNA dance lets us detect very close relationships between different yeasts."

"As well as helping biologists around the world to work out the relationships between other species using their unique footprints, in future we hope to use yeasts with beneficial footprints in the biorefining" said Dr Ian Roberts, NCYC curator. The NCYC team work closely with the Biorefinery Centre, also based at the IFR on the Norwich Research Park.

"Our long-term aim is to exploit our new knowledge to brew up better biofuels and chemicals from yeast, and so reduce dependency on oil as we move towards a new green economy," said Dr Roberts.

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The above story is based on materials provided by Norwich BioScience Institutes. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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DNA provides information on origins of yeast, helps evolutionaly biologists

Sunscreens, vitamins, anti-oxidant rich foods. It sometimes seems like half the space on drugstore shelves is devoted to products that claim to protect our DNA from damage. Exactly why DNA damage matters and what to do about it is never totally spelled out on the label.

DNA damage happens throughout life, and the body is constantly doing repair work. But DNA can accumulate damage and mutations as cells age or because of environmental and lifestyle factors, like radiation or toxin exposure or smoking. But while scientists have found damage levels are associated with risks for a number of diseases, such as cancer and neurological conditions, theres isn't yet a straightforward test for DNA damage.

A small startup company spun-off from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wants to change that. Exogen Biotechnology is distributing its DNA damage test kits via a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo as it hopes to collect hundreds of samples to help develop a simple diagnostic test that could be used at home or at the doctor to predict disease risk. The company hopes DNA damage level could one day be as common a piece of health information--and as useful--as cholesterol monitoring.

The evidence isnt there yet. Studies have only monitored specific and small populations. To understand how DNA damage relates to different factors for a large population, Exogen needs a lot more data, which is why it is running the citizen science project on Indiegogo. Its essentially crowdsourcing the problem, says co-founder Jonathan Tang, a researcher in computational biology with Lawrence Berkeley.

Contributors who order one kit ($99) take their own blood sample at home, send it back to Exogen, and fill out an online questionnaire. Exogen gives them results, which measures a specific kind of DNA damage called double-strand breaks. The results compare an individuals results to those of the larger group of supporters. The company hopes interesting patterns will be revealed in the data, such as geographic or seasonal variations. Theyre also encouraging people to order multiple kits ($179 for two, $349 for four) and conduct their own experiments in how a lifestyle change, such as a new diet, could alter their own DNA damage level.

Ordering monthly or quarterly kits, you can start tuning your lifestyle for healthier DNA, the Indiegogo video says.

Of course, it's not yet clear what someone should do to tune their lifestyle or what safe level of damage they should aim for. Exogen isnt allowed to offer any medical advice yet, since its not okayed as a diagnostic tool by the FDA, but the company hopes to gather enough data to support a clinical trial and eventual market approval. It says that an independent review board did review its protocol for the citizen science project and plans to give ethical oversight.

A pilot project of about 100 patients, done before the crowdfunding campaign, already showed a few associations: Older people had higher levels of DNA breaks, as did the few people who had cancer compared to others their age. So far, 555 people have funded the Indiegogo campaign offering more than $85,000 in support (the campaign closes in two days). Exogen wants to get to more than 1,000 people in total before it brings its data to the FDA.

The technology and methods to measure DNA damage have existed since the late 1990s, but it used to be tedious work. To process large volumes of samples, Exogen has automated some steps with software that analyzes microscope images rather than a technician. The big difference is that we can do it fast and accurately, and theres no human bias in the approach, says co-founder and biophysicist Sylvain Costes.

The crowdfunding approach is helping the company gather more data quickly, but the technique does have its pitfalls, because people need to understand what theyre signing up for. Bringing science to the public has been challenging, says Tang. I feel like were doing a lot of education right now to the public, and trying to help them understand the value of it.

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Find Out How Damaged Your DNA Is With A Home Test Kit