Category Archives: Transhuman News

Image Caption: Nelumbo nucifera from China, more commonly known as the 'sacred lotus'. Credit: Jane Shen-Miller / UCLA

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

A team of international scientists report today that they have sequenced and annotated the genome of the sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), which is thought to have a powerful genetic system. The team, which includes researchers from the US, China, Australia and Japan, have sequenced nearly 90 percent of the plants 27,000 genes.

The sacred lotus, which is a symbol of spiritual purity and longevity, has the ability to repair genetic defects, and may hold a key to the secrets of aging; the seeds of the lotus can survive up to 1,300 years. The petals and leaves of the plant also repel dirt and water and the flower can generate its own heat to attract pollinators.

Through sequencing, the researchers have found that the lotus bears the closest resemblance to the ancestor of all eudicots, than of any other plant that has been successfully sequenced to date. Eudicots are a group of flowering plants that include apple, coffee, peanut, soybean, tobacco, tomato, and countless others.

Publishing the paper in the journal Genome Biology, the team noted that the results of the sequencing offer insight into the heart of many of the plants mysteries.

The research was co-led by Ray Ming, a plant biology professor at University of Illinois Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB); Jane Shen-Miller, a plant biology professor at UCLA; and Shaohua Li, director of the Wuhan Botanical Garden (WBG) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The lotus genome is an ancient one, and we now know its ABCs, said Shen-Miller, who works out of the UCLAs Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life. Molecular biologists can now more easily study how its genes are turned on and off during times of stress and why this plants seeds can live for 1,300 years. This is a step toward learning what anti-aging secrets the sacred lotus plant may offer.

Shen-Miller said the plants genetic repair mechanisms could be very useful if researchers could find a way to transfer them to crops that have seeds that generally only have life spans of a few years. They could even prove significant if transferable to human health.

If our genes could repair disease as well as the lotus genes, we would have healthier aging. We need to learn about its repair mechanisms, and about its biochemical, physiological and molecular properties, but the lotus genome is now open to everybody, she said.

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Sacred Lotus Genome May Hold Key To The Secrets Of Aging

Washington, May 14 (ANI): Researchers at Texas A and M University have successfully sequenced the complete genome of a Scarlet macaw for the first time.

This is a groundbreaking move that could provide new insight into avian evolution, biology and conservation.

The team was led by Drs. Christopher Seabury and Ian Tizard at the Schubot Exotic Bird Health Center in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Texas A 'n' M.

Macaws are found in tropical Central and South America, from southern Mexico to northern Argentina. Trapping of the birds for the pet trade, plus loss of habitat due to deforestation in their native lands, has severely decreased their numbers since the 1960s.

There are 23 species of macaws, and some of these have already become extinct while others are endangered.

Macaws can live 50 to 75 years and often outlive their owners.

"They are considered to be among the most intelligent of all birds and also one of the most affectionate - it is believed they are sensitive to human emotions," stated Tizard.

The bird selected for the sequencing was a female named "Neblina" who lives in the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa. Neblina is believed to be from Brazil. She was confiscated during a raid on illegally imported exotic birds by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1995.

Tizard said that a blood sample was taken from Neblina, DNA was extracted for sequencing, and after a series of steps, the sequence of the genome was assembled by Seabury and his team.

"The final analysis showed that there are about one billion DNA bases in the genome, which is about one-third of that found in mammals," Tizard explained.

Continued here:
Genome sequencing may shed light on parrots' longevity and intelligence

May 14, 2013 The toxin that causes botulism is the most potent that we know of. Eating an amount of toxin just 1000th the weight of a grain of salt can be fatal, which is why so much effort has been put into keeping Clostridium botulinum, which produces the toxin, out of our food.

The Institute of Food Research on the Norwich Research Park has been part of that effort through studying the bacteria and the way they survive, multiply and cause such harm. In new research, IFR scientists have been mining the genome of C. botulinum to uncover new information about the toxin genes.

There are seven distinct, but similar, types of botulinum neurotoxin, produced by different strains of C. botulinum bacteria. Different sub-types of the neurotoxin appear to be associated with different strains of the bacteria. Genetic analysis of these genes will give us information about how they evolved.

Dr Andy Carter, working in Professor Mike Peck's research group, used data generated from sequencing efforts at The Genome Analysis Centre, on the Norwich Research Park. Andy compared the genome sequence of five different C. botulinum strains, all from the same group and all producing the same sub-type of neurotoxin.

An initial finding was that the five strains were remarkably similar in the area of the genome containing the neurotoxin gene. This suggests that the bacteria picked up the gene cluster in a single event, sometime in the past. Bacteria commonly acquire genes, or gene clusters, from other bacteria through this horizontal gene transfer. It is a way that bacteria have evolved to share 'weapons', such as antibiotic activity or the ability to produce toxins. To find out more about how C. botulinum acquired its own deadly weapon, Andy delved deeper into the genome sequence.

Like fossils of long lost organisms, Andy found, in the same region of the genome, evidence of two other genes for producing two of the other types of neurotoxin. Although these gene fragments are completely non-functional, finding them in the same place in the genome as the functional neurotoxin gene cluster is significant as it suggests that this region of the genome could be a 'hotspot' for gene transfer.

Looking to either side of the neurotoxin gene cluster uncovered more evidence supporting the hotspot idea. When the gene cluster inserted into the C. botulinum genome, it cut in two another gene. This gene is essential for the bacteria to replicate its DNA, so why does destroying it not prove fatal? C. botulinum was unaffected by this because contained in the segment of imported DNA was another version of the chopped-up gene.

Perhaps this is pointing us to the way C. botulinum first picks up its lethal weapon. This should help us prepare against the emergence of new strains, and may even one day help us disarm this deadly foe.

The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution Advance.

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Mining the botulinum genome