Category Archives: Transhuman News

HTC Droid DNA Unboxing and over view
This is the Droid DNA on Verizon Wireless, the US Version of the HTC J Butterfly. Android 4.1 Released 2012-11-21 1.50GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (quad co...

By: tooch0007

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HTC Droid DNA Unboxing and over view - Video

DNA Vergadering 7-5-2013
DNA Vergadering 7-5-2013.

By: dnasuriname

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DNA Vergadering 7-5-2013 - Video

Mississippi to Execute Willie Manning Tonight After Rejecting DNA Tests FBI #39;s Admission of Error
http://www.democracynow.org - The state of Mississippi is preparing to execute an African-American prisoner tonight, despite an unusual admission from the FB...

By: democracynow

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Mississippi to Execute Willie Manning Tonight After Rejecting DNA Tests

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (KSDK) - St. Clair County State's Attorney Brendan Kelly says for the first time, he has charged DNA, not an actual person by name, in connection to a 2005 rape.

The reason Kelly charged the DNA is because the statute of limitations is set to run out soon. He wanted to file charges before it becomes too late to charge a person.

The DNA has been charged with one count of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and one count of criminal sexual abuse.

According to Kelly, the suspect connected to the DNA may be a serial rapist. The suspect connected to the charged DNA is also a rape suspect in cases in two cases in East St. Louis in 1997, another case in East St. Louis in 2005, and a case in St. Louis in 2008.

Kelly is confident this person will be taken into custody and that time is no longer a problem.

KSDK

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DNA, not a named person, charged for 2005 rape case

TOPEKA A bill requiring DNA swab samples of people who are arrested for felony crimes and expanding the states existing DNA collections was sent by the House to Gov. Sam Brownback on Thursday.

The move, which essentially clarifies existing state law that allows law enforcement to collect DNA samples from people who are jailed before they are released, comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether such collections violate peoples privacy.

On one side are proponents, such as Wichita Democratic Rep. Jim Ward and Shawnee Republican Rep. John Rubin, who say such cheek swab collections are simply modern-day finger printing that can help police catch criminals who have left behind DNA evidence.

On the other are those, such as Grandview Plaza Republican Rep. Allan Rothlisberg, who say the state has already gone too far by collecting DNA samples for government databases before someone is convicted.

DNA should not be taken unless its either a conviction or by a court order, he said. The mere fact of being booked? The answer is no. Youre not convicted of anything. Its an invasion of privacy thats not necessary.

Rothlisberg said he understands the law can help catch people who have left evidence at past crimes, but he said that doesnt outweigh privacy issues.

But when the government has databases on people, I get very uncomfortable about that, he said.

Currently, the state can collect blood samples for DNA testing. The new bill, if approved by Brownback, would allow cheek swabs when people are booked and fingerprinted after arrest. It also would require samples from people incarcerated on May 2, 1991, for a crime committed before that date, before they are released.

The House voted 74-49 to approve the bill. The Senate approved the bill in a 40-0 vote in April.

Lawmakers considered extending the DNA swabs for people arrested for almost any crime, including misdemeanors. But that was stripped from the bill during negotiations between the House and Senate, Rubin said.

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House sends DNA samples bill to Brownback

HOUSTON, May 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- FamilyTreeDNA.com, the genetic genealogy arm of Gene By Gene, Ltd., has lowered the price of its mid-level maternal line mtDNA test to $49, effective immediately. The company announced it will offer its mtDNAPlus product at a two-third price reduction permanently, in just its latest step toward universal access by individuals to their personal genetic data.

"This groundbreaking pricing illustrates how next generation sequencing (NGS) is changing the DNA testing landscape," Gene By Gene President Bennett Greenspan said. "For Family Tree DNA to be able to offer this test at such an affordable price would have been unheard of before NGS. We're hopeful that by lowering the price of products like our mtDNAPlus, we'll be able to expand the horizon of DNA testing and, importantly, grow our database to fuel future genetic discoveries."

Earlier this year, Family Tree DNA -- the world's largest processor of Y-DNA and full mitochondrial sequences -- dropped the price of its basic Y-DNA test for males by 60 percent, in order to eliminate cost as a barrier to individuals interested in learning more about their personal genetic and genomic data.

Since then, the company has been working to do the same with its mtDNA test, which is applicable to both males and females and provides data on the direct maternal line by testing the mitochondria. The mtDNAPlus product tests Hypervariable Regions 1 and 2, or HVR1 and HVR2, providing individuals with both anthropological and genealogical information.

With the largest DNA database in the world, Family Tree DNA has processed over 5 million discrete tests for more than 700,000 individuals and organizations since it introduced its Y-DNA test in 2000. Data gathered from the mtDNAPlus test will be stored, free of charge, in the company's database. If customers are interested in performing any other DNA tests that the company offers in the future, they won't be required to resubmit DNA samples.

Customer InquiriesIndividuals interested in Family Tree DNA's $49 mtDNA test, or any of its ancestral testing products, can visit http://www.familytreedna.com or call (713) 868-1438 for more information.

About Gene By Gene, Ltd. Founded in 2000, Gene By Gene, Ltd. provides reliable DNA testing to a wide range of consumer and institutional customers through its four divisions focusing on ancestry, health, research and paternity. Gene By Gene provides DNA tests through its Family Tree DNA division, which pioneered the concept of direct-to-consumer testing in the field of genetic genealogy more than a decade ago. Gene by Gene is CLIA registered and through its clinical-health division DNA Traits offers regulated diagnostic tests. DNA DTC is the Research Use Only (RUO) division serving both direct-to-consumer and institutional clients worldwide. Gene By Gene offers AABB certified relationship tests through its paternity testing division, DNA Findings. The privately held company is headquartered in Houston, which is also home to its state-of-the-art Genomics Research Center.

Media Contact:Kate Croft for Gene By Gene, Ltd. Casteel Schoenborn 888-609-8351 croft@csirfirm.com

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Family Tree DNA Offers mtDNA Test For $49

In the middle of the South Atlantic, theres a patch of sea almost devoid of life. There are no birds, few fish, not even much plankton. But researchers report that theyve found buried treasure under the empty waters: ancient DNA hidden in the muck of the sea floor, which lies 5000 meters below the waves.

The DNA, from tiny, one-celled sea creatures that lived up to 32,500 years ago, is the first to be recovered from the abyssal plains, the deep-sea bottoms that cover huge stretches of Earth. In a separate finding published this week, another research team reports teasing out plankton DNA thats up to 11,400 years old from the floor of the much shallower Black Sea. The researchers say that the ability to retrieve such old DNA from such large stretches of the planets surface could help reveal everything from ancient climate to the evolutionary ecology of the seas.

We have been able to show that the deep sea is the largest long-time archive of DNA, and a major window to study past biodiversity, writes Pedro Martinez Arbizu, a deep-sea biologist of the German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research in Wilhelmshaven and an author of the paper on South Atlantic DNA in an e-mail.

The new studies are very exciting, says micropaleontologist Bridget Wade of the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, who was not connected to the research. Until now, it wasnt clear how far back in time you could take these DNA studies. These records are telling you new information that wasnt found in the fossil record.

The South Atlantic team went looking for DNA in plugs of silt and clay coaxed out of the ocean floor hundreds of kilometers off the Brazilian coast. The researchers were after genetic material from two related groups of marine organisms, the foraminifera and the radiolarians. Both are single-celled, and both include many species with beautiful pearly shells that fossilize nicely, making them a favorite target of researchers studying the prehistoric oceans.

The researchers used special pieces of DNA specific to radiolarians and foraminifera to fish out DNA from those groups. Then they sequenced the DNA and compared the results to known foraminifera and radiolarian DNA sequences. Their analysis showed theyd found 169 foraminifera species and 21 radiolarian species, many of which were unknown. Whats more, many of the foraminifera species belonged to groups that dont form fossils, the researchers report online today in Biology Letters.

The work shows that its possible to trace all species, not just those that fossilize, says Jan Pawlowski, a foraminifera specialist and one of the papers authors, of the University of Geneva in Switzerland. The results give us a completely different view [that] may open new insights into whats happened in the past, he says. For example, he says, different species of these wee creatures prefer different water temperatures. So DNA from buried sediments could be used to track the abundance of different species over time, revealing changes in ocean temperature.

The second team looked at DNA buried in the floor of the Black Sea, which was once a giant lake but became connected to the Mediterranean Sea roughly 9000 years ago, though the date is debated. The researchers examined sediments from waters only 980 meters deep, which is much shallower than the abyssal plain. But the oldest Black Sea layers that were analyzed were similar to those at the South Atlantic site: The mud at the sea bottom had scant amounts of organic matter and had been exposed to oxygen, which, in theory, should have made it tough to scrape up any preserved DNA.

It didnt. New material had buried the older layers, cutting off their oxygen, and more recent Black Sea sediments werent exposed to oxygen at all. The result was a rich trove of ancient DNA from as many as 2700 species, including green algae, fungi, and dinoflagellates, a type of one-celled aquatic creature. The diverse collection allowed the scientists to track the fate of different species over time, as their DNA blinked in and out of the sediments.

One type of marine fungus, for example, first appeared in the sediments roughly 9600 years agoexactly when some forms of freshwater plankton and a freshwater mussel vanish, the team reports this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That suggests that marine waters started to invade the lake roughly 600 years earlier than thought. The team also found DNA from a form of marine alga in 9300-year-old sediments, though the alga doesnt show up in the fossil record until 2500 years ago, says molecular paleoecologist Marco Coolen of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and an author of the Black Sea paper.

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Ancient DNA Found Hidden Below Sea Floor