Category Archives: Transhuman News

As many as 1 million species of plants and animals are facing extinction due to the actions of humans. Thousands of these could be lost in the coming decades.

Some organizations are already working on the technology to make a sort of de-extinction a reality, including the team at Colossal a biotech startup that recently raised $15 million to bring back the woolly mammoth.

And, for its part, the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) is working on a digital Noahs Ark to preserve many of their DNA sequences. VGP aims to collect the genetic information of every vertebrate species on Earthmore than 70,000 individual genomesin the hopes that humans could eventually bring back some of the animals we may push into extinction.

VGP is chaired by Erich Jarvis, a professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at The Rockefeller University in New York, as well as an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the largest private biomedical institutions in the US.

Since the Human Genome Project began in 1990, the cost of sequencing DNA has dropped drastically and the accuracy has improved, Jarvis told Emerging Tech Brew. While that project required nearly $3 billion, sequencing the genome of a single species is estimated to cost significantly less now. When next-generation sequencing tech became available, the price dropped to about $100,000 per genome, Jarvis explained. Today the process costs between $1,000 and $10,000, he said.

We spoke to Jarvis to get more detail on how far DNA sequencing technology has come, and why the data his team is collecting is so important.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the purpose of sequencing the genome of every vertebrate?

All the information of what makes a speciesall the code, all the instructionsis in the DNA. So if we can save that genetic code nowwithout the possibility of saving an animal or the speciesmaybe 100 years from now (or less, according to Ben [Lamm] and George Church), we can take that genome and resurrect the species. For that reason, our database where were putting these high-quality genome assemblies, we call it Genome Ark. This is an ark thats storing the genetic code of life.

The way we do experiments in the lab is we change something, and then by changing a reaction, we find out how it worked. Thats how we figured out the mechanisms of biology, chemistry, and so forth. We tinker around with things and see the outcome.

Well, nature has done that naturally with millions of species. If we sequence all these genomes of all of life and then create a database of all their different traitsnot just for blue eyes, brown eyes, or height, but for all these species that fly, those that cant, those that live in cold environments, those that live deep in the oceanit will make it easier for us to find the genetic code of the proteins and so forth that generate those traits.

If all these species go extinct that we dont have that genetic code, were losing all of that natural history thats been around for millions of years.

What are the other implications of this data collection process?

Many people, including many scientists, dont realize that even the human genome that cost $3 billion, and many others after it, is like Swiss cheese [and ]has holes in it of missing data, repetitive sequences.

Sort of like pieces of a puzzle, if you have two pieces that look similar, its hard to figure out where in the puzzle [that] goes. And this is the problem when you have repeat sequences in your DNA, and those repeat sequences actually turned out to be biologically important in many cases. This is causing many scientists to have errors in their scientific analysis, and many experiments to be actually done in a misinformed way because of having inaccurate or error-prone genomes.

Another error we were findingeach cell in our body has chromosomes from mom and dad. You get half your DNA from mom. You get the other half from dad.

What were finding out is that in a lot of genome assemblies, the sequences from mom and dad were so different that some of the computer algorithms were considering them as two separate genes, as opposed to moms version and dads versions.

Were finding thousands of [these false duplications] in the older sequencing. So people were mistakenly adding 5,000 or 6,000 genes to the genome as extra copies of various different genes, which werent true.

The implications of adding more genes that are false is that people start studying these genes that are really just divergent from each other and not two separate copies. And they make false conclusions about the evolution of the genes, false conclusions about the differences in the biology from one copy and another. Its just terrible.

How much progress has VGP made?

Back in 2017, we started producing this high-quality genome data. For vertebrates, we decided to do what we call all orders of vertebrates. Species are classified into orders, family, genera, so we take one species, like a parakeet that you buy in the pet shop, representing all 300 parrots, representing the order of parrots. A human and a chimpanzee representing primates...

Were halfway through the 260 [species that represent all vertebrate orders].

How have you seen this technology change over time?

[The VGP has] worked with all the major sequencing technology companies, tested out all their different protocols. We scientists and academia pulled together the technology of various companies and made a hybrid. The hybrid technology is whats giving us the highest-quality genome data to date. We spent about five years developing the best technology, and its continuing to develop. Were not perfect yet.

We had two breakthroughs. One breakthrough is that the enzymes that were reading the genetic code and then making reactions that the computer detects sometimes would make it wrong. They wouldnt get the G right or wouldnt get the C right. So itll call a G a C or vice versa. And so its making these mistakes we dont like. So the enzymes have gotten better in not making mistakes.

Then the technology plus the enzymes have gotten better at the length of the DNA thats actually read into the computer. So there isnt any technology out there that can just take a chromosome and read through the entire 10 million base pairs without errors or just as one large chunk. You have to chop the DNA up into pieces, sequence each piece and then stitch it back together in the computer.

Its like taking something, throwing it on the ground, breaking it into pieces, and then trying to put all the pieces back together. The bigger the piece, the easier it is to figure out how to put it together. We call it long-read technology, and thats a big improvement.

How long do you expect it will take to actually de-extinct a species?

Id be surprised if [Colossal generates] a woolly mammoth in five years. But I do think the day will come where we can, based upon the DNA sequence alone, resurrect a species.

There is a saying that applies to the time you automatically think it will take to complete a project: You tend to overestimate what you can do in two years and underestimate what you can do in 10 years.

Lets say in 20 to 50 years from now, something like this might be done. Ten years ago, I never thought that Id be leading an international project to sequence the genomes of all species on the planet, of all life. Or even think that I could do it in my lifetime. Im an ambitious person, but I have some practicality as well.

What would you say to people who might question if bringing species back is a good idea?

One answer I have to that is its just for our own survival. If enough species goes extinct, well go extinct, too. Well do self-extinction, even without nuclear bombs.

Were starting the sixth mass extinction, and its humansnot a meteorite or something else. We are responsible for the extinction and the coming extinction of many species, so I think we should be responsibleif they goto bringing them back.

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Meet the group trying to build a Noah's Ark for threatened species DNA - Morning Brew

Components of DNA that do not encode protein sequences, known as noncoding DNA, may hold the answers to why human brains work so much differently than that of other primate species, according to a new study published in early October in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Cell Stem Cell, a broad-spectrum journal that covers stem cell biology.

Stem cell researchers at Lund University in Sweden discovered that such DNA shows differences in the brains of humans and nonhuman primates. noncoding DNA was previously believed to have no practical function even being deemed junk DNA in scientific circles making the discovery of particular interest to researchers.

The findings open the realm of possibilities of what makes humans different from other species, a subject the studys author Johan Jakobsson, a professor of neuroscience at Lund, holds a particular curiosity for.

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"I believe that the brain is the key to understanding what it is that makes humans human," he said. "How did it come about that humans can use their brains in such a way that they can build societies, educate their children and develop advanced technology? It is fascinating."

Researchers grew brain cells from humans and chimpanzees using stem cells and compared the two cell types, finding that they use the non-coded part of their DNA in different ways, which appears to play a considerable role in the development of human brains.

"The part of our DNA identified as different was unexpected, declared Jakobsson. It was a so-called structural variant of DNA that was previously called 'junk DNA,' a long repetitive DNA string which has long been deemed to have no function."

The so-called junk DNA comprises over 98% of DNA matter in human and primate brains.

Previously, researchers have looked for answers in the part of the DNA where the protein-producing genes are which only makes up about 2% of our entire DNA and examined the proteins themselves to find examples of differences," explained Jakobsson. Our results indicate that what has been significant for the brain's development is instead perhaps hidden in the overlooked 98%.

This novel stem cell research technique was developed by John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, the 2012 Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine. Studying the differences between humans and chimpanzees using ethically defensible methods would not have been possible if this revolutionary technique had not been available, according to the researchers.

"Instead of studying living humans and chimpanzees, we used stem cells grown in a lab," Jakobsson said.

The new findings will potentially contribute to genetic research regarding psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, a disorder that appears to be unique to humans.

"But there is a long way to go before we reach that point, Jakobsson says, because instead of carrying out further research on the 2% of coded DNA, we may now be forced to delve deeper into all 100% a considerably more complicated task for research."

See the rest here:
Overlooked DNA may be what separates humans from other primates - The Jerusalem Post

This year's Black Friday deals have begun in earnest, and there's 50% off 23andMe Health and Ancestry kits right now. 23andMe is one of the biggest names in home DNA testing, and when we reviewed it, we were particularly impressed by the sheer amount of data we were presented with, all clearly laid out in an online dashboard that makes it easy to understand.

This offer is available in both the US and the UK. It runs until November 29, and it's such a big saving, 23andMe has limited its sale to three kits per buyer.

(Not in the US or UK? Scroll down for deals in your region.)

A home DNA test kit is a great way to satisfy your own curiosity, or give yourself a head start building your family tree. It also makes a good gift for a friend or loved one who's normally tricky to buy for.

23andMe is one of the biggest names in home DNA tests, but it's certainly not the only one, and all the most popular brands are cutting the prices of kits ahead of Black Friday. Not sure which one to pick? Check out our guide to the best DNA test kits to help you make the right choice.

No matter where you live, you'll find all the lowest prices for DNA test kits from around the web right here, with offers available in your region.

Today's best DNA test kits deals

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Save 50% off 23andMe DNA test kits the ideal gift for the person who has everything - TechRadar

In an unprecedented atlas, researchers begin to map how genes are turned on or off in different cells, a step toward better understanding the connections between genetics and disease.

Researchers at University of California San Diego have produced a single-cell chromatin atlas for the human genome. Chromatin is a complex of DNA and protein found in eukaryotic cells; regions of chromatin at key gene regulatory elements appear in open configurations within certain cell nuclei. Precisely delineating these accessible chromatin regions in cells of different human tissue types would be a major step toward understanding the role of gene regulatory elements (non-coding DNA) in human health or disease.

The findings are published online in the November 12, 2021, issue of Cell.

For scientists, the human genome, popularly called the book of life, is mostly unwritten. Or at least unread. While science has famously put an (approximate) number to all of the protein-coding genes required to build a human being, approximately 20,000+, that estimation does not really begin to explain how exactly the construction process works or, in the case of disease, it might go awry.

The human genome was sequenced 20 years ago, but interpreting the meaning of this book of life continues to be challenging, said Bing Ren, PhD, director of the Center for Epigenomics, professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at UC San Diego.

A major reason is that the majority of the human DNA sequence, more than 98 percent, is non-protein-coding, and we do not yet have a genetic code book to unlock the information embedded in these sequences.

Put another way, its a bit like knowing chapter titles but with the rest of the pages still blank.

Efforts to fill in the blanks are broadly captured in an ongoing international effort called the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), and include the work of Ren and colleagues. In particular, they have investigated the role and function of chromatin, a complex of DNA and proteins that form chromosomes within the nuclei of eukaryotic cells.

DNA carries the cells genetic instructions. The major proteins in chromatin, called histones, help tightly package the DNA in a compact form that fits within the cell nucleus. (There are roughly six feet of DNA tucked into each cell nucleus and approximately 10 billion miles in each human body.) Changes in how chromatin bundles up DNA are associated with DNA replication and gene expression.

After working with mice, Ren and collaborators turned their attention to a single-cell atlas of chromatin in the human genome.

They applied assays to more than 600,000 human cells sampled from 30 adult human tissue types from multiple donors, then integrated that information with similar data from 15 fetal tissue types to reveal the status of chromatin at approximately 1.2 million candidate cis-regulatory elements in 222 distinct cell types.

One of the initial challenges was identifying the best experimental conditions for such a diverse set of sample types, particularly given each tissues unique makeup and sensitivity to homogenization, said study co-author Sebastian Preissl, PhD, associate director for Single Cell Genomics at UC San Diego Center for Epigenomics, a collaborative research center that carried out the assays.

Cis-regulatory elements are regions of non-coding DNA that regulate transcription (copying a segment of DNA into RNA) of neighboring genes. Transcription is the essential process that converts genetic information into action.

Studies in the last decade have established that sequence variations in non-coding DNA are a key driver in multi-genic traits and diseases in human populations, such as diabetes, Alzheimers disease and autoimmune diseases, said study co-author Kyle J. Gaulton, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

A new paradigm that helps explain how these noncoding variants contribute to diseases posits that these sequence alterations disrupt function of transcriptional regulatory elements and lead to dysregulation of gene expression in disease-relevant cell types, such as neurons, immune cells or epithelial cells, said co-first author Kai Zhang, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. A major barrier to unlocking the function of noncoding risk variants, however, is the lack of cell-type-specific maps of transcriptional regulatory elements in the human genome.

Ren said the new findings identify disease-trait-relevant cell types for 240 multi-genic traits and diseases, and annotate the risk of noncoding variants.

We believe that this resource will greatly facilitate the study of mechanism across a broad spectrum of human diseases for many years to come.

Preissl said the chromatin atlas will also allow the scientific community to unravel tissue environment-specific differences of cell types that reside in multiple tissues, such as fibroblasts, immune cells or endothelial cells.

Reference: A single-cell atlas of chromatin accessibility in the human genome by Kai Zhang, James D. Hocker, Michael Miller, Xiaomeng Hou, Joshua Chiou, Olivier B. Poirion, Yunjiang Qiu, Yang E. Li, Kyle J. Gaulton, Allen Wang, Sebastian Preissl and Bing Ren, 12 November 2021, Cell.DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.10.024

Co-authors include: James D. Hocker and Yang E. Li, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and UC San Diego; Michael Miller, Hiaomeng Hou, Joshua Chiou, Olivier B. Poirion and Allen Wang, all at UC San Diego; and Yunjiang Qiu, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, La Jolla.

Funding for this research came, in part, from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, the National Human Genome Research Institute (GRANT 3U54HG006997-04S2), Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (AMP T2D RFP14), the Ruth L. Kirschstein Institutional National Science Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (T32 GM008666).

Read more from the original source:
Illuminating Dark Matter in Human DNA Unprecedented Atlas of the Book of Life - SciTechDaily

The DNA Hubi combines behind a single user interface running on Android TV 10. The device also includes the latest operating system and voice search for Android. It will replace the unit first introduced in 2017. The amount of random-access memory has been increased from two to three gigabytes, with twice as much internal memory fitting into the smaller casing. Without external plug-ins, the device can now store up to 16 gigabytes of programmes and applications.

Technical features are essential in product development, but the usability and functionality of the device at home are whats most important. Extra power in the processor adds both smoothness and reliability, and internal memory allows for better operation without external hard drives, says Ville Partanen, Director of Product Development at DNA.

The service also includes a recording option that makes it possible to record programmes from free channels and certain pay-TV channels.

The Android voice search is part of a completely redesigned Bluetooth remote.

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Upgrade to DNA's Android-powered DNA Hubi - Broadband TV News

A government-approved Covid testing firm is being investigated by the UKs data privacy watchdog after it emerged that it plans to sell customers DNA to third parties.

Cignpost Diagnostics, which trades as ExpressTest and offers 35 tests for holidaymakers, said it holds the right to analyse samples from seals to learn more about human health and sell information on to third parties.

Individuals are required to give informed consent for their sensitive medical data to be used but customers consent for their DNA to be sold now as buried in Cignposts online documents.

When buying tests, customers were asked to tick a box agreeing to a 4,876 privacy policy which links to a separate document outlining the research programme, The Sunday Times reported.

Cignpost removed the reference last week after the newspaper passed evidence of its activities to the Information Commissioners Office, which is now investigating.

It is still not known how many samples have been stored by the form of if they have been sold on already; the policy said data belonging to those providing swabs could be retained indefinitely.

Cignpost was founded last year and is believed to have sold as many as three million tests. It supplies pre-departure and arrival tests for travellers, with walk-in centres at sites including Gatwick and Heathrow.

The companys research programme information sheet reveals it keeps hold of data including biological samples and the DNA obtained from such samples.

It adds that it may share DNA samples and other personal information with collaborators including universities and private companies and that it may receive compensation in return.

ICO deputy commissioner Steve Wood said the watchdog would look carefully at the firm.

There is no personal data more sensitive than our DNA. People should be told about whats happening to it in a clear, open and honest way so they can make informed decisions about whether they want to give it up, he said.

A Cignpost spokesperson said it was in full compliance with data privacy laws, adding: We have invested significantly in robust systems and processes to ensure we protect our customers.

Because we are testing our customers for a potentially serious condition, protecting that data is paramount.

Related: Shareholder win! Covid contracts drive Serco to bumper profits and revenues

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Covid testing firm selling swabs carrying customers DNA to third parties - The London Economic