Ramanisblog

Tag: DNA

  • Neanderthals To Be Back ‘Surrogate Mother Needed’

    George Church, Pioneer of Genome Research has disclosed in an interview to Der Spiegel has disclosed that Neanderthal cloning is possible and a surrogate Mother is needed.

    Read the interview, which is interesting.

    Neanderthal Hunting.
    Neanderthal Hunting.

     

    ‘George Church, 58, is a pioneer in synthetic biology, a field whose aim is to create synthetic DNA and organisms in the laboratory. During the 1980s, the Harvard University professor of genetics helped initiate the Human Genome Project that created a map of the human genome. In addition to his current work in developing accelerated procedures for sequencing and synthesizing DNA, he has also been involved in the establishing of around two dozen biotech firms. In his new book, “Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves,” which he has also encoded as strands of DNA and distributed on small DNA chips, Church sketches out a story of a second, man-made Creation….

     

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, you predict that it will soon be possible to clone Neanderthals. What do you mean by “soon”? Will you witness the birth of a Neanderthal baby in your lifetime?

     

    Church: That depends on a hell of a lot of things, but I think so. The reason I would consider it a possibility is that a bunch of technologies are developing faster than ever before. In particular, reading and writing DNA is now about a million times faster than seven or eight years ago. Another technology that the de-extinction of a Neanderthal would require is human cloning. We can clone all kinds of mammals, so it’s very likely that we could clone a human. Why shouldn’t we be able to do so?

    SPIEGEL: Perhaps because it is banned?

    Church: That may be true in Germany, but it’s not banned all over the world. And laws can change, by the way.

    SPIEGEL: Would cloning a Neanderthal be a desirable thing to do?

    Church: Well, that’s another thing. I tend to decide on what is desirable based on societal consensus. My role is to determine what’s technologically feasible. All I can do is reduce the risk and increase the benefits.

    SPIEGEL: So let’s talk about possible benefits of a Neanderthal in this world.

    Church: Well, Neanderthals might think differently than we do. We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it’s conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial.

    SPIEGEL: How do we have to imagine this: You raise Neanderthals in a lab, ask them to solve problems and thereby study how they think?

    Church: No, you would certainly have to create a cohort, so they would have some sense of identity. They could maybe even create a new neo-Neanderthal culture and become a political force.

    SPIEGEL: Wouldn’t it be ethically problematic to create a Neanderthal just for the sake of scientific curiosity?

    Church: Well, curiosity may be part of it, but it’s not the most important driving force. The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing. Therefore the recreation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance.

    SPIEGEL: Setting aside all ethical doubts, do you believe it is technically possible to reproduce the Neanderthal?

    Church: The first thing you have to do is to sequence the Neanderthal genome, and that has actually been done. The next step would be to chop this genome up into, say, 10,000 chunks and then synthesize these. Finally, you would introduce these chunks into a human stem cell. If we do that often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthal. We developed the semi-automated procedure required to do that in my lab. Finally, we assemble all the chunks in a human stem cell, which would enable you to finally create a Neanderthal clone.

    SPIEGEL: And the surrogates would be human, right? In your book you write that an “extremely adventurous female human” could serve as the surrogate mother.

    Church: Yes. However, the prerequisite would, of course, be that human cloning is acceptable to society.

    SPIEGEL: Could you also stop the procedure halfway through and build a 50-percent Neanderthal using this technology.

    Church: You could and you might. It could even be that you want just a few mutations from the Neanderthal genome. Suppose you were too realize: Wow, these five mutations might change the neuronal pathways, the skull size, a few key things. They could give us what we want in terms of neural diversity. I doubt that we are going to particularly care about their facial morphology, though (laughs).

    SPIEGEL: Might it one day be possible to descend even deeper into evolutionary history and recreate even older ancestors like Australopithecus or Homo erectus?

    Church: Well, you have got a shot at anything where you have the DNA. The limit for finding DNA fragments is probably around a million years.

    SPIEGEL: So we won’t be seeing the return of the caveman or dinosaurs?

    Church: Probably not. But even if you don’t have the DNA, you can still make something that looks like it. For example, if you wanted to make a dinosaur, you would first consider the ostrich, one of its closest living relatives. You would take an ostrich, which is a large bird, and you would ask: “What’s the difference between birds and dinosaurs? How did the birds lose their hands?” And you would try to identify the mutations and try to back engineer the dinosaur. I think this will be feasible.

    SPIEGEL: Is it also conceivable to create lifeforms that never existed before? What about, for example, rabbits with wings?

    Church: So that’s a further possibility. However, things have to be plausible from an engineering standpoint. There is a bunch of things in birds that make flying possible, not just the wings. They have very lightweight bones, feathers, strong breast muscles, and the list goes on.

    SPIEGEL: Flying rabbits and recreated dinosaurs are pure science fiction today. But on the microbe level, researchers are already creating synthetic life. New bacteria detect arsenic in drinking water. They create synthetic vaccines and diesel fuel. You call these organisms “novel machines”. How do they relate to the machines we know?

    Church: Well, all organisms are mechanical in the sense that they’re made up of moving parts that inter-digitate like gears. The only difference is that they are incredibly intricate. They are atomically precise machines.

    SPIEGEL: And what will these machines be used for?

    Church: Oh, life science will co-opt almost every other field of manufacturing. It’s not limited to agriculture and medicine. We can even use biology in ways that biology never has evolved to be used. DNA molecules for example could be used as three-dimensional scaffolding for inorganic materials, and this with atomic precision. You can design almost any structure you want with a computer, then you push a button — and there it is, built-in DNA.

    SPIEGEL: DNA as the building material of the future?

    Church: Exactly. And it’s amazing. Biology is good at making things that are really precise. Take trees for example. Trees are extremely complicated, at least on a molecular basis. However, they are so cheap, that we burn them or convert them into tables. Trees cost about $50 a ton. This means that you can make things that are nearly atomically precise for five cents a kilo.

    SPIEGEL: You are seriously proposing to build all kinds of machines — cars, computers or coffee machines — out of DNA?

    Church: I think it is very likely that this is possible. In fact, computers made of DNA will be better than the current computers, because they will have even smaller processors and be more energy efficient.

    SPIEGEL: Let’s go through a couple of different applications of synthetic biology. How long will it take, for example, until we can fill our tanks with fuel that has been produced using synthentic microbes?

    Church: The fact is that we already have organisms that can produce fuel compatible with current car engines. These organisms convert carbon dioxide and light into fuels by basically using photosynthesis.

    SPIEGEL: And they do so in an economically acceptable way?

     

    Church: If you consider $1.30 a gallon for fuel a good number, then yeah. And the price will go down. Most of these systems are at least a factor of five away from theoretical limits, maybe even a factor of 10.

     

    SPIEGEL: So we should urgently include synthetic life in our road map for the future energy supply in Germany?

    Church: Well, I don’t necessarily think it’s a mistake to go slowly. It is not like Germany is losing out to lots of other nations right now, but there should be some sort of engineering and policy planning.

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/george-church-explains-how-dna-will-be-construction-material-of-the-future-a-877634.html

     

  • Free Biology Course by MIT

    MIT is offering free online courses on Biology with Video Lectures.

    ‘

    7.014 Introductory Biology

    Course Description

     

    The MIT Biology Department core courses, 7.012, 7.013, and 7.014, all cover the same core material, which includes the fundamental principles of biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and cell biology. Biological function at the molecular level is particularly emphasized and covers the structure and regulation of genes, as well as, the structure and synthesis of proteins, how these molecules are integrated into cells, and how these cells are integrated into multicellular systems and organisms. In addition, each version of the subject has its own distinctive material. http://ocw.mit.edu .

     

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  • Big Foot ‘Yeti’ proved By DNA. Videos

    Three separate DNA tests of the hair reported it “came from a human-like creature which is not a Homosapien yet is more closely related to man than a monkey”.

    Yeti hunters claim Yeti DNA is less than one per cent different to that of a human. But no-one has confirmed that “fact” to date, because no Yeti has ever been found or tested for DNA.

    Until now. The DNA tests were carried out at universities in Moscow, St Petersburg at Idaho in the US. It is understood a fourth DNA test is also being carried out in the UK.

    What do you think? Is it real? Or just a huge hoax? Tell us below.

    “We had ten samples of hair to study, and have concluded that they belong to mammal, but not a human, and not the animals known to the area where they were found, like a bear, or wolf, or goat, or any other animal,” Professor Valentin Sapunov of the Russian State Hydrometeorological Institute said.

    “It was a branch of our university in St Petersburg that carried out a DNA test, and the Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences. The tests were performed by laboratory of electronic microscopy and laboratory of molecular genealogical classification.”

     

    The above one looks like a Human Masquerading.

     

    http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/so-the-yeti-does-exist-scientists-say-so/story-e6frfq80-1226507133971#ixzz2Aqv3gZzB

     

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  • Three-Parent Baby Legal?

    Move is afoot to legalize the third-party parenting for people with hereditary defect.

    Would it not be a better idea, to have artificial insemination or Surrogate Mother once the Tests of the parent is known?

    The Moral dilemma to go in for the procedure will remain as it is now with Invitro fertilisation.

    Story:

    Members of the public are being asked whether families with a genetic risk of incurable conditions like muscular dystrophy should be allowed to use the DNA of a third party to create healthy children.

    Although the resulting babies would inherit a small fraction of their DNA from the donor and not their mother or father, the procedure would spare all future generations from a host of rare and debilitating conditions.

    The technique is currently forbidden as a treatment, but a public consultation launched today will help inform a decision by Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, on whether the clinical benefits outweigh any ethical concerns.

    Experts accept the technique, which involves genetically modifying a human egg or embryo, enters “unchartered territory” and raises serious ethical questions.

    As well as the moral implications of engineering embryos, there are questions over how the procedure would impact on a child’s sense of identity and whether they should be allowed to contact the donor later in life…..

     

    An estimated one in 200 children born in Britain each year is thought to have some form of mitochondrial disease, with defects in anywhere between a handful and 90 per cent of their mitochondria.

    In the vast majority of cases, where the number of defects is low, there are no symptoms and the condition is never even diagnosed.

    But in about one in 6,500 people the level of damage causes the development of severe medical conditions including muscular dystrophy and ataxia, a neurological condition affecting balance, coordination and speech.

    About 99.8 per cent of our DNA, including all our visible characteristics, is contained in the cell nucleus and is passed down from our father and mother in equal measure.

    But a small fraction consisting of 37 genes is located in the mitochondria, the tiny structures which supply power to cells, and is inherited solely from the maternal side.

    The new technique, being developed by researchers at Newcastle University, is designed to tackle a range of genetic conditions passed to children by their mothers through mutations in these genes.

    The mutations can cause cells to malfunction or fail completely, resulting in complications which are especially severe in parts of the body which use the most energy – the brain, heart and muscles.

    By removing the nucleus from a woman’s egg before fertilisation and implanting it into a donor egg which has had the nucleus removed, and then using the egg in traditional IVF, doctors could cut damaged mitochondria out of the family line.

    A similar technique could be used on an embryo by removing the nuclear DNA from the mother’s egg and father’s sperm and implanting them into a healthy donor embryo with its nuclear DNA removed.’

    ..

    Researchers have secured £6m in funding to develop the groundbreaking treatment which could prevent genetic conditions affecting the heart, muscle or brain being passed on to children and future generations.

    But the method is controversial because it involves transferring the parents’ DNA into a donor egg, meaning the resulting child would inherit a tiny fraction of their genetic coding from a third party.

     

  • Women Don’t need Men

    The Opinion page of The New York Times carries an article on the dispensability of Men.

    Arguments are.

    Women can conceive without men directly involved.

    ‘If a woman wants to have a baby without a man, she just needs to secure sperm (fresh or frozen) from a donor (living or dead). The only technology the self-impregnating woman needs is a straw or turkey baster, and the basic technique hasn’t changed much since Talmudic scholars debated the religious implications of insemination without sex in the fifth century. If all the men on earth died tonight, the species could continue on frozen sperm. If the women disappear, it’s extinction.”

    Yes, the author conveniently forgets to mention that even though the receptacle is available, with out the content, of what use is that?

    ‘Vassal’- the word ‘s ‘ Etymology would explain this.

    That the traits are inherited from the female is true.

    But are not traits from the father  also?

    ”

    Then, at some point, your father spent a few minutes close by, but then left. A little while later, you encountered some very odd tiny cells that he had shed. They did not merge with you, or give you any cell membranes or nutrients — just an infinitesimally small packet of DNA, less than one-millionth of your mass.

    Over the next nine months, you stole minerals from your mother’s bones and oxygen from her blood, and you received all your nutrition, energy and immune protection from her. By the time you were born your mother had contributed six to eight pounds of your weight. Then as a parting gift, she swathed you in billions of bacteria from her birth canal and groin that continue to protect your skin, digestive system and general health. In contrast, your father’s 3.3 picograms of DNA comes out to less than one pound of male contribution since the beginning of Homo sapiens 107 billion babies ago.”

    So better have the fathers’ presence of 3.3 picograms of DNA removed.

    Classic case of not being able to differentiate between ‘Complement’ and Essential’

    Story:

    I don’t dismiss the years I put in as a doting father, or my year at home as a house husband with two young kids. And I credit my own father as the more influential parent in my life. Fathers are of great benefit. But that is a far cry from “necessary and sufficient” for reproduction….

    Ultimately the question is, does “mankind” really need men? With human cloning technology just around the corner and enough frozen sperm in the world to already populate many generations, perhaps we should perform a cost-benefit analysis.

    It’s true that men have traditionally been the breadwinners. But women have been a majority of college graduates since the 1980s, and their numbers are growing. It’s also true that men have, on average, a bit more muscle mass than women. But in the age of ubiquitous weapons, the one with the better firepower (and knowledge of the law) triumphs.

    Meanwhile women live longer, are healthier and are far less likely to commit a violent offense. If men were cars, who would buy the model that doesn’t last as long, is given to lethal incidents and ends up impounded more often?

    Recently, the geneticist J. Craig Venter showed that the entire genetic material of an organism can be synthesized by a machine and then put into what he called an “artificial cell.” This was actually a bit of press-release hyperbole: Mr. Venter started with a fully functional cell, then swapped out its DNA. In doing so, he unwittingly demonstrated that the female component of sexual reproduction, the egg cell, cannot be manufactured, but the male can.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/men-who-needs-them.html?hpw