Blogs / Discoblog

Dear reader: You’re a mutant. But take comfort—it’s not just you. According to recent research, every person on Earth introduces between 100 and 200 new genetic mutations into the human genome.

BBC News reports:

[Researchers] looked at thousands of genes in the Y chromosomes of two Chinese men. They knew the men were distantly related, having shared a common ancestor who was born in 1805.

By looking at the number of differences between the two men, and the size of the human genome, they were able to come up with an estimate of between 100 and 200 new mutations per person.

This number of mutations is small compared to the size of the full human genome, so finding them was apparently quite a feat. Such a feat, in fact, that one of the scientists reportedly said that “finding this tiny number of mutations was more difficult than finding an ant’s egg in an emperor’s rice store.”

Some mutations can give rise to health conditions like cancer, so being able to identify new genetic variations not only could teach us about our own evolution, but could even help prevent disease-causing alterations in our DNA.

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Image: flickr / ghutchis

Is your child going to be a championship basketball player, or world-class pianist, or Nobel-winning physicist? Well, waiting for them to grow up before scoping out their talents can be a drag. Plus, it cuts down on precious training time.

That’s why, for $880, parents in China can send their three-to-12-year-old children to a special five-day camp where they will undergo DNA testing in an effort to predict their area of success. From a sample of saliva, scientists say, they can examine 11 genes that gauge a child’s future IQ, height, memory, and other traits. They will then recommend to the parents the best course of action to hone the kid’s innate capabilities.

CNN reports:

“Nowadays, competition in the world is about who has the most talent,” said [program director Zhao Mingyou]. “We can give Chinese children an effective, scientific plan at an early age”….

[P]arents are convinced it will help their child. It is no secret that China’s one-child policy often produces anxious and ambitious parents with high expectations for their only child.

“China is different from Western countries,” said Yang Yangqing, the lab’s technical director. “There is only one child in our families so more and more parents focus on their children’s education and they want to give them the best education.”

You can also watch CNN’s video about China’s DNA testing here.

There’s just one problem: Can DNA tests really reliably predict whether a child will be the next Stephen Hawking or Michael Jordan? After all, success is often the product not of a gene or two, but rather a complex combination, along with a properly nurturing (or incentivizing) environment—not to mention a hefty dose of hard work and luck.

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Image: flickr / Alex E. Proimos

Brooke Greenberg looks like a toddler—but, astonishingly, she is 16 years old. Doctors and researchers are baffled as to why her body and brain have not grown or aged, while her nails and hair continue to grow. As ABC reports:

Dr. Richard Walker of the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa, says Brooke’s body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why.

In a recent paper for the journal “Mechanisms of Ageing and Development,” Walker and his co-authors, who include Pakula and All Children’s Hospital (St. Petersburg, Fla.) geneticist Maxine Sutcliffe chronicled a baffling range of inconsistencies in Brooke’s aging process. She still has baby teeth at 16, for instance. And her bone age is estimated to be more like 10 years old.

Walker tested Brooke’s DNA, hoping her genes would uncover new information about how and why human beings age.

While no one knows how long Brooke will live, life is as normal as it can be for her—she rides in a stroller, and wears toddler’s clothes. Her family sends her to Ridge Ruxton, a pubic school focused on special education. And when she’s at home, she hangs out in her crib. For pictures of Brooke through the years, click here.

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Image: flickr/ Happiness in a Bite

Despite the fact that they were born at the same time to the same mother, Justin and Jordan look nothing like twins, besides having the same skin color. In fact, they look so different that James Harrison, the supposed father, decided to request a paternity test. Turns out, his instincts were right: One of the infants is his child, and the other is not.

Mia Washington, the mother of the “twins,” admitted to cheating on Harrison, her fiancé, prior to becoming pregnant. But she didn’t have any idea the pregnancy was a result of two separate sets of sperm.

Biologically speaking, this can happen when two or more eggs from the same woman are fertilized during the same ovulation period by two different men. When this rare event occurs, it is called heteropaternal superfecundation—and we really mean rare: There have only been about 10 other cases of this, according to the president of Clear Diagnostics’ DNA lab, Genny Thibodeaux. And in those cases, it was more obvious because the children were of different ethnic backgrounds.

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The latest in DIY involves playing around with DNA.  Toying with circuit boards and Python algorithms in basements and garages is so passé. The new crop of amateur tinkerers—self-pronounced “biohackers”—are cooking up genetics experiments and trying to reprogram life itself.  Could the biotech equivalent of Apple or Google, both of which were born in garages, emerge from someone’s home-made lab?

Meredith L. Patterson of San Francisco, who is a computer programmer by day, has set up a make-shift bio lab in her dining room.  She’s trying to create a genetically modified yogurt bacteria that will glow green to signal melamine contamination. She constructed a gel electrophoresis chamber for $25 and purchased some green fluorescent jellyfish protein from a bio supply company for less than $100. Step-by-step instructions for genetic transformation experiments were only a Google search away.  With the relative simplicity and low-cost of basic DNA experiments, it may not be long before kids start asking for electrophoresis kits instead of microscopes.

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The remains of an elderly man found in a Polish cathedral in 2005 have now been confirmed to be that of Copernicus, the 16th century astronomer famous for displacing Earth from the center of the universe. A team of Polish researchers have matched DNA extracted from a tooth and a femur bone to that of a strand of hair found in one of Copernicus’ old books.

For all his revolutionary ideas, Copernicus was never particularly famous during his lifetime, at least not enough to have a marked grave. (He didn’t publish his heliocentric treatise De revolutionibus until 1543, the year of his death, for fear of persecution.) Scientists knew he was one of the anonymous burials in a cathedral in Frombork, Poland, but they didn’t know which one. So they used radar to scan all the bodies to find one about 60 to 70 years old, the astronomer’s age when he died. The DNA evidence confirms that they got the right body.

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Murderers desperate to get rid of evidence might want to consider using bleach to wash away stains. But not just any bleach will do. When old-school chlorine-based bleach is splashed all over blood-stained clothing, even if the clothes are washed ten times, DNA is still detected.

So for the criminal aspiring for perfection, here’s the secret you’ll need to know: It’s the oxygen-producing detergents that will get rid of any incriminating evidence for good.

Researchers at the University of Valencia tested oxygen bleach on blood-stained clothing for two hours and found that it destroys all DNA evidence. Forensic tests such as luminal tests rely on the ability of blood to uptake oxygen: A protein in the blood called hemoglobin (responsible for transporting oxygen throughout the body) reacts with hydrogen peroxide and gives a positive test result.

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