Showing posts with label DNA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DNA. Show all posts

Gene Bank Needed to "Save" Endangered Native Animals

There is no way that Australia can prevent the extinction of some native animal species. Some can  be preserved with a national gene bank. Though a seed bank has already been set up to save native flora, nothing is planned for fauna.

Present debate is centered on the loss of the northern and southern gastric brooding frog. If a gene bank had existed the frog would have been preserved. Australia has the worst record of native animals going extinct than anywhere else, not something to be proud of. Over 40 birds and mammals have disappeared since European settlement.

Because government has been slow in allocating resources, private organizations have started gene banks. Indeed Taronga Conservation society Australia has stored genes from 20 native animals. This is far from adequate. Over 2,000 species need preservation.

With the Taronga Conservation Society Australia, the Animal Gene Storage and Resource Centre of Australia at Monash University has a total of 100 endangered species in storage. Funding from the public and enterprise supports these "frozen" storage facilities. Nothing has been added for four years due to lack of resources. Looking the other way is not the solution.
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Conservation by Ty Buchanan
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Angus Cattle Carry a Dangerous Recessive Gene

There are serious problems involved in breeding top class cattle for the market. Like in breeding budgerigars recessive genes coming together can cause some young to be victims of early death.

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In creating the "perfect" animal, weaknesses have been seen in Angus cattle. The disease is call Development Duplication (DD). Its general name is polymelia. Embryos are dying and some are born with extra limbs.

The disease is common in all cattle, but selective breeding has increase its prominence in Angus cattle. Some affected animals have had operations to remove extra limbs. This is complicating the issue particularly if they are used for breeding.

Tests are available to identify the recessive gene causing the problem. It occurs at a rate of 3 per cent in the Angus breed. Pairing a sire with the recessive to a dam without it produces a normal calf. The recessive gene is passed on, however, not eliminated. It is believed that the presence of the gene has improved growth and fertility. This is a dangerous path to follow. Keeping something deleterious for perceived market benefits.
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Conservation
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Brave New World of Criminal Investigation

We are entering a brave new world where DNA will be accurately read to predict eye color, distance between the eyes and nose shape. This will greatly improve police work in solving serious crime.

Even knowing whether a suspect is bald is helpful. Genes contain single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs).  These can now show whether someone is probably bald. We have some way to go because of the complex interaction of male and female chromosomes.

A rough composite picture will be soon be available. This can be used to screen out suspects. Facial metrics is advancing rapidly. Analysis of insulin-like growth hormone (IGF-1) and human growth hormone (HGH) can give a rough picture of build and height.

The importance of mitochondrial DNA which passes along the female line is well known. This can predict ancestry using Y chromosome (NRY) and autosomal markers. Patterns for Europeans, white Americans and East Asians have been identified.

In the future the crime rate could be significantly reduced and we could live in societies that are much safer than today's dangerous milieu where we are afraid to go out at night. A safe world - that is something hard to imagine.

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Conservation
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Mothers Keep the DNA of Their Sons

Mothers keep the DNA of their children in their system for a lifetime, particularly the genes of male offspring.  The DNA resides in the mother's brain.  It is not know what the overall effect is on a woman.  It was found, however, that presence of male DNA reduced the incidence of Alzheimer's.

All mammals exchange DNA in this way.  It is called fetal microchimerism and has bad effects as well as good.  While improving disease resistance it can lower autoimmune reactions.

Until recently humans were not known to have microchimerism, though other animals such as rats did.  Autopsies on middle aged deceased woman found male DNA spread throughout the brain.  A 101 year old lady had DNA present even at her advanced age.http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/
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Mammoth Cloning Still Not Possible

We have heard so much about how scientists are going to clone a mammoth. For many this idea remains "pie in the sky" - a lot of talk and no action. There is plenty of mammoth raw material around to do tests on. The problem is getting good DNA that can be cloned.

Scientists are jumping up and down again with the recent find of a frozen mammoth in Siberia. They say this time their will be "living cells". This is very optimistic. The new mammoth will probably be like all the others. Only partial DNA will be found. Even though bone marrow has been identified this time, cloning is a long shot. No living cells have so far been found in any extinct animal, as far back as 10,000 years when mammoths roamed the Earth.

There are problems in analyzing human DNA even though the human genome is known. The complete DNA of mammoths has not yet been determined. A prize is offered by the X Prize Foundation for the first cloned extinct animal. Scientists can hope I suppose.
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Neanderthals and Humans Could Have Fertile Offspring

The presumption that humans and Neanderthals interbred is gaining ground among scientists, despite the two lines having a different number of chromosomes (this is not yet absolutely proven to be scientific fact). Horses and donkeys interbreed to produce mules. Occasionally a few of these mules are fertile and can have offspring, so a different number of chromosomes is not an absolute barrier.

Neanderthal DNA is present in humans. However, there is no mitochondrial DNA: this is passed along the line of the mother. Visual evidence of interbreeding can be observed. Tatjana Schmidt-Derstroff noted decades ago that there are two types of Australian Aboriginals, desert living long-legged gracillis and coastal living muscular robustus. Both are dark skinned. Robustus carry a red/blond haired gene (not passed on by shipwrecked European sailors). The more muscular type is roughly similar in features to Neanderthals. For the most part these two different kinds of Aboriginal remained separate, though some interbreeding did occur.  Today, most Aboriginals have part European ancestry.

Tatjana Schmidt-Derstroff is happy with the hypothesis that humans and Neanderthals had fertile offspring, along the male line of course. This would engender a male Neanderthal mating with a female human. With male offspring passing on respective genes. Ms Schmidt-Derstroff also holds that the major leap from Neanderthal to human is about to take place again to modern space-travelling humans. Well, this change is already taking place as people move to new countries and different "races" interbreed to create a new tan colored human.
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Anthropology

Dogs Taking Life Easy

"I reckon we should take life real easy."
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Elephants and Mammoths Have Much the Same DNA

Elephants aren't so different from woolly mammoths. DNA samples taken from mammoth hair shows they are much alike. Furthermore, there are indications that the mammoth population was so low toward the end that inbreeding took place.

If the unique mammoth genome can be isolated it can be inserted into elephant DNA to produce a woolly mammoth. It has also been found that differentiation between mammoth was only minor, so that a disease could have easily wiped them out.

Mammoth are more closely related to elephants than chimpanzees are to humans, which is about 99 percent. Evidence shows that there were two groups of mammoth. One group died out 45,000 years ago, the other 10,000 years ago.
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Science

DNA Tests on Coconuts Show They Have Been Used by Man for a Long Time

The mystery of coconuts is solved. This useful fruit has been used for centuries. Besides being a healthy food it can be used as a carrying container, made into charcoal, its fibre used to make rope and it will save your life if appropriately adapted as a flotation device.

DNA tests have been done on coconuts worldwide. They have been spread around so much by people transporting them in their travels that they are quite homogeneous by type. There are only two main kinds: one from the Indian Ocean region and the other from the Pacific. Tall types predominate. The dwarf coconut accounts for only 5 per cent of all coconuts.

Both types of coconuts are used for different purposes. The niu vai is the usual kind with sweet juice inside. Copra is obtained from the niu kafa. One mystery still remains. While their are two distinct types, Madagascar has a variety that is a combination of the Pacific and Indian Ocean types.
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Science

Agriculture Was Brought into Western Europe by Southern European Males

Learning has not been linear for human beings. Advancement can be different from one place to another. It is now known from DNA analysis of 5,000 year old skeletons in a French cave that women did not travel into western Europe. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down only from the mother which shows that European women had local ancestry. On the other hand the Y chromosome passed down through males shows movement of males into new European regions. Knowledge of farming came into new areas when the males moved in and mated with local females.

Analysis of DNA from 29 skeletons found in France, highlighted this difference between the mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome. Males had moved from the Mediterranean to western Europe. Most of the males in the 29 skeleton group were related, so when the males arrived they stayed on the land with their new hunter gatherer wives.

The southern males had a problem: they did not have the lactose tolerant gene of central Europeans. They had to drink fermented milk from sheep and goats. Adult central European males could easily digest milk from cows.

More work is being done to further clarify how and when agriculture spread across Europe.
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History

Radiation From Mobile Phones Is Dangerous

New evidence shows that mobile phones really are dangerous. Even the average user can suffer from brain damage, lower sperm count and altered DNA. Just 4 hours of continuous use will preempt the brain's capacity to repair itself.

When scientists originally said that pulsed digital signals from cell phones cause DNA breaks they were condemned for making it up. Now proof is very strong. Apparently, the industry has known about situational damage from mobile phone use for years. They have intentionally hidden the truth.

Research on insects shows that DNA fragmentation occurs in ovarian cells. Insects do have ovarian cells. This reduces the insects' capacity to breed. Long term exposure kills cells completely. Other work with rats shows bone damage to fetuses from just six minutes of radiation per day. And rats had memory loss. From this work it can be deduced that children are more at risk.
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Internet

Australian Moths and Butterflies Are Barcoded

Australian moths and butterflies are being barcoded. There are 10,000 species in Australia and 65 per cent of them have been coded, 28,000 specimens in all. They are not flying around with a tag on them. DNA is analyzed then recorded with an image of a specimen in a barcode system.

The database is a combined project by the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and CSIRO's Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC). It is the first time such a system has been used to categorize a group of insects in a country. This is the beginning. Plans are in train to record most organisms worldwide.

The technology has been used to determine if wrongly named fish are being sold. It will be used to identify dangerous pests coming into Australia. Species will now be more effectively categorised in research.
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Science