Forensic and Policing Services Association (FAPSA): Breakthrough shows how DN... Press release issued: 26 May 2014 An international team of scientists has made a major step forward in our understanding of how enzymes ‘edit’ genes, paving the way for correcting genetic diseases in patients. Researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Münster and the Lithuanian Institute of Biotechnology have observed the process by which a class of enzymes called CRISPR – pronounced ‘crisper’ – bind and alter the structure of DNA. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) today [26 May], provide a vital piece of the puzzle if these genome editing tools are ultimately going to be used to correct genetic diseases in humans.
CRISPR enzymes were first discovered in bacteria in the 1980s as an immune defence used by bacteria against invading viruses. These enzymes have been tailored to accurately target a single combination of letters within the three billion base pairs of the DNA molecule. Ground-breaking technique traces DNA direct to your ancestor's home 1,000 yea... Tracing where your DNA was formed over 1,000 years ago is now possible, thanks to a revolutionary technique developed by a team of international scientists led by experts from the University of Sheffield.
The ground-breaking Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool, created by Dr Eran Elhaik from the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences and Dr Tatiana Tatarinova from the University of Southern California, works similarly to a satellite navigation system as it helps you to find your way home, but not the one you currently live in -- but rather your actual ancestor's home from 1,000 years ago. Previously, scientists have only been able to locate where your DNA was formed to within 700kms, which in Europe could be two countries away; however this pioneering technique has been 98 per cent successful in locating worldwide populations to their right geographic regions, and down to their village and island of origin. Ancestry & SNPs-1. Sex with Neandertals Introduced Helpful and Harmful DNA into Modern Human Genome. Neandertal DNA survives in Asian and European people today.
Image: 120, via Wikimedia Commons Over the past few years a number of studies of ancient and contemporary genomes have reached the same stunning conclusion: early human species interbred, and people today carry DNA from archaic humans, including the Neandertals, as a result of those interspecies trysts. Now two new analyses of modern human genomes are providing insights into how the acquisition of Neandertal DNA affected anatomically modern Homo sapiens tens of thousands of years ago and how it continues to affect people today.
In the first study, Sriram Sankararaman and David Reich of Harvard University and their colleagues compared a complete Neandertal genome sequence with 1,004 modern human sequences to see which regions of the modern genome contain Neandertal DNA. Like other researchers before them, they observed that Asians and Europeans have DNA from Neandertals, whereas Africans have little or no Neandertal DNA. Scientific Method.