or those seeking gluten-free products said study researcher Steven Newmaster an integrative biology professor and botanical director of the University of Guelph's Biodiversity Institute of Ontario.
and Canada using a gene sequencing technique called DNA barcoding to identify the plant species present in the products.
DNA barcodes are short gene sequences that are indicative of a particular species.)About 50 percent of the products did contain the main ingredient but around 30 percent of these also contained contaminants or fillers.
 They twisted it said Chuck Rice a soil microbiologist at Kansas State university and a researcher on a project cited in Coburn's new report. 6 Politicians Who Got the Science Wrong Lazy research?
If enough genetic diversity remains the population may recover; it may also become extinct. Beginning about the first century A d. humans began to sidestep these restraints.
Holocene extinction Pressure from the human population has had far-reaching effects on the biodiversity of the planet.
Based on population numbers required to maintain genetic viability; it is estimated that as many as 30 percent of plant
Juergen Tautz a bee biologist in Germany who was involved not in the study does not believe that bees can direct their heat to specific points in a cell
#How Ancient Life May have Come about A family tree unites a diverse group of individuals that all carry genetic vestiges from a single common ancestor at the base of the tree.
But this organizational structure falls apart if genetic information is a communal resource as opposed to a family possession.
Some evidence suggests that early evolution may have been based on a collective sharing of genes. A group of researchers are now searching for clear genetic vestiges from this communal ancestry.
But it's hard to shake our fascination with family trees. My father used to travel for work
Like my father biologists are curious about family ties but they go about it in a more systematic way.
Rather than phone books they sift through genetic codes from humans to bacteria and a lot in between.
are held the commonly genes similar enough to point to a common origin? The answer has always been yes.
And at the base of this tree some have imagined there sits a mild-mannered microbe that lived more than 3 billion years ago unaware that its genes would be the starting point of an entire planet's worth of highly differentiated life.
The organisms belonging to this collective state would have shared genetic information from neighbor to neighbor rather than solely from parent to offspring.
Goldenfeld is leading a new NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) team that aims to provide a clearer understanding of this early stage of evolution.
We are hoping to find fossils of the collective state in the genomes of organisms Goldenfeld said.
Goldenfeld's team will be performing genetic studies that will try to tease out signatures of community-based evolution.
The ultimate goal is to understand how our planet's biochemistry is an instantiation of the universal laws of life
A time before Darwinism It might sound strange that an organism's genetic code could be the result of crowdsourcing.
10 Animal Genomes Deciphered In so-called vertical gene transfer an organism inherits its genome from its parents
But as it turns out different genes go back to different ancestors said Peter Gogarten of the University of Connecticut who has done extensive work on comparative genetics.
if organisms share genes. Imagine a gene belonging to members of a specific family tree. One day this gene becomes isolated
and gets picked up by another organism with a different family tree. No reproduction between partners takes place only an adoption of a specific gene.
This so-called horizontal gene transfer is quite common among bacteria and archaea as exemplified by antibiotic resistance.
When a specific bacterium develops a defense against some drug the corresponding gene can pass horizontally to others in the same colony.
A 2008 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that 80 percent of the genes in bacteria were transferred horizontally at some point in the past.
Complex organisms also exhibit evidence of horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer albeit to a lesser extent. Researchers have shown that ancient ancestors of plants
and animals swallowed up other bacteria to form symbiotic relationships which eventually resulted in specialized cellular components such as mitochondria and chloroplasts.
In his work Gogarten has shown that horizontal gene transfer turns the tree of life into a thick bush of branches that interweave with each other.
Many of these branches terminated long ago due to extinction but some of their genes live on in us thanks to horizontal gene transfer.
Several studies suggest that horizontal gene transfer was more prevalent in the past when nothing but single-celled organisms inhabited the Earth.
I like to think of early life as being more like an undifferentiated slime mold Goldenfeld said. Such a communal form of life would have no meaningful family tree
life leaned heavily on horizontal gene transfer. Woese passed away in December of last year.
In 1987 Woese wrote about the consequences of rampant horizontal gene transfer. In such a scenario a bacterium would not actually have a history in its own right:
In a 2006 PNAS paper Kalin Vetsigian Woese and Goldenfeld showed that microbial chimeras may also have an advantage over their biological counterparts.
The researchers used computer models to demonstrate that the genetic code could evolve more efficiently if organisms shared their genes collectively.
Horizontal gene transfer turned out to be a better innovation-sharing protocol than vertical (Darwinian) transfer.
Now with his NAI team Goldenfeld wants to confirm these simulations with genetic studies. Specifically they will target archaea
whose genes have yet to be scrutinized as closely as those from the other domains Goldenfeld said.
The group is interested particularly in the question of how the ability to evolve originally developed.
and then seeing how their genomes rearrange in response. Universal biology However DNA evidence is just one aspect of this five-year research project.
We want to understand how evolution works before there were species or maybe even genes Goldenfeld said.
So this is going beyond'origin of species'approaches to evolution such as population genetics. How does one study evolution without genetics?
One considers the rules of the game that the genetic code is just one manifestation of.
Goldenfeld calls this universal biology. It is an attempt to distill from our specific biochemistry the general physical laws that animate matter.
Being a physicist Goldenfeld gives the example of thermodynamics. Life must obey conservation of energy and the law of increasing entropy
which will certainly influence how organisms optimize their use of resources. Other rules involve how to control the amount of variation in the genome from one generation to the next.
Too little variation and organisms can't adapt to changes in the environment. Too much variation and organisms can't retain useful traits.
The team can place different sets of rules into a computer simulation and see what sort of artificial life appears.
Goldenfeld believes that formulating the principles of universal biology may help answer one of the biggest questions of all.
This is of special interest to astrobiologists who wonder about the likelihood that we are not alone.
The principles of universal biology should be applicable to all life irrespective of whether it is based carbon chemistry
This story was provided byâ Astrobiology Magazine a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program o
and most other birds nips penis development in the bud according to the new research published today (June 6) in the journal Current Biology.
because birth defects in the external genitalia are among the most common congenital defects in humans said study researcher Martin Cohn a developmental biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Florida.
Evolutionary biologists have theorized that perhaps bird penises vanished because female birds preferred mates with smaller penises. In ducks and other species with phalluses males frequently force females to copulate.
In their research led by Nathalie Tufenkji a professor of chemical engineering they added cranberry derivatives directly to laboratory dishes growing two bacteria mostly commonly associated with UTIS Escherichia coli and Proteus mirabilis.
The researchers'most recent study appearing in June in the Canadian Journal of Microbiology was on P. mirabilis.
Tufenkji's earlier work found that chemicals in cranberries called proanthocyanidins (PACS) similarly hindered the gene in E coli responsible for growing flagellar filament.
#How Deadly H7n9 Flu Could Jump from Birds to Mammals Chinese researchers have found new clues to the origins of the deadly H7n9 flu virus
and also found a new flu virus lurking in birds that could potentially infect mammals.
The new research shows that the deadly H7n9 flu virus which emerged in China in March likely originated in migratory birds was passed to domestic ducks
As the researchers studied the H7n9 flu they found a previously unknown virus called H7n7.
In laboratory tests this H7n7 virus infected ferrets which are used often a model for human flu transmission.
H7n7 viruses have appeared in other parts of the world but the one the researchers found differed from those.
Flu viruses are named for their proteins the H in the name comes from hemagglutinin and the N from neuraminidase.
Both the H7n9 virus and the H7h7 virus belong to the H7 family of viruses. 6 Flu Vaccine Myths There are probably other viruses like H7n7 that are circulating in the poultry populations in China said study
Many flu viruses Guan noted don't cause people any problems. They spread through poultry populations
But H7-type flu viruses persist and oftenâ evolve into new forms. Vincent Racaniello professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University in New york said this kind of surveillance study is important in finding new viruses and understanding them better.
If scientists saw changes in the H7n7's proteins for instance they could see if it wasâ becoming more dangerous to humans said Racaniello who was involved not in the new study.
They sequenced the virus's genomes and the results are published Thursday (Aug 22) in the journal Nature.
The H7n9 virus has infected 130 people in China and caused 40 deaths. It seems to spread easily from chickens to people though there's no evidence of sustained person-to-person transmission.
Guan said the most surprising thing the team found was just how widespread flu viruses are.
If the virus continues to circulate in poultry further adaptation may occur possibly leading to easier transmission to humans he said.
Influenza viruses often change as they are transmitted between individuals and species; as H7n9 made its way from migratory to domestic birds it exchanged genes with other types of flu.
That's what gave it the ability infect people the researchers said. A key development for the virus was altering its proteins so it could bind to the cells in the upper respiratory tracts of chickens.
Many varieties of flu live in the birds'intestines but they aren't spread through the air.
However once the virus infects the chickens'upper respiratory tract people in close contact with the animals are more likely to be infected.
while the number of deaths due to H7n9 may make the virus seem particularly worrisome it's important to remember that not all cases of infection are reported.
Surveillance in birds is essential to let us know what is happening to viruses in the field and
Very little is known about wild yak biology such as how often the animals breed and how many young yaks survive to adulthood.
But in clones the trophoblast cells frequently fail perhaps a domino effect from just a few genes going wrong said Jose Cibelli a stem cell researcher at Michigan State university.
and tinker with their genes turning back time to make these single-use cells pluripotent
and there are questions about how stable the revised genomes of these cells would be over time.
what's in the nucleus. Trying to treat a mitochondrial disease by turning back the clock on an adult cell's genome would do nothing
and insert it in the place of the egg's original nucleus. Now that adult cell's genome can hum along in its new home creating stem cells without the mitochondrial defects present in its original form.
but they don't always use it said study lead author Alan Wilson a professor in the department of comparative biomedical sciences at The Royal Veterinary College in the United kingdom. oewhat was more remarkable was the maneuverability
Serendipitously marine biogeochemist Eric Achterberg at the University of Southampton in England and his colleagues were taking part in a series of research cruises in the Iceland Basin region of the North Atlantic ocean both during and after the eruption.
In about a third of the global ocean a scarcity of iron limits the abundance of life so ash supplying this metal could spur booms in biological activity.
Bring in some relatives says Miguel Pedrono a Madagascar-based conservation biologist with The french agricultural research center CIRAD.
and leaf litter biomass builds up on the forest floor and frequently causes wildfires. In addition many of Madagascar's plants have evolved defenses against large herbivores such as spines
Visitors residents and conservationists are all hungry for successful new conservation initiatives Pedrono wrote in the March issue of the journal Biological Conservation.
and restore the unique biological riches of Madagascar. Follow Ouramazingplanetâ@OAPLANET Facebookâ and Google+.+Original article at Livescience's Ouramazingplanet i
Now advances in biotechnology could enable scientists to bring extinct animals back from the grave.
In 2003 biologists brought back a Pyrenean ibex by making a clone of frozen tissues harvested from the last of these goats.
Writer and environmentalist Stewart Brand founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and his wife Ryan Phelan founder of the genetics company DNA Direct wondered
Working with Harvard biologist George Church they figured out a possible way to revive passenger pigeons.
because they no longer have fully intact genomes. But there could be another way: Using fragments of the passenger pigeon DNA scientists could synthesize the genes for certain traits and splice the genes together into the genome of a rock pigeon.
The cells containing the passenger pigeon DNA could be transformed into cells that produce eggs and sperm
But South korean biomedical engineer Insung Hwang hopes to find just a cell nucleus and produce a clone from it like Dolly the sheep.
Biologist David Ehrenfeld of Rutgers The State university of New jersey agrees de-extinction would impede conservation.
so devastating to citrus crops that it was classified as a bioterror weapon in 2003 The New yorker reports.
New biology The findings suggest that the flies are able to lurk for decades without causing a massive infestation.
The finding reveals the importance of doing long-term research on the flies said David Haymer a geneticist at the University of Hawaii who has studied medfly genetics
For instance doing genetic analysis on the flies can reveal whether new sightings are reintroductions or the result of an established population breeding Haymer told Livescience.
and soil biogeochemist at the University of Minnesota and lead study author. The earthworms eat away at the puffy duff layer blanketing the forest floor where species such as salamanders and ovenbirds live Resner reported Sunday (Oct 27) at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting.
The Peskiest Alien Mammals Though the team did not make direct observations of a mink attacking a woodpecker they collected several pieces of evidence to argue their case which they detailed earlier this month in the journal Biological Invasions.
This makes DNA a very stable non-reactive molecule and ideal for the long term storage of genetic information.
And here s the amazing part virtually every cell has its own DNA (its own genetic information
or genome) and each cell in your body carries your genome. So each block is more like a smartphone than a balloon each block has its own computer code or DNA genome.
In complex organisms each cell has the same DNA but interestingly different genes are active in different bodily organs.
Think of genes as different apps on a smartphone so all the smartphones that make up your liver will have one set of apps on
and your muscle cells will be using a different set of apps. In plants different apps (genes) are on in leaves
and roots but all the cells of a plant carry the same set of genes i e. the same genome.
So whether you are a vegetarian who eats lettuce and cauliflower or an omnivore who eats steak and kidney pies you are eating cells
which in turn contains the entire genetic information or the whole genome of each species you eat.
The only living parts that don t contain DNA are things like egg whites or filtered milk that are there for energy storage or blood juices in which our blood cells float.
Could any of the genes from any of the organisms you eat get into your DNA
or the apps that specify gene products are so cut up that they can no longer function as genetic material.
There are few if any sentences left just letters or fragments of words. Even if some sentences did survive your digestive system it is unlikely they would enter your cells or harm you in any way.
If you ate a fish with a gene from a strawberry or a strawberry with a gene from a fish to
The strain of GM wheat found in Oregon was developed by the biotechnology company Monsanto officials confirmed.
While other GM CROPS have been approved for cultivation GM wheat has not. Following the announcement Japan and South korea suspended some imports of U s. wheat
because the demand for the GM product wasn't there said Margaret Smith professor of plant breeding and genetics at Cornell University.
In order for Monsanto to gain approval to grow GM wheat to sell the company would need to petition the U s. Department of agriculture said Gregory Jaffe director of the Project on Biotechnology at the Center for Science
Field tests of GM wheat are subject to strict rules to ensure that the crops don't get mixed in with the food supply said Clay Sneller an associate professor at Ohio State university who studies wheat breeding and genetics.
The gene that is inserted into Monstato's GM wheat makes it resistant to the herbicide Roundup Ready Sneller said.
This same gene has been inserted into GM corn soybeans and cotton Sneller said At least 95 percent of GM soybeans contain this gene
and they're exported around the world and there's no health problems at all Sneller said. When Monsanto was considering GM wheat the company consulted with the FDA
Numerous scientific studies show that genetically modified crops are safe to eat Jaffe said. Americans have been eating GM corn
But it is possible to create a GM food that is unsafe for instance researchers could insert a gene that allowed the plant to produce an allergen or a protein to
and be vigilant about each new use of genetic engineering Smith said. Currently companies that make GM foods do not have to have approved these foods before they enter the market
#Is Genetics Key to Climate Change Solutions?(Op-Ed) Thomas Whitham is a regents'professor in the Department of Biological sciences and the executive director of the Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research at Northern Arizona University.
He contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. As the effects of climate change rapidly alter communities economies and natural systems the need to advance new solutions to
what may be the most pressing biological challenge of our time has never been more urgent.
One important part of the puzzle however involves unlocking the natural genetic diversity of plants to identify those species
Just as researchers have used genetics to improve food production it can also provide solutions that maintain biodiversity
Genetics holds the potential to benefit native systems that range from prairies to pine forests and coral reefs.
Plants are well known to possess extensive genetic variation in drought and temperature tolerance water-use efficiency and other traits that can prove critical for surviving climate changes
Importantly plants also exhibit genetic variation in their responses to pests and invasive species that can be used to mitigate their negative effects.
The use of genetics will become increasingly important in regions suffering from climate change. For example in the western United states drought and higher temperatures have doubled the rate of tree mortality
Fortunately plant genomes all of an organism's genetic information are a vast storehouse of genetic variability that can be used to help prevent the loss of species suffering from climate change.
Genetics-based environmental research is already helping to restore damaged and degraded landscapes. For more than 30 years a consortium of researchers has examined how genetic variation in the cottonwood tree can affect entire communities of organisms from microbes to mammals.
This research has been involved with a 50-year $626 million effort on the lower Colorado river that shows major genetics-based differences in the success of different populations that the Bureau of Reclamation
and other agencies are using to restore riparian habitat. From such combined restoration-research experiments scientists can learn which genetic lines are most likely to survive future climates.
Understanding a plant's response to climate conditions requires the integration of diverse sciences to examine how changing conditions influence the plant through its life history
Thus genetics-based research can help identify those individuals that possess superior traits that will allow them to survive in a future climate.
This type of research involves interdisciplinary teams of climate-change scientists biologists geneticists modelers and engineers who are using
and research platforms to unlock the vast stores of information within plant genomes. One of these advances is the Southwest Experimental Garden Array or SEGA a $5 million facility
SEGA is a new genetics-based climate-change research platform that allows scientists to quantify the ecological and evolutionary responses of species exposed to changing climate conditions.
and genotypes in different environments scientists can identify which ones perform best and are most likely to survive changing conditions.
if the potential benefits of genetics-based approaches are to be realized on a broader scale.
Similarly this approach requires the education of a new generation of scientists trained in diverse disciplines individuals who can collaborate on complex biological problems involving whole communities of organisms.
Genetics-based approaches seek to harness the natural genetic variation that exists in wild-populations to restore damaged natural systems
While native ecosystems are being challenged as never before the use of genetics offers new solutions that hold great promise.
Researchers have discovered genes that when activated either increase or reduce your chances for metabolic syndrome the name for a group of risk factors (high blood pressure cholesterol and glucose) that together increase the risk for heart disease America's No. 1 killer.
Fresh high-polyphenol olive oil affects the expression of those genes in a positive way reducing your risk for metabolic syndrome and heart disease.
Those biological benefits explain in part why the Mediterranean diet high in olive oil has been linked with superior health.
The first gymnosperm genome the common Christmas tree (i e. Norwegian wood) has been sequenced. The coniferous Norway spruce (Picea abies) is one of the most widespread and important plants in Europe.
Conifers have some of the biggest genomes (most DNA) of all organisms making them rather tough to study.
The Norway spruce genome contains 20 billion genetic letter-pairs but has roughly the same number of genes (stretches of DNA that code for a specific protein) as the widely studied plant Aradbidopsis
whose genome is 100 times smaller. Studying the spruce's genome could provide new tools for conifer breeding.
The findings were detailed today (May 22) in the journal Nature. Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitterâ and Google+.
+Â Follow us@livescience Facebookâ & Google+.
#Israel Escapes Locust Plague For Now MITZPE RAMON Israel A menacing swarm of locusts that entered southern Israel earlier this week has been largely smitten according to the Israeli government and local reports.
Such specialists increasingly rely on a new family of bio-pesticides such as a chemical called Green Muscle that comes from a naturally occurring fungus that only attacks locusts.
In particular officials use these bio-pesticides in sensitive areas like nature reserves he said. The FAO warned Israel a couple days ahead of time that swarms were likely
The researchers report their findings today (Dec 12) in the journal Current Biology. Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+.
When we look at influenza viruses this is an unusually dangerous virus for humans Keiji Fukuda the World health organization's assistant director-general for health security said Wednesday at a briefing.
New Bird flu Virus: 6 Things You Should Know None of this is good. Right now 18 percent of the cases in China have ended in deaths.
While this is still less deadly than the previous avian flu outbreak in China six years ago he H5n1 bird flu virus eventually killed more than 300 people after spreading from China to other countries in 2006 he death rate for this new Chinese bird flu
One flu-virology expert John Oxford from Queen Mary University told Reuters this week that the emergence of this completely new strain of bird flu infections in humans was very very unsettling.
Public health officials in general have been worried about bird flu viruses for years. Research several years ago showed that the virus could be transmitted from an expectant mother to a fetus
and that the virus isn't just contained in the lungs t can also migrate throughout the body.
This new strain is likely to have similar capabilities. New Rules on Mutant Bird flu Research Stir Debate What's more it could reignite fears about the possibility of deadly global pandemics.
A decade ago several well-known virologists and public-health experts warned in published papers that the world was at risk for pandemics that could kill tens of millions of people or even more without adequate infectious disease monitoring and medical research.
 A California company (Inovio) is in the early stage of developing a potential vaccine with plans to get access to the virus in a highly protected lab environment for its initial tests.
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