The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime, and see if the DNA matches any samples from unsolved crimes in a national database. The 5-to-4 decision split the court’s conservative and liberal blocs, with conservative Justice Antonin Scalia authoring a fiery dissent. Twenty-eight…
A new study suggests that the large majority of noncoding DNA, which is abundant in many living things, may not actually be needed for complex life. The clues lie in the genome of the carnivorous bladderwort plant, Utricularia gibba. The U. gibba genome is the smallest ever to be sequenced from a complex, multicellular plant. The researchers who sequenced it say that 97…
In the middle of the South Atlantic, there’s a patch of sea almost devoid of life. There are no birds, few fish, not even much plankton. But researchers report that they’ve found buried treasure under the empty waters: ancient DNA hidden in the muck of the sea floor, which lies 5000 meters below the waves. The DNA, from tiny, one-celled…
Artist and Phd student, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, finds and photographs DNA samples out in public, collecting everything from hair to chewed gum and cigarettes. She then sequences the DNA, extracting information about certain traits related to outward appearance (e.g. gender, eye-color, ancestry). Dewey-Hagborg then feeds this information into a computer program that uses the details to create a 3D model of…
Dr Helena Cronin, co-director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics, discusses “sexuality after genetics”. Why are males and females so different? Why would one identical twin be gay while the other is straight? Dr Cronin, who specialises in the genetics of gender and sexuality, also explains why she thinks there…
To the surprise of scientists, the most dangerous cancers of the uterine lining closely resemble the worst ovarian and breast cancers, raising the tantalizing possibility that the three deadly cancers might respond to the same drugs. This finding, part of a major new study, is the best evidence yet that cancer will increasingly be seen as a disease defined by its…