Synthetic Genetic Polymers Capable of Heredity and Evolution is the title of a journal article appearing in the April 2012 issue of Science. The researchers reported the findings of a project in which they created synthetic DNA, called XNA. The X stands for “Xeno,” a term meaning “alien.”The XNA created exhibits all the characteristics of
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Scientists from Russia and South Korea are hell-bent on recreating the Woolly Mammoth, an animal that has been extinct for more than 10,000 years. The North-Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic in Russia and South Korea’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation are combining their research efforts to recreate the extinct animal using an Indian Elephant
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In our last blog we introduced telomeres, the genetic information that slowly vanishes from chromosomes each time cells divide. Researchers who study aging see a correlation between those vanishing telomeres and growing older. But I am getting ahead of myself. Before we can talk about the mechanism of stopping aging we really need to understand
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“Hello Dolly,” not the musical but the sheep. Seen below, Dolly was the first adult mammal cloning success using sheep. Her journey from the petri dish to birth began as a cell taken from a mammary gland of a 6-year old female donor. The technique included putting the cell into a suspended state to extract
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By mapping the human genome in its entirety we are entering a new biomedical world using computational biology. To understand the complexity associated with this new world we need to understand DNA. DNA – Deoxyribonucleic Acid Since the mid-19th century we have known that within our cells contained the building block of life. We didn’t
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Humanity is closer today to immortality than it has ever been. We have surpassed Darwinian survival of the fittest to reach a new stage in evolution, creating humans reshaped by advances in biology combined with technology. In the 21st century one of our human challenges will be – do we really want to go there?
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