I just came across an article distributed by the Slate discussing the above topic. This brought my thinking to the use of DNA and the idea of anonymity in general.

DNA testing makes them easy to trace
By Rachel Lehmann-Haupt Last Updated Monday, March 1, 2010, at 9:36 AM ET

When Donor 3066 signed up with the California Cryobank, he offered some basic information about himself on a piece of paper: that he had a BA in theater; that his mother was a nurse and his father was in the Baseball Hall of Fame; that his birthday was Sept. 18, 1968. He made it clear that he didn’t want to be found by signing a waiver of anonymity…

Donor 3066 was being sought out by Michelle Jorgenson, a 39-year-old waitress from Sacramento, Calif., whose daughter, Cheyenne, was born in 1998.  When her daughter turned 5, Jorgenson joined the Donor Sibling Registry and began searching for other mothers and donor offspring who used Donor 3066. She was concerned because her daughter was sensitive to sounds and walked on her toes, and she wanted to know if other half-siblings were displaying similar behavior. Through the registry, she met a number of other mothers and half-siblings. She discovered that two had autism and two others showed similar signs of sensory disorder…

Jorgenson began her search by approaching a mother in her group with a son named Joshua and suggested he do a cheek swab so she could explore his paternal roots through a Y chromosome test. The mother agreed. Through the test, Michelle learned about some of Joshua’s genetic markers. A few weeks of searching on the Family Tree DNA Web site using these markers led to two families with matching DNA. Through one of the families, she met a woman who mentioned that she found the obit of a relative who was a former baseball manager, and three children were listed. Michelle suspected that this might be her donor’s father, so she looked up the phone number of his listed son. When Michelle called the number, the deceased man’s son answered the phone. She began to ask him questions: Was your father in the Baseball Hall of Fame? Were you born in Illinois? Did you ever donate sperm? When the man said yes, she asked him if his birthday was Sept. 18, 1968. When he answered yes, she burst into tears. “You’re the biological father of my daughter,” she said. He was shocked but agreed to talk to Cheyenne on the phone—and eventually allowed the two to come visit him in Los Angeles.

Although in this case there appears to be a happy out come for all parties this is not always the case.  What about the request for privacy that Donor’s sign up for when they choose to remain anonymous?  Is that even something that clinic should offer since there is no guarantee that the donor can’t be found?  What are the options for men who do become donors?  There are many questions that are raised in this article and very few answers, partly because technology is growing at such a fast rate and party because it appears in the article many clinics are ignoring this issue of privacy.  Let us know what you think about this issue.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Baroque master’s death is surrounded in mystery, but that mystery may soon be solved thanks to DNA testing — as long as the right body can be found.

The caused of death for this famous painter in 1610 and the whereabouts of his corpse have always been unclear.  But a team of Italian anthropologists believe that what is left of Caravaggio’s body may be hidden among dozens of bodies buried in a crypt in Tuscany, thanks to recent historical clues.

The team using CAT scans and kits for carbon dating plan to study what they believe are the painter’s exhumed remains to discover how he died.  “If we are lucky enough to find Caravaggio’s skull, we will also be able to do a reconstruction of his face, just as we did in 2007 for Dante Alighieri,” Silvano Vinceti, head of the National Committee for Cultural Heritage, told Reuters.

The only images of the artist available until now have been self-portraits.  Scholars have put forward many theories about Caravaggio’s death. The most popular are that the painter was assassinated for religious reasons or collapsed with malaria on a deserted Tuscan beach.

However, in 2001 an Italian researcher claimed to have found the painter’s death certificate, which allegedly proved that he died in hospital.  “This historical document shows Caravaggio did not die alone on the beach but after three days in hospital, which means the body must have been buried in the San Sebastiano cemetery,” said Vinceti, referring to a Tuscan town near the city of Grosseto.

But in 1956, bodies buried at the tiny San Sebastiano graveyard were moved to a nearby town, Porto Ercole, and scholars hope that the remains of Caravaggio will be among them.

The team from the departments of Anthropology and Cultural Heritage Conservation at the universities of Ravenna and Bologna will have to examine the bones of between 30 and 40 people, selecting those that belong to young men who died at the beginning of the 17th century, to try and identify the painters remains.

“We will check the DNA extracted from the bones and teeth of possible matches against that of the painter’s male descendants,” Professor Giorgio Gruppioni, who will head the team, told Reuters.  “Sadly Caravaggio died childless,” said Gruppioni, “but his siblings had children whose relatives are still living in the northern Italian town that carries his name.”

Caravaggio, who pioneered the Baroque painting technique of contrasting light and dark known as chiaroscuro, is famed for his wild life. Legend has it that he was on his way to Rome to seek pardon for killing a man in a brawl when he died.

Based on the article by Ella Ide: DNA tests could solve mystery of Caravaggio’s death

February 20th was a big day for Darlene and Cliff Ryckman.  It was the day when they got back their missing dog Molly.  Molly the Shih Tzu made it home because of DNA testing which was completed by local police.

In an unusual case that spanned nearly a year, DNA sample were taken to prove that Molly belonged to Cliff and Darlene Ryckman.

Molly had no microchip and no tattoo, so when the tiny dog went missing last year the Ryckmans were at a loss to prove the identity of the dog they had raised from birth.  Even though they found out who in the neighborhood had taken her in.

Darlene, said “I thought you know what, they do it on humans, they got to do it on animals,” when asked where shy got the idea to preform a DNA test on Molly.

The Ryckmans also own Molly’s sire, Howey, and had the DNA paternity test done to compare genetic material between the two. In all three test were performed on each dog.

The stressful year started last March 4 when the two dogs were let out into the back yard of the family’s home.  The gate wasn’t quite shut, and the two dogs started to chase a cat and the next thing Darlene knew, she couldn’t find Molly.

“I prayed every day,” she said. “I went to a psychic. I put it in The Spectator.”  Darlene also put an announcement on local TV, got the word out at some schools and put up flyers.

Almost right after Molly went missing, a woman responded to the flyers Darlene had posted.  She said had seen two people in the neighborhood pick up a Shih Tzu and take it into an apartment building.  Cliff, tracked down a specific apartment, and was told by a woman there that they did not have Molly.

The Ryckmans weren’t convinced and they were persistent with police.  Eventually they ended up face-to-face with the people who had picked up Molly on the street when they were out with Molly.  Darlene said of the encounter, “Seeing Molly just walking away from me … she was going nuts when she seen me and my husband, and I just broke down because I couldn’t take my dog and these people wouldn’t give me my dog back.”

Cliff said the whole situation was very upsetting for the couple.  He said,”It upset me to go to work because my wife would be crying everyday.”

But finally, after much determination and pursuing Molly through three moves by the people who had Molly, the Ryckmans paid $110 for DNA tests for the two dogs.  Constable Annette Huys, one of two officers working on the case, took the DNA samples.  Huys said, “I’d just come out of the forensic unit, so I was used to collecting lots of DNA, but not necessarily from dogs.”  Huys said unfortunately everybody had fallen in love with the Molly and it didn’t matter which side police dealt with, they were always crying when it came to talking about the Molly.

It took about two weeks for the samples to come back a match. Molly was returned to her the Ryckmans on February 20th.

Staff Sergeant Jack Langhorn called the entire case including taking doggy DNA “extremely unusual.” He said, “It was a unique situation … It wouldn’t be something that we’re going to do on a regular basis.”

Darlene said she’s grateful to the two officers who worked on the case and that, she’ll be getting Molly microchiped shortly.

The Hamilton Spectator

Dog DNA

Reported in the December issue of Molecular Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research; researchers at the University of Florida have been able to just just a fraction of the normal dosage of a highly toxic, debilitating chemotherapy drug to achieve even better results in the fight against colon cancer cells.

Scientist say that more research is needed before the therapy can be tested in patients, but the discovery in human colon cancer cell lines and mice with established human tumors suggests that the addition of a small molecule to the cancer drug Temozolomide disrupts repair mechanisms in a type of tumor cells that is highly resistant to treatment.

Satya Narayan professor of anatomy and cell biology at the college of Medicine and a member of the University of Florida Shands Cancer Center said that, “This is very important because aside from aggressive surgery with possibly chemotherapy, there are no specific treatments for colon cancer. The recurrence rate for this type of cancer after surgery is very high, about 30 to 50 percent, and there is an urgent need to develop new approaches to manage this deadly disease.”

The National Cancer Institute estimates there will be about 106,000 new cases of colon cancer in the United States in by the end of 2009. It is the second most common cause of cancer-related death in both men and women in the Western hemisphere.

Colon cancer forms in the large intestine and survival rates vary according to how soon the cancer is diagnosed and the treatment is started. The challenge of treating patients is that colon cancer is not a single disease but an array of disorders with distinct molecular mechanisms, with one type being quite proficient at repairing the DNA damage inflicted by the drugs currently used to treat the disease.

Narayan’s research team evaluated more than 140,000 small molecules, finally arriving at a tiny molecule that precisely blocks the ability of cancer cells to recognize and repair the DNA damage inflicted by Temozolomide, or TMZ. Narayan said, “Our idea was if you induce DNA damage (with TMZ), and at the same time block cell repair, you can synergize toxic effects to the cancer cells. We hope that with this combination treatment we can reduce the tumors drastically and expand the lifetime of patients much longer than is currently possible.”

TMZ is commonly used against certain types of brain cancer. It works by damaging the DNA of the cancer. By combining TMZ with the small molecule, Narayan’s team was able to disable the colon cancer’s ability to manufacture repair enzymes.

The UF researchers effectively used an amount of TMZ that is about 10 times lower than recommended in its studies of mice with human colon cancer tumors. According to Narayan, if only about one-tenth as much TMZ is needed to kill cancer cells, it will be possible to use lower doses of a drug that creates a great deal of adverse side effects, a partial listing of which includes anxiety, back pain, breast pain, constipation, cough, diarrhea, dizziness, drowsiness, dry skin, hair loss, headache, joint pain, loss of appetite, mouth sores, muscle aches and nausea.

“By using these strategies we can predict that disruption of DNA repair by small molecules can bypass drug resistance factors and dramatically reduce side effects caused by toxic doses of TMZ,” Narayan said.

More study is needed before the combination can be tested in patients, but Narayan believes that TMZ can be combined with the small molecule in a single dose in pill or capsule form.

Sankar Mitra, Ph.D., a professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who did not participate in the study, said that, the research demonstrates that it is possible to sensitize colon cancer cells to TMZ more broadly than is now possible — a benefit of particular importance to patients with cancers that are as varied as colon cancer. “This could be the start of other small molecule inhibitors”

Sankar Mitra also noted that the therapeutic molecules were selected through sophisticated analysis of the structure of tens of thousands of potential small molecules from the National Cancer Institute database. The computer-based process, which can suggest likely cancer therapeutics within hours, replacing manual analysis which would normally have taken weeks or months.

Robert W. Sobol, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pharmacology and chemical biology, and human genetics, at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute said that, “There have been a multitude of studies suggesting that inhibition of DNA polymerase beta would enhance chemotherapeutic response. However, potential inhibitors have been challenging to identify and most have proven to be non-specific and/or non-selective. The compound identified by Dr. Narayan appears to be the first in what I expect to be a growing list of DNA polymerase beta inhibitors that have clinical potential.”

The research was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Science Daily

I just came accost this article on the DNA Read the World website.  It was really interesting.  DNA really is helping fill in missing pieces of information in our knowledge.

New Insight Into Horse Evolution Friday, December 11, 2009 18:35 IST

Scientists at the Australian Center for Ancient DNA (ACAD) based at the University of Adelaide are studying ancient DNA from extinct horse species have discovered new evidence on the evolution of Equidae over the past 55 million years.

Only the modern horse, zebras, wild asses and donkey survive today, but many other lineages have become extinct over the last 50,000 years.

“Our results change both the basic picture of recent equid evolution, and ideas about the number and nature of extinct species,” Cooper said.  The study used bones from caves to identify new horse species in Eurasia and South America, and reveal that the Cape zebra, an extinct giant species from South Africa, were simply large variants of the modern Plains zebra.

Study’s lead author, Dr Ludovic Orlando, from the University of Lyon, said that the research team discovered a new species of the distinct, small hippidion horse in South America.  “Previous fossil records suggested this group was part of an ancient lineage from North America but the DNA showed these unusual forms were part of the modern radiation of equid species,” Orlando said.

“This has serious implications for biodiversity and the future impacts of climate change,” Cooper added

This study does not appear to have immediate consequences it continues to add to our knowledge of the world on which we live.  The bones that were studied come from different time periods and many show that these animals became extinct more recently than previously though some as recently as 50,000 years ago.  This study also suggest that we have under-estimated how much a single species can vary over time and space, and mistakenly assumed more diversity among extinct species than were possible.  While most children study Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution it is sometimes easy to forget that each species changes in very ways over time.

This article provides food for though regarding the environment around us and how it has been changing over time.

The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
National Academy of Sciences

There are many organizations world wide that are trying desperately to help find missing children.  South African Provincial Police are trying to set up a National DNA Database of Children to assist in locating missing children.  Officers are trying to use media, movie theaters, banks and even air lines to show video clops showing pictures and details of the over 114 children who are missing in the provinces.  They are also planning to ask malls, trains and taxi operators to distribute pamphlets with photos and details of the missing children

Police announced these plans as officers continued searching for six-year-old Okuhle and three-year-old Mabaxole Maqhubela, the latest additions to the province’s list of missing children. They disappeared in Laingsburg last week on their way from East London to Cape Town by taxi.

During a weekly press briefing, provincial visible policing head Robbie Roberts, said missing children were one of the “biggest concerns” in the South Africa.  According to Roberts “on a daily basis a lot of children are reported missing.”

Roberts warned parents not to leave their children alone or let them out of their sight.  “And ask yourself when you put your children in the care of somebody, do you really know that person? Do you really trust that person?”

Roberts urged parents to tag their children, including on the tag the child’s name and the parents’ contact details, especially when taking their children to a large public area like a beach. “It’s unbelievable how many children get lost on a beach in one day,” he said.

Roberts said children needed to be taught their home address and parents’ cellphone or landline number. “Once recovered, we find it difficult to get this information from children.” He also urged parents to take photographs of their children so they would always have a recent one.

Provincial Police Commissioner Mzwandile Petros had tasked Roberts, other NGOs, to come up with a more effective plan to tackle the problem.

In the most recent missing children case, Roberts said officers had been unable to find recent photographs of Okuhle Maqhubela and her brother, Mabaxole. The brother and sister went missing from a petrol station in Laingsburg at midnight during a trip from East London to Cape Town, where they would have been reunited with their mother.

Roberts said police in the province would approach the national office to have an identity kit they had created for children, to be distributed in the Western Cape and the rest of the country, if approved.

Once filled out and completed, the kit would include details of the child, a recent photograph, his or her fingerprints, a DNA sample, his or her blood type and details of his or her parents. Dessie Rechner, founder of the NGO Pink Ladies which helps police with search operations, said she was “extremely excited” about the identity kit and proposed database.

Missing children are a huge concern international. Many laboratories are trying to assist in the search for missing children. DNA Identifiers offers a Child Safety Identification Kit like the one described in the article to help keep children safe.

Child Safety Kit

More about this article

I just came across an article distributed by the Global Press Release Distribution about the above topic. This brought my thinking to the use of DNA in general, and about the ethics of cloning specifically.

Dan Vergano, USA TODAY. Scientists have cloned man’s best friend for the first time, creating a genetic duplicate of a 3-year-old male Afghan hound, South Korean scientists reported Wednesday

The puppy was born in April to its surrogate mom, a Labrador retriever. His name: Snuppy, short for Seoul National University puppy. The team of scientists there that cloned the dog, led by Hwang Woo Suk, is the same one that first cloned human embryonic stem cells last year. Their achievement is reported in the journal Nature. Researchers have cloned other animals, but dog cloning has posed a particular challenge. And the difficulties have alarmed some animal advocates and researchers.

There are benefits of cloning your pet according to the Seoul National University, but there are also many groups that are questioning the ethics involved in cloning.

USA Today

Associated Press Writer, JEFF CARLTON, released a story on January 7, 2010, regarding a convict who had been convicted on rape charges of a Texas Tech University student in 1985. The wrongly convicted man, Tim Cole, was an Army Veteran who died in a prison in 1999 at the age of 39.  A 2008 DNA test proved his innocence, 13 years after another man confessed in a series of letters to Lubbock County prosecutors and judges.

Cole’s family sought the pardon. The State Governor, Perry, though expressing sympathy, maintained he didn’t believe he was legally permitted to issue one. However, Cole’s brother tells The Associated Press that a Perry aide says the governor will pardon Cole.

La Times

The controversy surrounding Adolf Hitler’s skeletal remains is embarrassing for the Russian secret services. In 2000 the Russian secret service presented a skull fragment and a piece of jawbone that they claimed were the remains of the Adolf Hitler the Nazi leader. It was an attempt to quash the rumors that he had escaped Germany alive at the end of World War II.

But this October US researchers presented the results of DNA tests on the skull fragments.  The results conclude that the skull fragments definitely did not belong to Hitler because the fragments were from a female.  Scientists had already harbored doubts about the authenticity of the piece of bone because it was thinner than a male’s usually is.  Nick Bellantoni of the University of Connecticut said, “The bone seemed very thin — male bone tends to be more robust. It corresponds to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40.”  In addition the position of the exit wound at the back of the skull also made scientists suspicious because eyewitnesses said Hitler had committed suicide by firing into his right temple.

Russia’s intelligence service, has rejected these doubts. Vasily Khristoforov, the director of the FSB archives (the FSB is the successor to the KGB), told the newspaper Izvestiya that the bones are definitely Hitler’s. “These researchers never got in contact with us,” Khristoforov said, adding, “with what could they have compared the DNA? Moscow is the only place with the remains of Hitler”

Bellantoni said he was allowed to work on the skull for an hour. When he flew home from Moscow he had two samples in his luggage: a sample from the skull fragment and one sample of blood from the sofa on which Hitler is said to have shot himself.

Bellantoni was able to compare the bloodstains on the blood-stained fabric with photos the Soviets took after they seized Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. The stains had matched those in the photos. The research showed that the sofa blood DNA did not match the skull DNA. The sofa blood was male and the skull belonged to a woman, claims Bellantoni.

Khristoforov insists that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had ordered an investigation of the bone pieces because he was not convinced Hitler was dead. The comparison of the jaw bones with X-ray photos of Hitler made in 1944 had satisfied Stalin that Hitler was dead.

Khristoforov said that the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun, Joseph Goebbels and his wife and their six children had been destroyed on April 4, 1970. “The order came from KGB chief Yuri Andropov, the later state and party leader.”  The remains of Hitler and Eva Braun had been stored in the eastern German city of Magdeburg but on the orders of Andropov they were incinerated and the ash was scattered in the river. “That was probably the right solution. Otherwise the burial site would have become a pilgrimage site for fascists who exist everywhere.”

Even within Russian officials don’t all agree on whether the bones are really Hitler’s. After the US research was revealed in October, the vice president of the Russian state archive, Vladimir Kozlov, said: “No one claimed that was Hitler’s skull.

ABC News

In an article published May 19th, 2009 Scientists released data that shows that this fossil could be, “the first link to all humans … truly a fossil that links world heritage,” said Norwegian paleontologist Jørn Hurum of the University of Oslo Natural History Museum.

Meet “Ida,” the small “missing link” found in Germany.  The 47-million-year- old fossil suggests that Ida is a critical missing-link species in primate evolution.  This fossil is thought to bridge the evolutionary split between higher primates such as monkeys, apes, and humans and their most distant relatives such as lemurs.

Ida, properly known as Darwinius masillae has lemur-like skeleton features and primate-like aspects such as grasping hands, opposable thumbs, nails instead of claws.

At least one aspect of Ida is unquestionably unique: her incredible preservation, unheard of in specimens from the Eocene era, when early primates underwent a period of rapid evolution.  “From this time period there are very few fossils, and they tend to be an isolated tooth here or maybe a tailbone there,” said Brian Richmond, a biological anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study with Jørn Hurum

For Jørn Hurum full publications see:

Jørn Hurum Full Publication