By A. Chris Gajilan
ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- Biologist-entrepreneur J. Craig Venter is part of a new kind of scientific explorer whose uncharted territory was his own genes.
J. Craig Venter says knowing his DNA gives him incentive to stick to healthy habits.
Venter has just published almost all 6 billion letters, or 96 percent, of his own personal genetic code in the journal PLoS Biology. From diseases to personality traits, it's the most comprehensive human genome to date. Venter's gene map provides a new understanding of his genetic destiny, according to the DNA inherited from both his father and his mother.

Venter says it's just the beginning of a new era of personal genomics. "For the first time, we can answer almost any question of what's genetic, what's the environment. Our genes can tell us probabilities of what might happen and give us a chance to do something about it."
Today, Venter probably knows more about his own biology than any other human being. But as it stands now, the little that is understood about DNA is related to disease. For now, much of his insight is bad news.

His father's fatal heart attack may have been an early clue of heart disease risk, but his genome has now given him a glimpse of at least three genes linked to increased heart attack risk.
Venter says it gives him more motivation than just a simple family history. "In my case it gives me a little bit more motivation to try and persistently stick with healthy habits because you don't have the excuse of saying ... you know, I don't really have those traits. ... I know what is in my genetic code," he says. J. Craig Venter talks to Dr. Sanjay Gupta about the journey to mapping his own DNA. »

He's also identified a gene linked to Alzheimer's disease. It was a surprise to him, given that he had absolutely no family history of the illness. Now, he takes statins, or drugs that lower the cholesterol in the blood, because of their proven beneficial heart effects and possible memory protection.
Venter says he takes all the new discoveries in stride. "I'll be watching it obviously and looking for preventative ideas or hints of it. I'm not afraid of it in the sense that I feel it's a sentence, because I know that it is a statistical probability."
So far, he's found genetic proof of links to blindness, alcoholism, lactose intolerance, substance abuse, hypertension, obesity, even the type of earwax he has.

But the genome is far from perfect. He doesn't see it as an absolute, but rather as a clue. It's an indicator of risk, but not a certainty. For example, Venter has a normal risk for skin cancer, but still he recently battled melanoma.
The road to personal discovery has been long and contentious for Venter. In 2000, Venter led a private team that raced the publicly funded Human Genome Project to complete the first working drafts of the human genome, creating a blueprint for the DNA of all humanity. The public project eventually took 13 years and $3 billion to complete. It was a composite of 269 people's DNA.

As then-president of the private company Celera Genomics, Venter matched the public effort at a fraction of the cost and the time. Celera's genome was a composite of five people's DNA. Years later, it was revealed that much of the genome was, in fact, his own.
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· 360 Blog Venter reflects on seeing his own DNA

Then-President Bill Clinton declared the race a tie, pronouncing the result "the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind."
Since then, Venter has left Celera and has started the J. Craig Venter Institute, which is looking for a faster way to crack the DNA code. Over the years, he has used the Celera work and $10 million to analyze DNA, including his own.

Given his past, Venter says he has carved out an unlikely place in history for himself. He says he almost flunked out of high school and spent most of youth surfing in California. He would later serve as a medic in Vietnam and eventually choose to become a scientist.
An avid diver and sailor, he's just finished a trip around the world. Between his adventure-seeking and high-risk business moves, he as well as his friends and family find it surprising that he doesn't have the gene type associated with risk taking.
He stresses that his genome is not so much about vanity, but understanding the complex balance between nature and nurture.

"It's not just straight-up determinism. The original thinking was we could really go into a preventive medicine paradigm," says Venter.
The idea is simple. Calculate the genetic probability of getting a disease and your chances at treating or beating it are better. Many genetic tests already exist for breast cancer, heart disease and diabetes, but they aren't always that reliable or predictive.

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Venter and other geneticists think they're going to get exponentially better at providing more people a look at their genetic map. As the era of personal DNA sequencing evolves, several groups are racing to find new, cheaper and faster ways to map an individual's DNA. The nonprofit X Prize Foundation is offering $10 million to the first team that can sequence the DNA of 100 people within 10 days.

Dr. George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, is working on a DNA test that would identify for the consumer 1 percent of his or her DNA at a cost of $1,000. He says that someday soon, people may be checking their DNA maps as they do their stock portfolios -- constantly adjusting to everyday developments and new gene discoveries.

"You'll have all that information sitting at your desk and as the information flows in you'll say, 'I only want to know things of certain type. I don't want to know about Alzheimer's, or I don't want to know about heart disease, or I do, or I want to know about everything, as soon as it comes in," says Church.
It's a habit Venter already follows. As more genes are discovered, he says, he constantly checks his own genome.
"There will be a tipping point where everybody wants it to be part of their medical history," says Church.

But someday soon it may affect more than just your medical history.
"Maybe this will be the new mating information. Once we all have our genomes, some of these extremely rare diseases are going to be totally predictable," says Vente
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CNN

Consumers warned about tainted meat

CNN) -- Federal and state health officials issued a consumer alert Thursday after nine people were sickened by contaminated beef.

A day before the start of what historically is a popular weekend for grilling, officials urged consumers to check the beef in their freezers and make sure it doesn't include possibly tainted meat.

The 41,205 pounds (approximately 20 tons) of beef identified as possibly tainted is no longer on store shelves, because the sell-by dates have already expired.

But the alert was issued anyway in case the product remains in consumers' freezers, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture said.

Nine people have been sickened -- six in Washington, two in Oregon, and one in Idaho -- by the beef, which is contaminated with E. coli bacteria, state health officials reported.

The meat, processed between July 19 and July 30, according to the company, was also sold in Alaska, but no illnesses have been reported there.

Authorities identified the suspect products as 16-ounce packages of "Northwest Finest 7% Fat, Natural Ground Beef" with UPC code label "752907 600127" and 16-ounce packages of "Northwest Finest 10% Fat, Organic Ground Beef" with expiration dates between August 1 to August 8.

The beef was sold in Safeway, QFC, and Fred Meyer and other stores.

DNA tests confirmed that the nine people sickened by E. coli were infected with the same strain of the bacteria.

Federal and state health officials say that E. coli bacteria are killed if beef is cooked at 160

S0urce CNN

Frozen Bacteria Repair Own DNA

Mason Inman
for National Geographic News

Bacteria can survive in deep freeze for hundreds of thousands of years by staying just alive enough to keep their DNA in good repair, a new study says. In earlier work, researchers had found ancient bacteria in permafrost and in deep ice cores from Antarctica.

These bacteria, despite being trapped for millennia, were able to be revived and grown in the lab.

Some researchers had thought that bacteria would have to turn into dormant spores to survive for so long.

But if bacteria merely went dormant, metabolism would stop and various environmental factors would begin damaging their DNA.

Like an ancient scroll that's crumbling apart, the DNA becomes so damaged that it's indecipherable after about a hundred thousand years. Then the cells can't ever reproduce and the bacteria are effectively dead.

"Our results show that the best way to survive for a long time is to keep up metabolic activity," said Eske Willerslev, lead study author and a researcher at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Doing this "allows for continuous DNA repair," Willerslev added.

The work suggests that if bacterial life existed on Mars or on Jupiter's moon Europa, it might still survive locked in icy soils.

The new study appears this week in the online advance edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Living, Just Barely

The new study examined DNA from bacteria found in permafrost from Siberia in Russia and Canada. The permafrost dated back to about a half-million years ago.

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• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070827-frozen-dna_2.html
  

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http://www.allaboutscience.org/dna-double-helix-video.htm

• DNA Double Helix
  DNA Double Helix: A Recent Discovery of Enormous ComplexityThe DNA Double Helix is one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. First described by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, DNA is the famous molecule of genetics that establishes each organism's physical characteristics. It wasn't until mid-2001, that the Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics jointly presented the true nature and complexity of the digital code inherent in DNA. We now understand that each human DNA molecule is comprised of chemical bases arranged in approximately 3 billion precise sequences. Even the DNA molecule for the single-celled bacterium, E. coli, contains enough information to fill all the books in any of the world's largest libraries.
  DNA Double Helix: The "Basics"DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is a double-stranded molecule that is twisted into a helix like a spiral staircase. Each strand is comprised of a sugar-phosphate backbone and numerous base chemicals attached in pairs. The four bases that make up the stairs in the spiraling staircase are adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G). These stairs act as the "letters" in the genetic alphabet, combining into complex sequences to form the words, sentences and paragraphs that act as instructions to guide the formation and functioning of the host cell. Maybe even more appropriately, the A, T, C and G in the genetic code of the DNA molecule can be compared to the "0" and "1" in the binary code of computer software. Like software to a computer, the DNA code is a genetic language that communicates information to the organic cell. The DNA code, like a floppy disk of binary code, is quite simple in its basic paired structure. However, it's the sequencing and functioning of that code that's enormously complex. Through recent technologies like x-ray crystallography, we now know that the cell is not a "blob of protoplasm", but rather a microscopic marvel that is more complex than the space shuttle. The cell is very complicated, using vast numbers of phenomenally precise DNA instructions to control its every function. Although DNA code is remarkably complex, it's the information translation system connected to that code that really baffles science. Like any language, letters and words mean nothing outside the language convention used to give those letters and words meaning. This is modern information theory at its core. A simple binary example of information theory is the "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." In that famous story, Mr. Revere asks a friend to put one light in the window of the North Church if the British came by land, and two lights if they came by sea. Without a shared language convention between Paul Revere and his friend, that simple communication effort would mean nothing. Well, take that simple example and multiply by a factor containing many zeros. We now know that the DNA molecule is an intricate message system. To claim that DNA arose by random material forces is to say that information can arise by random material forces. Many scientists argue that the chemical building blocks of the DNA molecule can be explained by natural evolutionary processes. However, they must realize that the material base of a message is completely independent of the information transmitted. Thus, the chemical building blocks have nothing to do with the origin of the complex message. As a simple illustration, the information content of the clause "nature was designed" has nothing to do with the writing material used, whether ink, paint, chalk or crayon. In fact, the clause can be written in binary code, Morse code or smoke signals, but the message remains the same, independent of the medium. There is obviously no relationship between the information and the material base used to transmit it. Some current theories argue that self-organizing properties within the base chemicals themselves created the information in the first DNA molecule. Others argue that external self-organizing forces created the first DNA molecule. However, all of these theories must hold to the illogical conclusion that the material used to transmit the information also produced the information itself. Contrary to the current theories of evolutionary scientists, the information contained within the genetic code must be entirely independent of the chemical makeup of the DNA molecule.
  DNA Double Helix: Its Existence Alone Defeats any Theory of EvolutionThe scientific reality of the DNA double helix can single-handedly defeat any theory that assumes life arose from non-life through materialistic forces. Evolution theory has convinced many people that the design in our world is merely "apparent" -- just the result of random, natural processes. However, with the discovery, mapping and sequencing of the DNA molecule, we now understand that organic life is based on vastly complex information code, and such information cannot be created or interpreted without a Master Designer at the cosmic keyboard.
  Learn More Now!

Source:

• http://www.allaboutscience.org/dna-double-helix.htm

DNA Double Helix Video

Source:

• http://www.allaboutscience.org/dna-double-helix-video.htm

PNA/DNA

Thermodynamic comparison of PNA/DNA and DNA/DNA hybridization reactions at ambient temperature

Source:

• http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/27/24/4792

Where Broken DNA Is Repaired

A cell nucleus is shown after irradiation by high-energy particles like those in cosmic rays. At top, the white arrow tracks one particle through regions of high-density DNA (blue) and low-density DNA.

Green signals are RIF, "radiation-induced foci," accumulations of proteins associated with radiation damage. Middle and bottom panels model DNA density topographically the higher the peak, the denser the DNA showing that RIF prefer low-density regions and tend to locate themselves at the interface between high and low density.

*"NASA has long been interested in the radiation hazards in space," says LSD's Sylvain Costes, who led the study. "On a trip to Mars, astronauts will be exposed to cosmic rays for as long as three years, so NASA has been trying to come up with a mechanistic model of DNA repair to estimate the increased risk of cancer. We are helping to develop such a model."

Source:
Link Science Daily

Kool Jokes!

Source:

• http://www.go-quiz.com/cocktail/cocktail.php

Unknotting DNA Clue To Cancer Syndrome

Science Daily — A new UC Davis study that explains the actions of a gene mutation that causes early onset cancer provides a fundamental insight into the mechanism of DNA-break repair.

UC Davis microbiologist Neil Hunter used spaghetti as a model to explain the gene mutation that causes early onset cancer. (Credit: UC Davis)

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• Link
  

2 DNA variants linked to MS

New Genes Linked With MS

CHICAGO, USA, July 30--After decades of dead ends, scientists have identified two genes that may raise the risk of multiple sclerosis, lending insight into the causes of the debilitating disease.

DNA Methylation Analysis

DNA methylation analysis: a powerful new tool for lung cancer diagnosis

Department of Biochemistry, University of Southern California, School of Medicine, Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, NOR 6420, 1441 Eastlake Ave, Los Angeles, California, CA 90089-9176, USA.

Carcinoma of the lung is the most common cause of cancer death worldwide. The estimated 5-year survival ranges from 6-16%, depending on the cell type. The best opportunity for improving survival of lung cancer patients is through early detection, when curative surgical resection is possible. Although the subjects at increased risk for developing carcinoma of the lung (long-term smokers) can be identified, only 10-20% of this group will ultimately develop the disease. Screening tests of long-term smokers employed to date (radiography and sputum cytology) have not been successful in reducing lung cancer mortality. The application of molecular markers specific for lung cancer offers new possibilities for early detection. Hypermethylation of CpG islands in the promoter regions of genes is a common phenomenon in lung cancer, as demonstrated by the analysis of the methylation status of over 40 genes from lung cancer tumors, cell lines, patient sputum and/or serum. Determination of the methylation patterns of multiple genes to obtain complex DNA methylation signatures promises to provide a highly sensitive and specific tool for lung cancer diagnosis. When combined with the development of non-invasive methods to detect such signatures, this may provide a viable method to screen subjects at risk for lung cancer.

PMID: 12154407 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
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