News Blog

(Credit: JCVI)

Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute have created the largest man-made DNA structure to date, putting them one step closer to producing a completely synthetic organism, according to the institute.

The work, published online by Dan Gibson, Ph.D. in the journal Science, raises hopes for benefits like new drugs and pollution scarfing micro-organisms while spooking some with visions of biological warfare and patent wielding corporations controlling all future forms of synthetic life.

The researchers chemically created DNA fragments in the lab then used homologous recombination (a process that cells use to repair damage to their chromosomes) in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to rapidly build the entire bacterial chromosome from large sub-assemblies, according to the press release. "This extraordinary accomplishment is a technological marvel that was only made possible because of the unique and accomplished JCVI team," said president and founder J. Craig Venter.

Venter dismisses concerns that what JCVI is really creating is the "microbesoft" of synthetic life. His team has long been concerned with the societal issues surrounding its work and has undergone"significant ethical review" by experts who founds no reason why work should cease "as long as the scientists involved continued to engage public discussion," according to the JCVI Web site.

Critics remain unimpressed. "Venter is claiming bragging rights to the world's longest length of synthetic DNA, but size isn't everything. The important question is not 'how long?' but 'how wise?'" said Jim Thomas in a bio-watchdog article castigating Venter.

"While synthetic biology is speeding ahead in the lab and in the marketplace, societal debate and regulatory oversight is stalled and there has been no meaningful or inclusive discussion on how to govern synthetic biology in a safe and just way. In the absence of democratic oversight profiteering industrialists are tinkering with the building blocks of life for their own private gain."

Next step would be to insert the synthetic DNA into living cells and hope it becomes the world's first artificially created, self-replicating organism.

The first dating service to use lab-based genetic profiling launched online last week. Scientific Match promises to pair up people who will be physically attracted to each other because their DNA is different.

Well-matched couples will like each others' natural scents, have more fun in bed, and bear healthier children than those who are genetically similar, the company claims.

The service, available only in the Boston area, charges $1,995 for a year-long subscription.

"I strongly believe this will dominate the future of dating services," said founder Eric Holzle, a mechanical engineer.

Members swab their cheeks and send in saliva samples. A lab spends two weeks analyzing the immune system genes, and then the company matches individuals with genetic profiles that are unalike.

"We look at six specific genetic reference points on DNA, and none of those six can match to make a match," Holzle explained.

He was inspired by a well-known "sweaty T-shirt" study of a dozen years ago, in which biologists found that women liked the smell of dirty shirts worn by men who were immunologically dissimilar to themselves.

As with other online dating sites, Scientific Match's users can fill out written profiles and upload photographs. Genetic details are not displayed, except to indicate a match. The service runs criminal background checks to exclude anyone who has committed crimes involving violence or identity theft.

Scientific Match is open to straight and gay people. However, women taking the birth control pill are turned away because some studies show they are more attracted to men with similar immune system genes.

The success or failure of the service can't be measured, however, with only a handful of customers so far. Although Holzle doesn't guarantee finding one's true love, he insists that people paired by Scientific Match will at least smell appealing to each other.

The romantic role played by scent is well-documented in poetry and science. Perfumers even add synthetic versions of pheromones, suspected aphrodisiacs found naturally in the body, to fragrances that include Paris Hilton's eponymous perfume.

But the ability to bottle attraction or to predict it through genetic profiling remains unproven by science.

Scientific Match sounds more like pseudoscience to Dean Hamer, the molecular biologist and author credited with discovering "gay genes."

"That sounds like a complete and utter rip-off that preys on people's lack of knowledge of causation and correlation," he said, adding that people could wrongly write off a potentially great mate due to genetic discrimination. "Why don't they just smell their underarms?"

Nevertheless, entrepreneurs are sure to try to capitalize on advances in genomics and biotechnology to reshape the landscape of high-tech matchmaking. The field is wide open. For instance, nobody has tried to set up couples based upon genes that have been linked to promiscuity or libido strength.

And Googling a date's full genetic code could be on the distant horizon. The cost of sequencing someone's DNA has dropped to the low six figures.

The latest online services to incorporate genetic testing include startup 23andMe, Ancestry.com, and the Genographic Project, which sell swab-and-send testing kits for uncovering the deep roots of a family tree.

Add a black light and the cat glows red.

(Credit: Gyeongsang National University)

This may be the fluffiest, freakiest thing since Alba, the green fluorescent bunny from artist Eduardo Kac.

South Korean scientists tinkering with fluorescence protein genes say they have bred white Turkish Angora cats to glow red under ultraviolet light.

The pair of cats cloned from a mother's altered skin cell are nearly a year old. The researchers told the AFP that their work could help unravel mysteries of some 250 genetic diseases suffered by both humans and cats. The findings also could be used to clone endangered tigers, leopards, and other animals, the report said.

However, it's unlikely that such psychedelic-looking cats would come to pet stores anytime soon. Debates about the ethics and safety of concocting cloned and transgenic animals continue to rage.

Genetic Savings & Clone, which charged between $32,000 to $50,000 for cloning cats, shut shop last year. But Spot's or Mittens' genes can be banked in a cryogenic chamber for $1,500, and hypoallergenic kittens cost between $6,000 and $28,000.

GloFish glow, too.

(Credit: GloFish)

California officials in 2004 banned the sale of GloFish, the world's first transgenic pet.

British scientists injected jellyfish genes into chickens and pigs to make them glow several years ago. Last year, Taiwanese scientists said they also spawned glow-in-the-dark pigs.

The cat experiment took place at Gyeongsang National University with funding from the Korean government.

Perhaps the biggest cloning story to hail from South Korea was the revelation in 2005 that a prominent doctor had faked a breakthrough in cloning humans.

(Via miguel23)

The company that makes art from DNA has turned a bit more Andy Warhol for an encore.

DNA 11, an online company that creates personalized oil paintings from the buyer's DNA or fingerprint, introduced a new way for people to buy art--by puckering up. In partnership with cosmetics company MAC, DNA 11 now lets people buy a personalized painting by sending in a print of their lips, or what are called Kiss Portraits. (It's very Marilyn Monroe.)

DNA 11 has been selling on-demand paintings of people's genetic code for years. Its art work has even appeared on the crime show CSI as a fictional way to trace a killer, but technically that's not possible. To create a work, DNA 11 collects a sample of the buyer's DNA, which is immediately sent to a special lab. (The lab doesn't keep records of people's names.) And then only a partial picture of the code is used to create an individual's painting--which typically looks like computer code on canvas.

Similarly with its new product, DNA 11 will send the customer a collection kit so it can create a high-resolution image of the lip print. (Buyers will presumably use MAC lipstick to blot a print.) The buyer can customize the color and size of paintings, which start at $290 and go up in price depending on size or framing. DNA 11 sells its art in museum stores such as New York's Museum of Modern Art and also online. With the Kiss Portraits, it's hoping to appeal to more women shoppers.

"Our products are for people who feel they have everything, want something truly original, or are decorating a living space," said DNA 11 co-founder Adrian Salamunovic.

Genetics pioneer Craig Venter took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit with organizer Tim O'Reilly. What's a biologist doing at a Web 2.0 conference? Talking about how information and biology are converging (and have been for a while).

(Credit: J. Craig Venter Institute)

Interesting tidbits: Venter's own DNA was sequenced as part of his research. It cost, he estimates, about $70 million. Today it costs only $300,000 to sequence a person's DNA, and the $100,000 benchmark is in sight. It's an information processing problem, he said. In other words, Moore's Law and genetics are tightly tied. It won't be long before your genome--and your likelihood to get various diseases, live long, be athletic, etc.--will be available in a standard medical test.

The implications for medicine, and its evil twin the insurance industry, are vast. Despite the privacy issues, Venter is in favor of transparency in genomics, so that, for example, you'll be able to "Google a date's DNA," as O'Reilly remarked. Scary? Sure. But "a good idea," Venter said. "Especially if you plan to have children."

In other news, apparently we are "weeks to months away" from growing a living, but completely synthetic bacteria in the lab. If you find this terrifying and fascinating, I recommend the novel, The Deus Machine by Pierre Oullette (Amazon link).

Peer-to-peer company BitTorrent is set to announce on Tuesday morning the availability of a new enterprise content delivery product, BitTorrent DNA. Designed for companies that use streaming video, large downloads or games over the Web, the launch of BitTorrent DNA marks yet another conscious move by the San Francisco-based software brand to move beyond its roots as the creator of file-sharing protocol that became nearly synonymous with digital piracy over the past few years.

BitTorrent described the new BitTorrent DNA product in a statement as "the ideal solution for publishers seeking ways to overcome the obstacles associated with centralized content delivery, such as slow downloads, choppy video streams, and inefficient use of network infrastructure." The inaugural client for the new content delivery network (CDN) is online video start-up Brightcove, which powers a number of large companies' broadband media operations.

BitTorrent DNA will be used to "accelerate" the delivery of the video hosted on Brightcove's platform.

With the rise of online video and large-scale media downloads, content delivery has become a crowded niche in the market. BitTorrent DNA will square off with industry leaders like Akamai Technologies--the force behind CBS' video distribution network as well as a host of others. BitTorrent is hoping, however, that its massive following (150 million downloads of its client, according to the company) will help give it an edge.

In addition, the peer-to-peer format has become increasingly popular in the streaming video space, with recent entries like Joost and Babelgum touting P2P technology as the backbone for their professional-quality video content.

In February, BitTorrent announced that it was creating a digital download store that would use that robust user base as a way to legally transfer large movies, games and other files. The company has also forged alliances with major movie studios for legal film downloads.

Meanwhile, the exhaustive battle over online piracy wages on.

Ancestry.com announced plans on Monday to add DNA digging to its mix of ancestral-sleuthing tools.

And for some, err...specifically me, it may answer an inside family joke as to whether my husband and I are actually distant, distant and, again, I emphasize distant, kissing cousins. We learned on our wedding day, while his mother and my grandmother chatted, that his grandparents and my great-grandparents were from the same small village in Hiroshima, Japan. Hmm, what are the odds?!?

Some things are better left unknown.

For those who are curious about their own genealogy, Ancestry's parent, The Generations Network, is teaming up with Sorenson Genomics to offer DNA genealogy database searches by the end of summer.

With Ancestry's DNA kit, which is set to sell for less than $200, users will swab their cheek with a Q-Tip-like device and mail the results to Sorenson. Within two or three weeks, Sorenson plans to process the swab sample and have the information will entered into the user's database. Users can opt to make their DNA information, online family trees and historical documents accessible to others or keep them private, said Brett Folkman, vice president of strategy and business development at Ancestry.

The DNA test examines the Y chromosome for paternal lineage, as well as the Mitochondrial DNA for the maternal lineage, said Doug Fogg, chief operating officer at Sorenson.

Sorenson, which conducts genetic genealogy testing, has offered a consumer version of its service since 2001, under its Relative Genetics division. The division, however, will cease to exist once the transfer of data is made to Ancestry, which will handle the marketing and database, while Sorenson continues to oversee the lab work.

Although the ability to conduct a home DNA test and get the results with relative ease are tempting, the thought of sitting across the kitchen table with a distant cousin-husband may be little too weird to down with the morning coffee.

CORONADO, Calif.--It's not a vacation home in Santa Barbara, but the best thing that people can leave to their children might just be a DNA map.

At least, that's what Ryan Phelan, founder and CEO of DNA Direct, thinks about her company's services. Phelan told attendees at the Future in Review conference that people who are taking several different prescription drugs or have a family history of cancer should consider looking into their genetic profile.

DNA Direct offers people a chance to send in a DNA sample (a cotton swab to the inside of the cheek) and get the results back in three to eight weeks. Naturally, there's a profit motive behind the pitch. The cheapest test offered by DNA Direct costs $199, and it scales up from there.

Tests are available to determine the genetic probability of several types of cancer, cystic fibrosis, and blood-clotting disorders, among other things. Knowing one's probability for diseases or other health problems could prompt people to get advance screenings when treatment could make a difference, Phelan said. And assembling a family DNA profile could make future generations aware of their susceptibility to various diseases.

Phelan took the opportunity in front of the conference attendees to float a trial balloon: are people interested in paying for a home DNA storage kit? According to an unscientific show of hands, lots of people are willing to pay $100 for such a kit, and Phelan's company is thinking about offering such a product.