Concentrate on the concentration
Agarose gels act as a molecular sieve to separate DNA strands based on their length, with shorter fragments having an easier time migrating than longer fragments. Higher concentrations of agarose will effectively slow down the migration of DNA fragments, while lower concentrations allow DNA to migrate faster.
However, it’s important to remember that every experiment is different and the concentration of agarose should ideally be optimized based on the sizes of DNA fragments that are being separated.
For very large DNA fragments, anything over 4000 bp in length, a 0.8% gel will allow for quicker migration.
However, if you are trying to identify small DNA bands you might need a 1.5% or 2% gel for best results.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MnnY_KbSRk
In a lab at the University of Wyoming, some silkworms are spinning cocoons of silk, just as every silkworm has done for millions of years. But these insects are special. They have been genetically engineered to spin a hybrid material that’s partly their own silk, and partly that of a spider. With spider DNA at their disposal, they can weave fibers that are unusually strong and tough. It’s the latest step in a decades-long quest to produce artificial spider silk. Spider silk is a remarkable material, wonderfully adapted for trapping, crushing, climbing and more. It is extraordinarily strong and tough, while still being elastic enough to stretch several times its original length. Indeed, the toughest biological material ever found is the record-breaking silk of the Darwin’s bark spider.
It’s 10 times tougher than Kevlar, and the basis of webs that can span rivers. Because of its enticing properties, spider silk has enormous potential. It could be put to all sorts of uses, from strong sutures to artificial ligaments to body armour. That is, if only we could make enough of the stuff. Farming spiders is out of the question. They are territorial animals with a penchant for eating each other. It took 82 people, 4 years and 1 million large spiders to make a piece of cloth just 11 feet by 4 feet. The alternative is to synthesise spider silk artificially.
That hasn’t been easy. Scientists have long since managed to reconstruct the proteins in the silk, using everything from bacteria to potatoes to goats. But these systems only provided small amounts of silk proteins, and would be expensive to scale up. Making silk proteins is just part of the far harder challenge of turning proteins into silk fibres, with their complex microscopic structures. To get around these problems, Donald Jarvis, Malcolm Fraser and Randolph Lewis had a simple idea: why not use another animal that also spins silk? As a large industry and centuries of history can attest to, silkworms are easy to farm in large numbers. And they’re silk-spinning machines, with massive glands that turn silk proteins into fibers.
Their own silk is no mechanical slouch, and it’s already used to make sutures. But spider silk has many advantages. Not only is it stronger and tougher, but we understand how specific tweaks to a spider’s genes can produce silks with different properties. It should be possible to customise unique silks that are tailor-made for specific purposes. Fraser had just the right tool for the job. In the 1980s, he identified pieces of DNA that can hop around insect genomes, cutting themselves out of one location and pasting themselves in somewhere else. He named them PiggyBac, and he has turned them into tools for genetic engineering.
You can load PIggyBac elements with the genes of your choice, and use them to insert those genes into a given genome. In this case, Florence Teulé and Yun-Gen Miao used PiggyBac to shove spider silk genes into the silk-making glands of silkworms. To identify the silkworms that had incorporated the spider genes, Teulé and Miao added another passenger to their PiggyBac vehicle – a gene for a glowing protein. The insects that had been successfully engineered all had glowing red eyes.
These engineered silkworms produced composite fibres that were mostly their own silk, with just 2 to 5 percent spider silk woven among it. This tiny fraction was enough to transform the fibres. They were stronger, more elastic, and twice as tough as normal silkworm fibres. And even though they didn’t approach the strength and elasticity of true spider silk, they were almost just as tough. One other team has tried to do something similar, but their fibers didn’t show the same physical improvements.
They also produced fibres where the spider silk merely coated the silkworm strands. When silkworm cocoons are harvested, these outer coats are usually removed. By contrast, Teulé and Miao’s engineered their spider genes so that th...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-xWFyK20u4
Effect of ethidium bromide
Ethidium bromide is a fluorescent dye and it intercalates between nucleic acids bases and provides opportunity to easily detect nucleic acid fragments in gels (Sharp et al. 1973; Boffey, 1984; Lodge et al. 2007; Harrington, 1993; Lane et al., 1992).The gel subsequently is being illuminated with an ultraviolet lamp usually by placing it on a light box. An apparatus integrated with the illumination system is used to take images of the gel with the presence of UV illumination. The gel can be subsequently photographed usually with a digital camera and images are usually shown in black and white, despite the fact that the stained nucleic acid fluoresces reddish-orange.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk5oR739b88
As many of you now know Elon Musk stated that he has Asperger's syndrome, or autism spectrum disorder.
So what is this Asperger's syndrome?
Asperger Syndrome is diagnosed when a person struggles with social relationships and communication, and shows unusually narrow interests and resistance to change, but has good intelligence and language skills. Most genetic studies of autistic spectrum conditions treat autism as if they are all very similar, whereas in reality there is considerable variation (e.g., in language level and intellectual ability).
The researchers looked for sequence variations (called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs) in the gene known as GABRB3.
The volunteers were tested for 45 SNPs within this key gene. The team found that certain SNPs in GABRB3 were significantly more common in people with AS. They also discovered that additional genetic variations in the same gene were linked to scores on an empathy measure called the Empathy Quotient in the general population. You can find link to scientific paper in video description.
https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2040-2392-4-48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcCo_kYwvRY
Researchers taking part in a government-funded study discovered mutations in three genes that appear to cause the speech problem in some people. Stuttering tends to run in families, and previous research suggested a genetic connection. But until now, researchers had not been able to pinpoint any culprit genes.
Dennis Drayna, a geneticist and senior author of the study, said he hopes the results help convince doubters that stuttering "is almost certainly a biological problem."
The research - released Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine - also points to a possible enzyme treatment for stuttering someday.
Without a known cause, stuttering has been attributed to such things as nervousness, lack of intelligence, stress or bad parenting. Stutterers were told it was all in their heads. Fraser said parents contact her group worried they have done something to cause their children's stuttering. Were they too strict? Too attentive? Didn't pay enough attention?
The gene discovery should lift that guilt, she said.
Drayna and other experts said that while stress and anxiety can make stuttering worse, they do not cause it. "It really is not an emotional disorder. It doesn't come from your interactions with other people," he said.
Stuttering usually starts in children as they are learning to talk. Most youngsters lose their stutter as their brain develops. For some, the stuttering persists. An estimated 3 million Americans stutter. Treatments include speech therapy and electronic devices.
"This is a very difficult disorder to study," said Drayna, who is with the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. "You can't study it in cells in a dish. You can't study it in a test tube. You can only study it in awake humans."
To find the genes, Drayna and others first looked at a large, inbred Pakistani family with many members who stuttered, and discovered a mutation on chromosome 12. Then they found the same mutation and two other mutated genes in a group of nearly 400 other people from Pakistan, the U.S. and England who stutter.
They didn't find the mutations in a similar group of people who don't stutter, except in one Pakistani volunteer.
The researchers estimate that the three gene variants account for 9 percent of all stuttering cases. But they are looking for other stuttering genes. In fact, between 50 percent and 70 percent of stuttering cases are thought to have a genetic component, Drayna said.
"The task of connecting the dots between genes and stuttering is just beginning," Simon E. Fisher of England's Oxford University wrote in an accompanying editorial.
The three implicated genes normally help run the "recycling bin" where cells of the body send their garbage. The mutations apparently interfere with that, affecting brain cells that control speech.
"People had suggested all sorts of causes for stuttering over the years. An inherited disorder of cell metabolism was never on anyone's list," Drayna said.
Two of the stuttering genes have previously been tied to rare diseases that can occur when the cell's recycling bin malfunctions.
Other related disorders are now being treated by replacing a missing enzyme, and that could eventually be a treatment method for some kinds of stuttering, the researchers said.
Kristin Chmela, a speech therapist from suburban Chicago who specializes in treating stuttering, said she was teased and bullied for her own stuttering while growing up, and "there were lots of days where I was afraid to go to school."
She said she is looking forward to sharing the gene discovery with those she treats: "It's going to be very interesting to see the reaction on some of their faces."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4c29n_oFH4
GloFish first appeared on the market in 2003 and became the world's first genetically modified pet. To give the fish a bright glowing color, scientists used the DNA of a tropical jellyfish. GloFish glows in both daylight and UV light.
Initially, scientists created the fish to glow in a water polluted by industrial waste. But it happened so that businessmen from the Texas company Yorktown Technologies became interested in GloFish. Glowing fish literally blew up the aquarist market.
Although the sale of GloFish is banned in California and the European Union, recently police in the Netherlands found about 1,500 lanternfish sold in various aquarium stores.
GloFish has a competitor - it's called "medaka" or Japanese rice fish. A few years before the appearance of the glofish, Taiwanese scientists were able to develop a breed of medaka, painted in a luminous green color.
Another genetically modified fish is salmon, bred by AquaBounty. Unlike GloFish, it does not glow at all, but it can grow all year round, and not in spring and summer, like its wild relatives. The salmon bred by AquaBounty has been specifically bred for commercial farming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6P4UkVohNA
The map above shows what the borders of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa might look like if they were based on the dominant Y-DNA haplogroup rather than ethnicity and/or any other political considerations.
Here’s some very basic information about each group:
Haplogroup R1b: “It is the most frequently occurring paternal lineage in Western Europe, as well as some parts of Russia (e.g. the Bashkir minority) and Central Africa (e.g. Chad and Cameroon). It is also present at lower frequencies throughout Eastern Europe, Western Asia, as well as parts of North Africa and Central Asia.”
Haplogroup R1a: “It is distributed in a large region in Eurasia, extending from Scandinavia, Central Europe and southern Siberia to South Asia.”
Haplogroup N: “It has a wide geographic distribution throughout northern Eurasia, and it also has been observed occasionally in other areas, including Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Southwest Asia and Southern Europe.”
Haplogroup I1: “The haplogroup reaches its peak frequencies in Sweden (52 percent of males in Västra Götaland County) and western Finland (more than 50 percent in Satakunta province).[6] In terms of national averages, I-M253 is found in 35–38 per cent of Swedish males, 32.8% of Danish males, about 31.5% of Norwegian males and about 28% of Finnish males.”
Haplogroup I2: “The haplogroup reaches its maximum frequency in the Dinaric Alps in the Balkans, where the men are on record as being the tallest in the world, with a male average height of 185.6 cm (6 ft 1.1 in).”
Haplogroup J1: “This haplogroup is found today in significant frequencies in many areas in or near the Middle East, and parts of the Caucasus, Sudan and Ethiopia. It is also found in high frequencies in parts of North Africa, Southern Europe, and amongst Jewish groups, especially those with Cohen surnames. It can also be found much less commonly, but still occasionally in significant amounts, throughout Europe and as far east as Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.”
Haplogroup J2: “It is found in Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Europe and North Africa, but it is usually associated with Northwest Asia. It is thought that J2 might have originated between the Caucasus Mountains, Mesopotamia and the Levant.”
Haplogroup E: “Most members of haplogroup E-M96 belong to one of its identified subclades, and the E-M96(xE-P147, E-M75) is rare. E1a and E-M75 are found almost exclusively in Africa. By looking at the major subclade frequencies, five broad regions of Africa can be defined: East, Central, North, Southern and West. The division can be distinguished by the prevalence of E-V38 in East, Central, Southern and West Africa, E-M78 in East Africa and E-M81 in North Africa.”
Haplogroup G: “At the level of national populations, G-M201 is most commonly found in Georgia; it is found at even higher levels among many other regional and minority populations in The Caucasus. G-M201 is also widely distributed at low frequencies, among ethnic groups of Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, and North Africa.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybQrNT9Q34c
Source:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-hitlers-deputy-replaced-doppelganger-dna-analysis-says-no-180971334/
In May 1941, the deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler set off on a dangerous solo flight to Scotland, where he hoped to broker a peace treaty with Britain. Rudolf Hess’ strange and ill-advised mission very quickly began to unravel. His plane ran out of fuel, for one, forcing him to land in a field several miles from his destination. And instead of finding British officials sympathetic to his cause, Hess was, unsurprisingly, whisked away into prison. After he was convicted and given a life sentence during the post-war Nuremberg trials, Hess spent 46 years in the Spandau prison in Berlin. He died there in 1987, reportedly by suicide, though some insist that he was murdered to stop him from revealing wartime secrets.
This is not, in fact, the strangest conspiracy theory that shrouds Hess’ tortured legacy. For decades, rumors have swirled that the man who was captured in Scotland, convicted at Nuremberg and imprisoned in Spandau was not Hess at all, but an imposter. But, as Rowan Hooper of New Scientist reports, a recent genetic analysis may finally put this notion to rest.
Speculation about a Hess doppelgänger has not been confined to fringe theorists. Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly believed that Spandau prisoner number 7 was an imposter, as did W. Hugh Thomas, one of the doctors who tended to the man claiming to be Hess. Thomas cited a number of factors to support his hypothesis: the prisoner’s refusal to see his family, his apparent lack of chest scars that would have been consistent with an injury Hess sustained during WWI, the absence of a gap between his teeth that can be seen in earlier photos of Hess.
Proponents of the imposter theory believe, according to a new study published in Forensic Science International Genetics, that the doppelgänger served to cover up Hess’ murder by either German or British intelligence. And it is possible to understand why people might search for an alternative explanation to the bizarre narrative of Hess’ wartime jaunt to Britain, which seemed to suggest he believed “you could plant your foot on the throat of a nation one moment and give it a kiss on both cheeks the next,” as Douglas Kelley, an American psychiatrist who examined Hess, once put it.
Hess’ motivations for flying to Scotland remain opaque, but the new forensic analysis suggests it was no double who ended up in Spandau. In the early 1980s, study co-author and U.S. Army doctor Phillip Pittman took a blood sample from Hess as part of a routine check-up. Pathologist Rick Wahl, another of the study’s co-authors, then hermetically sealed some of the sample to preserve it for teaching purposes. This proved to be a fortuitous decision. After Hess’ death, his gravesite in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel became a rallying point for neo-Nazis. So in 2011, his remains were disinterred, cremated and scattered at sea.
As part of the new study, researchers extracted DNA from the preserved blood sample and, in the hopes of establishing a familial line, embarked on the difficult task of tracking down one of Hess’ living relatives.
“The family is very private,” lead study author Sherman McCall tells Hooper. “The name is also rather common in Germany, so finding them was difficult.”
The researchers were eventually able to locate one of Hess’ male relatives, whose identity has not been revealed. When analyzing the DNA of the two men, the team paid particular attention to the Y chromosome, which is passed from fathers to sons. “Persons with an unbroken paternal line display the same set of DNA markers on the Y chromosome,” Jan Cemper-Kiesslich, another of the study’s authors, explains in an interview with the Guardian’s Nicola Davis.
This genetic investigation yielded telling results: There was found to be a 99.99 percent likelihood that the two individuals were related.
“We are ext...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4OIeVdaqTY
Haplogroup I1 is the most common type of haplogroup I in northern Europe. It is found mostly in Scandinavia and Finland, where it typically represent over 35% of the Y chromosomes. Associated with the Norse ethnicity, I1 is found in all places invaded by ancient Germanic tribes and the Vikings. After the core of ancient Germanic civilization in Scandinavia, the highest frequencies of I1 are observed in other Germanic-speaking regions, such as Germany, Austria, the Low Countries, England and the Scottish Lowlands, which all have between 10% and 20% of I1 lineages.
Haplogroup I is the oldest major haplogroup in Europe and in all probability the only one that originated there (apart from very minor haplogroups like C1a2 and deep subclades of other haplogroups). Haplogroup IJ would have arrived from the Middle East to Europe some 35,000 years ago, then developed into haplogroup I soon afterwards. It has now been confirmed by ancient DNA test that the first Homo sapiens to colonize Europe during the Aurignacian period (45,000 to 28,000 years ago), belonged to haplogroups CT, C1a, C1b, F and I.
It is estimated that the I1 branch bifurcated from the rest of haplogroup I some 27,000 years ago. I1 is defined by over 300 unique mutations, which indicates that this lineage experienced a serious population bottleneck. Most of the Late Glacial and Mesolithic remains tested to date belonged to haplogroup I* or I2. It is not yet clear in which part of Europe I1 originated. It has been speculated that I1 evolved in isolation in Scandinavia during the late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods, when hunter-gatherers from southern Europe recolonised the northern half of the continent from their Last Glacial Maximum refugia. The oldest attested evidence of postglacial resettlement of Scandinavia dates from 11,000 BCE with the appearance of the Ahrensburg culture. However, five Y-DNA samples from Mesolithic Sweden, dating from c. 5800 to 5000 BCE and tested by Lazaridis et al. (2013) and Haak et al. (2015) all turned out to belong to haplogroup I2.
The earliest sign of haplogroup I1 emerged from the testing of Early Neolithic Y-DNA from western Hungary (Szécsényi-Nagy et al. (2014)). A single I1 sample was identified alongside a G2a2b sample, both from the early Linear Pottery (LBK) culture, which would later diffuse the new agricultural lifestyle to most of Poland, Germany and the Low Countries. This means that haplogroup I1 was present in central Europe at the time of the Neolithic expansion.
It is therefore possible that I1 lineages were among the Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers that were assimilated by the wave of East Mediterranean Neolithic farmers (represented chiefly by Y-haplogroup G2a). There is also evidence from the samples of the Early Neolithic Starčevo culture and Cardium Pottery culture that haplogroup I2a lived alongside G2a farmers both in south-eastern and south-western Europe.
The most likely hypothesis at present is that I1 and I2 lineages were dispersed around Europe during the Mesolithic, and that some branches prospered more than others thanks to an early adoption of agriculture upon contact with the Near Eastern farmers who were slowly making their way across the Balkans and the Mediterranean shores. The small groups of farmers from the early LBK culture in Hungary surely included a majority of G2a men accompanied by other minor haplogroups assimilated along the way over the centuries, including I1 men. Yet distinct families would have spread in different directions and met varying successes in their expansion. It would appear that a founder effect in the northern LBK population led to a sudden explosion of I1 lineages, perhaps in part thanks to their better knowledge of the Central European terrain and fauna (since hunting was typically practised side by side to agriculture to complement the farmers' diet). I1 would later have spread to Scandinavia from northern Germany.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFDqI8xClBY
The world has depicted Lord Krishna as a baby stealing butter and a charming youth holding a flute, with a peacock feather on his head. And in all these depictions, there’s one common link: the blue colour of his skin. The question as to why his skin looked different from ours must have nudged you? The legends tell us that Lord Krishna had drunk poisoned milk given by a demon when he was a baby and that had caused the bluish tinge in his skin.
The same theory is floated to explain blue throat (neelkanth) of Lord Shiva, who is believed to have drunk the poison to save the world from destruction at the time of Samudra Manthan.
Religious interpretation of blue
Etymologically speaking, the Sanskrit word ‘Krishna’ means black or dark. At times, it is also translated as “all attractive”. According to Vedas, Lord Krishna is a dark-skinned Dravidian god. Even in traditional patta chitras (cloth art) in Odisha, Lord Krishna and Vishnu are always shown having black skin. Then why is Lord Krishna universally depicted as someone with blue skin?
Hindu religion believes in symbolisms and the blue color is a symbol of the infinite and the immeasurable. According to Swami Chinmayananda, the inspiration behind Chinmaya Mission, whatever is immeasurable can appear to the mortal eye only as blue, just like the cloudless summer sky appears blue to the physical eye. Since Lord Krishna is beyond our perception, it seemed apt to attribute this colour to him.
Blue is the colour of aura
Some are of the opinion that the bluish tinge in Lord Krishna’s skin is not the colour of the material body but the eternal spiritual body of the Lord that emits blue aura. According to Bhagavad Gita, the blissful form of Lord Krishna is visible only to pure devotees. He may have bewildered the non-devotees, but those who offered pure devotional service to Him had always seen Him in his blue blissful form.
The science of blue skin
But in real life, can people actually have that skin colour? While James Cameron, in his film Avatar, showed Na’vi having blue skin to imply otherness, there’s nothing alien about being born with a blue skin.
Blue-tinged skin is the result of methemoglobinemia—a condition wherein hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that distribute oxygen to the body, is unable to release oxygen effectively to body tissues. As the blood doesn’t get oxygenated, it makes the skin look blue, lips purple, and blood chocolate-coloured.
Most of us have less than 1 per cent of methemoglobin. The skin gets the bluish tinge when that level rises to 10-20 per cent.
Famous Fugate family of Kentucky
Six generations of the Fugate family, who lived in the hills of Kentucky from 1800 to 1960, had blue skin. The blue lineage began in the early 1800s when Martin Fugate, a French orphan, settled on the banks of the Troublesome Creek. He married a red-haired American lady who had a very pale complexion. Their genetic chemistry resulted in a mutation and the both unknowingly carried the recessive gene that resulted in their descendants being born with blue skin.
Due to intermarriage, the next generations were also born with this rare disorder. However, most of the family members lived into their 80s and 90s with no significant health problems.
Blue Baby syndrome
Methemoglobinemia may be passed down through families or can be caused by exposure to certain drugs and chemicals. Uranium toxicity because of contaminated water is also believed to have the potential to cause ‘blue baby syndrome’. Indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers in Punjab villages saw a surge in blue baby syndrome in 2009. Cases of blue baby syndrome were reported in villages in Romania and Bulgaria that faced sanitation problem and high level of nitrates in groundwater.
Hopefully, Lord Krishna wasn’t a victim of groundwater contamination.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeeSThrRkf0
Do modern Greeks share at least some genetic ancestry with ancient Greeks, or they are totally Turkic/Semitic by blood?
There are two international, intercollegiate genetic researches published in 2017, with over 20 universities and institutions involved, which prove beyond any doubt that modern Greeks, from the mainland, the islands, and the Greek immigrants from Anatolia, who were expelled from modern Turkey to Greece in 1923, are direct descendants from the ancient Greeks and furthermore the direct descendants of the neolithic populations living in those areas (known as Pre-Greeks, or Pelasgians). The continuity is striking since it ranges from 80% to 93%.
Another striking fact is that the Greeks in general are not at all related to the Turks, a minimal relation of 2% is present only in some particular populations originating from specific areas of Asia Minor.
Also, let me point out to you that Modern Greeks speak a modern version of the Greek language, write with the same alphabet used for over 2,600 years, and still use a lot of their ancient customs and habits. Therefore, they are also closely related to the ancients culturally and linguistically.
You can take a look at the research here:
Genetic history of the population of Crete - Drineas - - Annals of Human Genetics - Wiley Online Library https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ahg.12328?fbclid=IwAR0t4Hnt8kK89m25QkmomyJ6GtB-N2jjb9IcNDsbavP-2VNbMsqg7Vyc2tE
About the Minoans and modern Cretans and the populations of Peloponnese
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318862250_Genetic_origins_of_the_Minoans_and_Mycenaeans
about the Greek Cypriots https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4750176/
And two books explaining all the above: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4750176/https://www.jstor.org/stable/414
and a simplified article for the non-experts https://www.thenationalherald.com/181104/modern-greeks-dna-similar-mycenaeans-minoans-study-finds/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YStPQ5BFPI
The Kalash represent an enigmatic isolated population of Indo-European speakers who have been living for centuries in the Hindu Kush mountain ranges of present-day Pakistan. Previous Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers provided no support for their claimed Greek descent following Alexander III of Macedon's invasion of this region, and analysis of autosomal loci provided evidence of a strong genetic bottleneck. To understand their origins and demography further, we genotyped 23 unrelated Kalash samples on the Illumina HumanOmni2.5M-8 BeadChip and sequenced one male individual at high coverage on an Illumina HiSeq 2000. Comparison with published data from ancient hunter-gatherers and European farmers showed that the Kalash share genetic drift with the Paleolithic Siberian hunter-gatherers and might represent an extremely drifted ancient northern Eurasian population that also contributed to European and Near Eastern ancestry. Since the split from other South Asian populations, the Kalash have maintained a low long-term effective population size (2,319–2,603) and experienced no detectable gene flow from their geographic neighbors in Pakistan or from other extant Eurasian populations. The mean time of divergence between the Kalash and other populations currently residing in this region was estimated to be 11,800 (95% confidence interval = 10,600−12,600) years ago, and thus they represent present-day descendants of some of the earliest migrants into the Indian sub-continent from West Asia.
Scientific paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4570283/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnoWwhyb5nA
First ancient DNA from Indus Valley civilization links its people to modern South Asians
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/912501
Researchers have successfully sequenced the first genome of an individual from the Harappan civilization, also called the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). The DNA, which belongs to an individual who lived four to five millennia ago, suggests that modern people in India are likely to be largely descended from people of this ancient culture. It also offers a surprising insight into how farming began in South Asia, showing that it was not brought by large-scale movement of people from the Fertile Crescent where farming first arose. Instead, farming started in South Asia through local hunter-gatherers adopting farming. The findings appear September 5 in the journal Cell.
"The Harappans were one of the earliest civilizations of the ancient world and a major source of Indian culture and traditions, and yet it has been a mystery how they related both to later people as well as to their contemporaries," says Vasant Shinde, an archaeologist at Deccan College, Deemed University in Pune, India, and the chief excavator of the site of Rakhigarhi, who is first author of the study.
The IVC, which at its height from 2600 to 1900 BCE covered a large swath of northwestern South Asia, was one of the world's first large-scale urban societies. Roughly contemporary to ancient Egypt and the ancient civilizations of China and Mesopotamia, it traded across long distances and developed systematic town planning, elaborate drainage systems, granaries, and standardization of weights and measures.
Hot, fluctuating climates like those found in many parts of lowland South Asia are detrimental to the preservation of DNA. So despite the importance of the IVC, it has been impossible until now to sequence DNA of individuals recovered in archaeological sites located in the region. "Even though there has been success with ancient DNA from many other places, the difficult preservation conditions mean that studies in South Asia have been a challenge," says senior author David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, the Broad Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Answering questions about the ancient people of the Indus Valley was in fact the primary reason Reich founded his own ancient DNA laboratory in 2013.
In this study, Reich, post-doctoral scientist Vagheesh Narasimhan, and Niraj Rai, who established a new ancient DNA laboratory at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow, India, and led the preparation of the samples, screened 61 skeletal samples from a site in Rakhigarhi, the largest city of the IVC. A single sample showed promise: it contained a very small amount of authentic ancient DNA. The team made over 100 attempts to sequence the sample. Reich says: "While each of the individual datasets did not produce enough DNA, pooling them resulted in sufficient genetic data to learn about population history."
There were many theories about the genetic origins of the people of the IVC. "They could resemble Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers or they could resemble Iranians, or they could even resemble Steppe pastoralists--all were plausible prior to the ancient DNA findings," he says.
The individual sequenced here fits with a set of 11 individuals from sites across Iran and Central Asia known to be in cultural contact with the IVC, discovered in a manuscript being published simultaneously (also led by Reich and Narasimhan) in the journal Science. Those individuals were genetic outliers among the people at the sites in which they were found. They represent a unique mixture of ancestry related to ancient Iranians and ancestry related to Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers. Their genetic similarity to the Rakhigarhi individual makes it likely that these were migrants from the IVC.
It's a mix of ancestry that is also present in modern South Asians, leading the researchers to believe that people ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ3yyAP7iro
Scientific paper: https://mednexus.org/doi/pdf/10.3760/cma.j.issn.0366-6999.20121419
What is gigantomastia?
Gigantomastia or breast hypertrophy is a rare condition that involves developing extremely large breasts due to excessive breast tissue growth. It affects people assigned female at birth. If you have gigantomastia, you’ll experience rapid and disproportionate breast growth. The speed at which your breasts grow can vary, from over a few weeks to over several years. The tissue is almost always benign (not cancerous).
Gigantomastia is characterized by:
Breasts that have an excess of at least 5 pounds of breast tissue.
Extra breast tissue that equals more than 3% of your total body weight.
It can happen during puberty, pregnancy or from taking medication. In some cases, it occurs spontaneously and for no reason.
Gigantomastia is also referred to as macromastia. However, macromastia is usually defined as excess breast tissue that weighs less than 5 pounds.
What are the different types of gigantomastia?
Healthcare providers classify gigantomastia into four types:
Juvenile gigantomastia: This type happens during puberty.
Gestational gigantomastia: This is when gigantomastia occurs during pregnancy.
Drug-induced gigantomastia (or medication-induced): This happens after taking certain drugs.
Idiopathic gigantomastia: This is when the cause of gigantomastia is unknown or can't be determined. Idiopathic gigantomastia is the most common type.
How common is gigantomastia?
It's an uncommon condition. Only about 300 cases have been reported.
What are the symptoms of gigantomastia?
Having extremely large breasts can be both physically and emotionally painful. Some of the most common symptoms of breast hypertrophy are:
Infection or lesions on the skin of your breasts, especially under your breasts.
Neck and back pain caused by your breasts pulling you down.
Poor posture.
Loss of feeling in the nipples.
Breast pain (mastalgia).
Painful and itchy indentations on your skin from the straps of your bra.
What causes extremely large breasts?
The cause of gigantomastia isn't entirely known; however, researchers think it may be influenced by:
Hormonal changes (like during puberty or pregnancy).
Medications like penicillamine or bucillamine.
Autoimmune conditions like lupus or arthritis.
Extreme obesity.
Genetics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqUE8zxHqH4
The Romani people—once known as "gypsies" or Roma—have been objects of both curiosity and persecution for centuries. Today, some 11 million Romani, with a variety of cultures, languages and lifestyles, live in Europe—and beyond. But where did they come from?
Earlier studies of their language and cursory analysis of genetic patterns pinpointed India as the group's place of origin and a later influence of Middle Eastern and Central Asian linguistics. But a new study uses genome-wide sequencing to point to a single group's departure from northwestern Indian some 1,500 years ago and has also revealed various subsequent population changes as the population spread throughout Europe.
"Understanding the Romani's genetic legacy is necessary to complete the genetic characterization of Europeans as a whole, with implications for various fields, from human evolution to the health sciences," said Manfred Kayser, of Erasmus University in Rotterdam and paper co-author, in a prepared statement.
To begin the study, a team of European researchers collected data on some 800,000 genetic variants (single nucleotides polymorphisms) in 152 Romani people from 13 different Romani groups in Europe. The team then contrasted the Romani sequences with those already known for more than 4,500 Europeans as well as samples from the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia and the Middle East.
According to the analysis, the initial founding group of Romani likely departed from what is now the Punjab state in northwestern India close to the year 500 CE. From there, they likely traveled through Central Asia and the Middle East but appear to have mingled only moderately with local populations there. The subsequent doorway to Europe seems to have been the Balkan area—specifically Bulgaria—from which the Romani began dispersing around 1,100 CE.
These travels, however, were not always easy. For example, after the initial group left India, their numbers took a dive, with less than half of the population surviving (some 47 percent, according to the genetic analysis). And once groups of Romani that would go on to settle Western Europe left the Balkan region, they suffered another population bottleneck, losing some 30 percent of their population. The findings were published online December 6 in Current Biology.
The researchers were also able to examine the dynamics of various Romani populations as they established themselves in different parts of Europe. The defined geographic enclaves appear to have remained largely isolated from other populations of European Romani over recent centuries. And the Romani show more evidence of marriage among blood relatives than do Indians or non-Romani Europeans in the analysis.
But the Romani did not always keep to themselves. As they moved through Europe and set up settlements, they invariably met—and paired off with—local Europeans. And some groups, such as the Welsh Romani, show a relatively high rate of bringing locals—and their genetics—into their families.
Local mixing was not constant over the past several centuries—even in the same groups. The genetic history, as told through this genome-wide analysis, reveals different social mores at different times. For example, Romani populations in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Croatia show genetic patterns that suggest a limited pairing with local populations until recently. Whereas Romani populations in Portugal, Spain and Lithuania have genetic sequences that suggest they had previously mixed with local European populations more frequently but have "higher levels of recent genetic isolation from non-Romani Europeans," the researchers noted in their paper.
The Romani have often been omitted from larger genetic studies, as many populations are still somewhat transient and/or do not participate in formal institutions such as government programs and banking. "They constitute an important fraction of the European population, but their marginalized situation in many co...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq_vS_6vA8o
Justin Bieber says a rare disorder that paralysed half of his face is the reason behind his tour postponement.
The multi-Grammy award winner is suffering from Ramsay Hunt syndrome, he said in video he posted on Instagram on Friday. The syndrome causes facial paralysis and affects nerves in the face through a shingles outbreak.
Bieber's post comes after he cancelled his shows in Toronto and Washington DC. The singer demonstrated in the video that he could barely move one side of his face, calling the ailment "pretty serious".
"For those frustrated by my cancellations of the next shows, I'm just physically, obviously not capable of doing them," he said.
"My body's telling me I've got to slow down. I hope you guys understand," he added.
Ramsay Hunt syndrome (herpes zoster oticus) occurs when a shingles outbreak affects the facial nerve near one of your ears. In addition to the painful shingles rash, Ramsay Hunt syndrome can cause facial paralysis and hearing loss in the affected ear.
Ramsay Hunt syndrome is caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. After chickenpox clears up, the virus still lives in your nerves. Years later, it may reactivate. When it does, it can affect your facial nerves.
Prompt treatment of Ramsay Hunt syndrome can reduce the risk of complications, which can include permanent facial muscle weakness and deafness.
Symptoms
Facial paralysis
Facial paralysis Open pop-up dialog box
The two main signs and symptoms of Ramsay Hunt syndrome are:
A painful red rash with fluid-filled blisters on, in and around one ear
Facial weakness or paralysis on the same side as the affected ear
Usually, the rash and the facial paralysis occur at the same time. Sometimes one can happen before the other. Other times, the rash never occurs.
If you have Ramsay Hunt syndrome, you might also experience:
Ear pain
Hearing loss
Ringing in your ears (tinnitus)
Difficulty closing one eye
A sensation of spinning or moving (vertigo)
A change in taste perception or loss of taste
Dry mouth and eyes
When to see a doctor
Call your doctor if you experience facial paralysis or a shingles rash on your face. Treatment that starts within three days of the start of signs and symptoms may help prevent long-term complications.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sCn3I2selE
Aryan, name originally given to a people who were said to speak an archaic Indo-European language and who were thought to have settled in prehistoric times in ancient Iran and the northern Indian subcontinent. The theory of an “Aryan race” appeared in the mid-19th century and remained prevalent until the mid-20th century. According to the hypothesis, those probably light-skinned Aryans were the group who invaded and conquered ancient India from the north and whose literature, religion, and modes of social organization subsequently shaped the course of Indian culture, particularly the Vedic religion that informed and was eventually superseded by Hinduism.
However, since the late 20th century, a growing number of scholars have rejected both the Aryan invasion hypothesis and the use of the term Aryan as a racial designation, suggesting that the Sanskrit term arya (“noble” or “distinguished”), the linguistic root of the word, was actually a social rather than an ethnic epithet. Rather, the term is used strictly in a linguistic sense, in recognition of the influence that the language of the ancient northern migrants had on the development of the Indo-European languages of South Asia. In the 19th century “Aryan” was used as a synonym for “Indo-European” and also, more restrictively, to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages. It is now used in linguistics only in the sense of the term Indo-Aryan languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family.
In Europe the notion of white racial superiority emerged in the 1850s, propagated most assiduously by the comte de Gobineau and later by his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who first used the term “Aryan” to mean the “white race.” Members of that so-called race spoke Indo-European languages, were credited with all the progress that benefited humanity, and were purported to be superior to “Semites,” “yellows,” and “blacks.” Believers in Aryanism came to regard the Nordic and Germanic peoples as the purest members of the “race.” That notion, which had been repudiated by anthropologists by the second quarter of the 20th century, was seized upon by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and was made the basis of the German government policy of exterminating Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and other “non-Aryans.”
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many white supremacist groups used the word Aryan in their name as an identifier of their racist ideology. Those groups include the Aryan Circle (a large group that had its roots in the Texas prison system), the Aryan Nations (a Christian Identity-based hate group prominent in the late 20th century), and the Aryan Brotherhood (a group originating in San Quentin [California] prison). That association with racism, crime, hate crimes, and Nazism has given the word a powerful new negative sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1cQfe4Znzg
Researchers have discovered the gene for big butts -- at least a gene that gives some sheep unusually big, muscular bottoms. The discovery could help scientists understand more about how fat and muscle are deposited in the body, including in humans. Researchers have long known that certain sheep have a genetic mutation that makes them develop unusually lean and muscular back ends. But they've been unable to isolate the specific mutation. Researchers from the Agriculture Department and Duke University in Durham, N.C., and colleagues finally found the gene on chromosome 18 by studying the genes of inbred offspring of big-bottomed sheep. The gene, the researchers believe, somehow shuts down the production of fat cells while promoting the creation of muscle cells. The researchers dubbed the gene "callipyge," which means "beautiful buttocks" in Greek. The work was described in the October issue of Genome Research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHAUVsyCl3g
It is a common belief that oral health serves as a gateway to general health. This implies that oral health significantly impacts the general health and wellbeing of an individual. In recent years, various studies have provided unequivocal evidence on the strong relationship between systemic and oral diseases. It is believed that this relationship is due to common risk factors shared between various diseases.
Periodontal diseases (such as gingivitis and periodontitis), and dental caries are the most common forms of oral diseases. The incidence of periodontal disease is found to be greatest in diabetic patients and those with heart diseases, as compared to the healthy population. In fact, various studies have identified periodontal disease as a risk factor for the etiology of coronary heart disease. Similarly, a thorough examination of the gingival tissue can point toward a significant deficiency of Vitamin C and other nutritional deficiencies.5 Dental caries, which is also one of the most common forms of infectious diseases globally, has been found to significantly affect the systemic health, and quality of life of individuals.
The oral cavity serves as a focal point of entry for pathogens into the systemic circulation. While the host immune system of a healthy individual prevents the body from virulent microorganisms, a breach in the physical barriers in the oral cavity may provide access to into the systemic circulation. Similarly, a lack of oral hygiene allows an increase in virulent microbial colonization of the oral biofilm. Therefore, mechanical and chemical means of controlling the quantity and quality (virulence) of the oral biofilm is important in preventing systemic diseases and particularly periodontal diseases such as gingivitis and periodontitis. An emphasis on preventing oral diseases can lead to a reduction in the incidence of various systemic diseases as well. Similarly, routine screening and oral examinations may help in identifying early manifestations of systemic diseases in the oral cavity and help in preventing disease progression.
The fields of medicine and dentistry have witnessed major technological advancements in recent years. Despite this fact, on a larger public health scale basic protocols of patient care continue to focus on and highlight the importance of simple, preventive and behavioral modification strategies. Recently, various forms of alternative or traditional medicinal treatments, such as Ayurveda have started to gain popularity, due to their natural origin, cost effectiveness, negligible side effects, and improved patient compliance.
Ayurveda is a form of traditional holistic medicinal system originating in the Indian subcontinent region. Its advent and practice in the region reportedly date back about 3000-5000 years. Recently, it has gained popularity as complementary medicine in other parts of the world. The aim of this review is to identify the potential uses of oil pulling therapy in the prevention of various oral diseases and to pinpoint its use as an adjunct to conventional oral hygiene aids.
What is Oil Pulling?
Oil pulling or oil swishing, as the name suggests involves vigorous swishing of oil in the oral cavity to achieve local and systemic benefits, similar to the modern day use of mouthwashes and oral rinses. It has been used for centuries for the treatment and prevention of various oral and systemic diseases, using edible oils derived from either sunflower, sesame, and coconut. The process of oil swishing is believed to cure or control 30 different types of systemic diseases including headaches, migraine, and chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes mellitus. The effects of oil pulling on oral health, as an adjunct to conventional oral hygiene measures have been exemplary. Scientific evidence suggests that oil pulling therapy may reduce the total oral bacterial count and reduce plaque and gingival scores. Furthermore, it has also shown to diminish the susceptibility...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXCs8h9Hfeg
This award-winning English singer/songwriter first showed signs of a specific type of lupus called discoid lupus erythematous at age 23 with the emergence of facial scarring.
Although he’s not as outspoken about lupus as other celebrities living with the disease, Seal often talks about his art and music as a means through which to channel pain and suffering.
“I believe that in all forms of art there has to have been some initial adversity: that is what makes art, as far as I’m concerned,” he told an interviewer at The New York Times in 1996. “And it’s not something you outlive: once you experience it, it’s always with you.”
Discoid lupus erythematosus is the most common type of chronic cutaneous lupus (CCLE), an autoimmune skin condition on the lupus erythematosus spectrum of illnesses. It presents with red, painful, inflamed and coin-shaped patches of skin with a scaly and crusty appearance, most often on the scalp, cheeks, and ears. Hair loss may occur if the lesions are on the scalp. The lesions can then develop severe scarring, and the centre areas may appear lighter in color with a rim darker than the normal skin. These lesions can last for years without treatment.
Patients with systemic lupus erythematous develop discoid lupus lesions with some frequency. However, patients who present initially with discoid lupus infrequently develop systemic lupus. Discoid lupus can be divided into localized, generalized, and childhood discoid lupus.
The lesions are diagnosed by biopsy. Patients are first treated with sunscreen and topical steroids. If this does not work, an oral medication—most likely hydroxychloroquine or a related medication—can be tried.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klLtfYnbRh4