Hacking biology - synthetic DNA and experimental evolution
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Every biology student is familiar with DNA - the ladder-like blueprint of life built on a backbone of the sugar deoxyribose. Scientists are now hacking this structure to make entirely new DNA-like molecules built on different sugar skeletons, opening an exciting new world of synthetic genetics. Plus, we find out what happens when music has sex, discover why the X chromosome is more than just a number, and our gene of the month is the unfortunate Ken and Barbie.
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Every biology student is familiar with DNA - the ladder-like blueprint of life built on a backbone of the sugar deoxyribose. Scientists are now hacking this structure to make entirely new DNA-like molecules built on different sugar skeletons, opening an exciting new world of syn...
This is a really interesting study looking at the evolution of music and this was published in the PNAS and it was led by Robert MacCallum and Armand LeRoi from Imperial College.
This is from Marco Bortolato at the University of Southern California and this is looking at the genetics of rage.
The final story that we’ve got is a really nice paper published in Science. This is from Jennifer Doudna at the University of California Berkeley who's been looking at how bacteria use certain molecules like molecular scissors to snip up their DNA and glue it together.
An international team of scientists have discovered a new gene in the flu virus, despite it being 30 years since the flu genome was first decoded.
New research led by Jordi Garcia-Fernández and Manuel Irimia at the University of Barcelona and published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports suggests that genetic “cut and pasting” could have been the driving factor behind the origin of vertebrate limbs.
Hot on the heels of last month’s announcement of the full sequence of the tomato genome, plant researchers at the University of California, Davis, have discovered a genetic tweak that could make bland supermarket tomatoes taste more like classic heirloom varieties
We’ve already heard about the scientists working on the frontiers of DNA, but others are taking things further, hacking the machinery inside our cells that translates the information encoded in our DNA into proteins to create strange new molecules previously unknown in nature.
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At the University of Reading, Dr Tiffany Taylor and her colleagues are busy manipulating bacteria and putting them through their paces, so see how they evolve in the face of considerable challenges.
Why do we use the letter A,C,G, and T for DNA and why are the chromosomes called X and Y? Are they not DNA?
Is it true that active genes make up only 3% of the DNA in our chromosomes? And if so, what does the other 97% do?
Our gene of the month is Ken and Barbie - yes, named after the dolls. Like their plastic childhood counterparts, male and female flies with a fault in the gene have no external genitals - their naughty bits start to develop but get stuck inside the body.
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