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Today, 23andMe announced what Forbes reports is only the first of ten deals with big biotech companies: Genentech will pay up to $60 million for access to 23andMe's data to study Parkinson's. You think 23andMe was about selling fun DNA spit tests for $99 a pop? Nope, it's been about selling your data all along. Since 23andMe started in 2006, it's convinced 800,000 customers to hand over their DNA, one vial of spit at a time. Personal DNA reports are the consumer-facing side of the business, and that's the one we're most familiar with. It all seems friendly and fun...

Russia's richest man has revealed that he bought US scientist James Watson's Nobel Prize gold medal, and intends to return it to him. Steel and telecoms tycoon Alisher Usmanov said Mr Watson "deserved" the medal, and that he was "distressed" the scientist had felt forced to sell it. The medal, awarded in 1962 for the discovery of the structure of DNA, sold for $4.8m (£3m) at auction. The medal was the first Nobel Prize to be put on sale by a living recipient....

Let’s suppose that James Watson, who co-discovered the structure of DNA together with Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin, is wrong about race and intelligence. And let’s even suppose that it was immoral for him to say that this fact “makes me despair about Africa.” Does this abolish Dr. Watson’s free speech rights? No. Well, does James Watson merit the merry media witch hunt that has followed him, ever after making that Verboten remark, so that he is now known as “the disgraced scientist James Watson”? I do not think so. Media witch hunting is a fundamental wrong, no matter who...

DNA Analysis Report released Monday night following the grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown shows Brown’s DNA was on the interior driver’s-side door handle of Wilson’s police vehicle. That evidence matches with Wilson’s story that Brown reached inside the car and attacked him.

Partial Ingredients For DNA And Protein Found Around Star NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered some of life's most basic ingredients in the dust swirling around a young star. The ingredients - gaseous precursors to DNA and protein - were detected in the star's terrestrial planet zone, a region where rocky planets such as Earth are thought to be born. The findings represent the first time that these gases, called acetylene and hydrogen cyanide, have been found in a terrestrial planet zone outside of our own. "This infant system might look a lot like ours did billions of years ago,...

Rapid DNA technology makes it easier than ever to grab and store your genetic profile. G-men, cops, and Homeland Security can't wait to see it everywhere. Robert Schueren shook my hand firmly, handed me his business card, and flipped it over, revealing a short list of letters and numbers. "Here is my DNA profile." He smiled. "I have nothing to hide." I had come to meet Schueren, the CEO of IntegenX, at his company's headquarters in Pleasanton, California, to see its signature product: a machine the size of a large desktop printer that can unravel your genetic code in the...

In high school biology, we are taught that there are three types of life: eukaryotes (that's us, and most everything else we often think of as life), bacteria, and archaea (extremophiles and other very primitive life forms). But some scientists are pretty sure that there are entirely different, undiscovered lifeforms that could be prevalent on Earth, and they remain undescribed because we're not good at looking for them. In a new paper published in Science, Tanja Woyke and Edward Rubin of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute note that "there are reasons to believe that current approaches [to discovering...

Ebola, Marburg viruses edit genetic material during infectionFiloviruses like Ebola "edit" genetic material as they invade their hosts, according to a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The work, by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Galveston National Laboratory, and the J. Craig Venter Institute, could lead to a better understanding of these viruses, paving the way for new treatments down the road. Using a laboratory technique called deep sequencing, investigators set out to investigate filovirus replication and transcription, processes involved in the virus...

Genetics will determine whether a person infected with Ebola dies, scientists claimed today. A new study has found DNA could be the key to tracking the deadly effects of the virus which has ravaged West Africa. The World Health Organisation revealed nearly 5,000 people have died from the disease, which has devastated Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. A team of scientists at Washington University believe their study has identified genetic factors behind the mild-to-deadly range of reactions to the virus.

Monica Lewinsky was "in love" with former President Clinton, the disgraced former intern revealed Monday. "Sixteen years ago, fresh out of college … I fell in love with my boss," the infamous former White House staffer told a business conference Monday during an eye-opening speech about her devastating experience in the public eye following the revelation of her affair with Clinton — her first public address in 13 years. "Overnight I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one. I was patient zero," she said, according to reporters present at the Forbes magazine "30 Under 30"...

And so one of the West’s greatest, most enduring mysteries, which has spurred numerous failed attempts to crack it, continues. It’s the saga of Jack the Ripper, who committed at least five grisly murders in East London in the autumn of 1888 and then, poof, disappeared, never to be identified.

Geneticist specialists from the Institute of Biological Problems of the North, Far-East Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, are reconstructing the picture of Eurasia colonization by the Slavs. According to the researchers’ opinion, the Slavonic men and women jointly developed the territory of the south of contemporary Russia. However, after the 9th century, women used to stay at home, and colonization of the east and north was mainly performed by men. This conclusion was made by geneticists through analyzing variable consecutions of DNA of mitochondria and of some sections of Y-chromosome with representatives of 10 Russian populations from the Stavropol...

In the genetic history of our species, the mamas outnumber the papas. A new study in Investigative Genetics reports that females have made a bigger contribution than men. By studying the DNA of 623 males from 51 populations, the researchers found more genetic diversity in the DNA inherited from mothers than they did in the DNA inherited from fathers. At first glance, these results could be taken to mean that there used to be more women than men. But if you know anything about history, it makes more sense to blame reproductive habits: In many cultures, more women reproduced than...

The FBI is preparing to accelerate the collection of DNA profiles for the government's massive new biometric identification database. Developers of portable DNA analysis machines have been invited to a Nov. 13 presentation to learn about the bureau's vision for incorporating their technology into the FBI's new database. So-called rapid DNA systems can draw up a profile in about 90 minutes. The Next Generation Identification system, or NGI, the successor to the FBI's criminal fingerprint database, is designed to quickly ID crooks through facial recognition, iris matching, tattoo cross-checks and vocal recordings, among other unique traits. But critics say aggregating...

Vital DNA evidence has finally uncovered the identity of notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper. The man behind the grisly killing spree in London’s East End has been unveiled as Aaron Kosminkski, a 23-year-old Polish immigrant who ended up dying in an asylum. A blood soaked shawl, purchased by author Russell Edwards, led to the breakthrough when a scientist matched DNA evidence left on it to descendants of Kosminski. Mr Edwards, 48, from Barnet, north London, was "captivated" by the murder mystery and had been investigating it in his spare time, but had come to the conclusion it could never...

Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two men who have sat on North Carolina's death row for three decades for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, were set free this week after the discovery of new DNA evidence.

NORFOLK Her attacker broke in through a back door while she was sleeping. He tied her up and held a knife to her throat. He said he wasn't going to rape her, that he was hungry and just wanted money. But he did rape her. A month later, he returned in the middle of the night to the same house near Ocean View. He bound the woman and her teenage daughter with duct tape and raped the girl. Norfolk police investigated, but the case went cold. Two years later in Kuwait, in 2010, an Army captain was showering when a...

Do you think the NSA surveillance issue is bad? Wait until you hear about the U.S. government’s DNA tracking program. A 2007 law mandated the collection of blood samples from the heels of newborns to screen for diseases, but an updated part of the law could be used to track children in education. newborn screening The program, Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007, was reauthorized by the House of Representatives this past June and the Senate in January 2014. The original sponsor was Democratic U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd and was signed in 2008 by President Obama. The purpose of...

DNA sequences reveal Ebola’s spread and mutation The virus was not recognized in West Africa until March of this year, however, when the first case was confirmed in Guinea. Gire said the West African epidemic likely began after a single zoonotic event — in other words, transmission of the virus from an animal to a person. Gire said his study shows that more than 300 mutations have occurred since Ebola began infecting people in Sierra Leone. Every time a virus passes from one person to another, it is likely some mutations will occur, though not all of them will be...

The earliest people in the North American Arctic remained isolated from others in the region for millennia before vanishing around 700 years ago, a new genetic analysis shows. The study, published online Thursday, also reveals that today's Inuit and Native Americans of the Arctic are genetically distinct from the region's first settlers. Inuit hunters in the Canadian Arctic have long told stories about a mysterious ancient people known as the Tunit, who once inhabited the far north. Tunit men, they recalled, possessed powerful magic and were strong enough to crush the neck of a walrus and singlehandedly haul the massive...