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The police in China are collecting blood samples from men and boys from across the country to build a genetic map of its roughly 700 million males, giving the authorities a powerful new tool for their emerging high-tech surveillance state. They have swept across the country since late 2017 to collect enough samples to build a vast DNA database, according to a new study published on Wednesday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a research organization, based on documents also reviewed by The New York Times. With this database, the authorities would be able to track down a man’s male...

One of my sisters had put DNA in to 23 & Me sometime in the past (several years ago, maybe). Over the past week, she has been notified of a person who just recently submitted DNA for testing. It turns out that this person seems to be our half-sibling. There are 5 of us from same parents, all born from 1954 to 1960. The newly identified one seems to be related only to our father and born in 1964. I babysat for this person and two siblings, when I was around 10 or 11. Their family moved away around 1969,...

One in three women in Europe inherited the receptor for progesterone from Neandertals -- a gene variant associated with increased fertility, fewer bleedings during early pregnancy and fewer miscarriages. This is according to a study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden... Progesterone is a hormone that plays an important role in the menstrual cycle and in pregnancy. Analyses of biobank data from more than 450,000 participants -- among them 244,000 women -- show that almost one in three women in Europe have inherited...

Variant Bio has spent the last several years scouring the world for genetic outliers in human beings. It found a small group of “outlier humans” with special variations in their DNA that could affect disease risk and eventually be used to develop medicines to improve human life. Founded in New York, the 10-person startup’s lead geneticist Stephane Castel is focusing on the DNA of Sherpa people living at high altitudes in Nepal and Himalayas. Their unique genetic characteristics allow them to live healthy lives with blood oxygen levels far below what most humans need. Most people in high altitudes suffer...

The researchers used advanced ancient DNA capture techniques to retrieve ancient DNA from 25 individuals dating back 9,500-4,200 years and one individual dating back 300 years from northern and southern East Asia... Prof. FU and her team found that these Neolithic humans share the closest genetic relationship to present-day East Asians who belong to this "second layer." This suggests that by 9,500 years ago, the primary ancestries composing the genetic makeup of East Asians today could already be found in mainland East Asia. While more divergent ancestries can be found in Southeast Asia and the Japanese archipelago, in the Chinese...

Genetic enhancement may not be restricted to the pages of sci-fi novels for much longer. For example, scientists have already inserted genes from tardigrades — tiny, adorable and famously tough animals that can survive the vacuum of space — into human cells in the laboratory. The engineered cells exhibited a greater resistance to radiation than their normal counterparts... Tardigrades and "extremophile" microbes, such as the radiation-resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, "are a great, basically natural reservoir of amazing traits and talents in biology," added Mason... "Maybe we use some of them." Harnessing these traits might also someday allow astronauts to journey...

Led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Santa Cruz, the team analyzed genome-wide data from 89 individuals who lived between 500 and 9,000 years ago. Of these, 64 genomes, ranging from 500 to 4,500 years old, were newly sequenced - more than doubling the number of ancient individuals with genome-wide data from South America. The analysis included representatives of iconic Andean civilizations from whom no genome-wide data had been reported before, including the Moche, Nasca, Wari, Tiwanaku and Inca. The central Andes, surrounding present-day Peru, is one of the few places in the world where...

When all babies’ DNA is stored forever and accessible to whoever has the most money or political clout, no one’s most fundamental privacy is secure. The coronavirus pandemic has intensified the discussion about the right to biological privacy. Dr. Anthony Fauci at White House press conferences muses about “certificates of immunity” to be carried by Americans who have antibodies to the virus. Bill Gates advocates a national tracking system so the government can see where the virus is. Whether his envisioned system involves microchipping the population is the subject of some debate. Privacy advocates warn about allowing the government to...

A Native American man in Montana has what may be the oldest DNA native to the Americas, according to news reports. After getting his DNA tested, Darrell "Dusty" Crawford learned that his ancestors were already in the Americas about 17,000 years ago, according to the Great Falls Tribune, a Montana newspaper.

The DOJ announced it is finalizing a rule to collect DNA samples from illegal immigrants who are in federal custody... the DNA Fingerprint Act requires a federal agency to “collect DNA samples from individuals who are arrested,... facing charges,... or convicted... or from non-US persons who are detained under the authority of the US. The Office of Special Counsel reported to President Donald Trump and Congress in a letter last August that Customs and Border Protection had failed to comply with the law and collect DNA samples Until now, 'non-U.S. persons have been exempt' from the sample collection following an...

The Department of Justice today issued a final rule to implement the Attorney General’s authority provided by the bipartisan DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 to authorize the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect DNA samples from certain non-United States persons it detains.  Once implemented, this rule will facilitate federal, state, and local investigative and crime reduction efforts.“Today’s rule assists federal agencies in implementing longstanding aspects of our immigration laws as passed by bipartisan majorities of Congress,” said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen.  “Its implementation will help to enforce federal law with the use of science.”As a result...

The Trump administration plans to begin taking DNA samples from migrants crossing the border or held in detention for use in a federal criminal database, a significant expansion of immigration laws that is certain to raise privacy concerns. The new rule, posted by the Justice Department on Friday and set to take effect in April, will require immigration officers to collect cheek swabs from what could amount to hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants taken into federal custody each year, including migrants at the border and people asking for asylum. The move, which is sure to face court challenges, injects...

Gene drives use genetic engineering to create a desired mutation in a few individuals that then spreads via mating throughout a population in fewer than 10 generations. In theory, such a mechanism could be used to prevent malarial mosquitoes from transmitting disease, or possibly to wipe out an invasive species by disabling its ability to reproduce. Though scientists have had success proving the concept in the lab, they have found that wild populations invariably adapt and develop resistance to the scheme. And when gene drives work, they are all or nothing—without nuance—they spread to all individuals, which can be a...

Palaeontologists have announced the discovery of organic material in 75-million year old dinosaur fossils. The team claims to have found evidence of cartilage cells, proteins, chromosomes and even DNA preserved inside the fossils, suggesting these can survive for far longer than we thought. The researchers, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and North Carolina State University, made the discovery in skull fragments of Hypacrosaurus, a duck-billed herbivore from the Cretaceous period. These particular specimens were “nestlings”, meaning that at time of death they weren’t yet old enough to leave the nest. Inside the skull fragments, the team spotted evidence of...

Dinosaur DNA Found! February 28, 2020 | David F. Coppedge Deep-timers had a big enough problem with collagen and melanosomes. But DNA should be long gone. 75 million years? No way! Could this be the last straw? For two decades now, especially since 2005, creationists have been challenging deep-timers (those who believe life is hundreds of millions of years old, and earth is 4.5 billion years old) with dinosaur soft tissue. Secular reports have been coming in regularly about soft tissue in fossils: feathers, melanosomes, collagen, various proteins, and materials in dinosaur bones that look like stretchy blood vessels and...

Nearly a decade into his life sentence for murder, Lydell Grant was escorted out of a Texas prison in November with his hands held high, free on bail, all thanks to DNA re-examined by a software program. "The last nine years, man, I felt like an animal in a cage," Grant, embracing his mother and brother, told the crush of reporters awaiting him in Houston. "Especially knowing that I didn't do it." Now, Grant, 42, is on a fast-track to exoneration after a judge recommended in December that Texas' highest criminal court vacate his conviction. His attorneys are hopeful a...

Scientists examining the genomes of West Africans have detected signs that a mysterious extinct human species interbred with our own species tens of thousands of years ago in Africa, the latest evidence of humankind's complicated genetic ancestry. The study indicated that present-day West Africans trace a substantial proportion, some 2% to 19%, of their genetic ancestry to an extinct human species – what the researchers called a "ghost population." "We estimate interbreeding occurred approximately 43,000 years ago, with large intervals of uncertainty," said University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) human genetics and computer science professor Sriram Sankararaman, who led the...

A British man once struck down by coronavirus has described how the horror symptoms of the deadly disease almost killed him. Simon Parker, 47, thought he was suffering from a common cold when he fell ill on Boxing Day in 2016. But he became severely ill over the next few days and by New Year's Eve couldn't even breathe - forcing him to desperately call 999. He was taken from his home in Kingswear, Devon, to a hospital where he was put into an induced coma.

<p>Lawyers for a woman who accuses President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s are asking for a DNA sample, seeking to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress she says she wore during the encounter.</p> <p>Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers served notice to a Trump attorney Thursday for Trump to submit a sample on March 2 in Washington for “analysis and comparison against unidentified male DNA present on the dress.”</p>

Full title: Four ancient skulls unearthed in Mexico suggest that North America was a melting pot of different peoples and cultures 10,000 years ago The first humans to settle in North America were more diverse than previously believed, according to a new study of skeletal fragments. US scientists analysed four skulls recovered from caves in Mexico that belonged to humans that lived sometime between 9,000 to 13,000 years ago. The researchers were surprised to find a high level of diversity, with the skulls ranging in similarity to that of Europeans, Asian and ...