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BUENOS AIRES - They look like ordinary foals, docile with honey brown coats and white facial patches, content to spend their days munching alfalfa in a cordoned-off pasture in rural Buenos Aires province. But these five 10-month-olds are the world’s first genetically edited horses: cloned copies of a prize-winning horse named Polo Pureza, or Polo Purity, with a single DNA sequence inserted using CRISPR technology with the aim of producing explosive speed. Kheiron Biotech, the Argentine company that created the horses, says gene-editing has the potential to revolutionize horse breeding. While cloning creates a genetically identical copy, CRISPR functions as...

Bearded dragons are famous for their ability to change sex depending on heat and genes. Two new genome projects have revealed the likely master gene, Amh, behind this switch — finally solving a reptile mystery that has baffled scientists for years. Credit: Shutterstock Scientists have finally cracked one of the strangest mysteries in reptile biology: how bearded dragons decide their sex. Breakthrough Genomes Reveal Bearded Dragon’s Secrets Two separate research teams have now released near-complete reference genomes of the central bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps), a lizard species that ranges widely across central eastern Australia and is also a favorite pet...

Cutting-edge technology could one day transform treatment for Down syndrome, as researchers have successfully deleted an extra chromosome in lab-grown cells. Down syndrome - which occurs when a person has three copies of chromosome 21 instead of two - alters brain development and can cause intellectual disability, learning difficulties and other health challenges. It affects about one in 700 births in the US, with an estimated 250,000 people living with the condition. Scientists from Mie University in Japan have used CRISPR-Cas9, a DNA-editing tool often described as 'molecular scissors,' to cut away the surplus chromosome in cells. Their system was...

Robert Mueller says he was able to pinpoint security company executive Erik Prince’s precise location for several hours in January 2017 by matching his mobile phone signal to a cell site near Trump Tower in New York City. The special counsel’s report discloses the use of this investigative technique, by which police determine a suspect’s location via a cellphone’s GPS signal. The Prince narrative is one instance in unredacted sections of the report in which Mr. Mueller’s team explicitly discloses cellphone tracking. It raises the question of whether the FBI applied the process to other investigative subjects — a phone’s...

During the last Ice Age, modern humans had ongoing encounters with more than one variety of now-extinct Pleistocene-era hominin.Those encounters, according to new research, not only resulted in interbreeding between homo sapiens and other types of archaic humans -- they may have helped some of the earliest arrivals in North America survive...The earliest arrival of anatomically modern humans in North America has been a subject of intense debate for several decades. Increasingly with time, discoveries by archaeologists have continued to push back the time scales on when those arrivals began, with initial estimates of early human dispersals into North America...

Aman who had always wanted a golden retriever thought he had struck gold with a stray who appeared to be a golden mix—only to be baffled when his DNA results came in. Reddit user u/vansic32 took to the r/DoggyDNA sub on August 10, where she introduced users to their dog, Walter—"our golden surprise." She said: "My husband always wanted a golden retriever so we adopted this NM [New Mexico] stray thinking we can have a golden mix. We were very surprised with his results." The woman posted plenty of photos of Walter, who, with his silky golden coat, fluffy ears,...

The ancestors of all modern humans split off from a mystery population 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected with them 300,000 years ago, a new genetic model suggests. The unknown population contributed 20% of our DNA and may have boosted humans' brain function...In a study published Tuesday (March 18) in the journal Nature Genetics, researchers presented a new method of modeling genomic data, called "cobraa," that has allowed them to trace the evolution of modern humans (Homo sapiens).By applying their new method to modern human DNA data published in the 1000 Genomes Project and the Human Genome Diversity Project,...

A 4-year-old boy who was found dead in Lorton, Virginia, more than 50 years ago, and whose name has remained a mystery, has finally been identified after a flood of tips, a series of DNA tests and decades of twists and turns. Fairfax County police Chief Kevin Davis announced the breakthrough Monday, saying the child’s identification has led police to two people who are believed to have been involved in his killing, and another missing boy whose body has never been discovered. The case of the boy, identified as 4-year-old Carl Matthew Bryant, confounded police and the public for decades....

When the well-preserved body of the famous Ötzi the Iceman was recovered from the ice in the Austrian-Italian Alps in 1991, his remains provided archaeologists with a wealth of information about life in Europe more than 5,000 years ago. Surprisingly, sequencing of his genome indicated that he shared a very high proportion of his ancestry with early farmers who lived in Anatolia. Science News Today reports that a groundbreaking new study analyzed the DNA of 47 other individuals who lived alongside Ötzi in the Austrian Tyrol between 6400 and 1300 b.c. to determine if they shared genomic similarities. The research...

A mouse study has found the sugar 2-deoxy-D-ribose stimulates hair regrowth. Put down the rosemary oil and pause the red light therapy, research suggests the secret to curing male pattern baldness could lie in a sugar that occurs naturally in our bodies. In a mouse model of testosterone-driven hair loss, the sugar, called 2-deoxy-D-ribose, stimulated hair regrowth just as effectively as existing treatment minoxidil – the active ingredient in Rogaine. Though commonly referred to as male pattern baldness, the condition, also known as hereditary-patterned baldness or androgenetic alopecia, affects women too. In fact, up to 40 percent of people experience...

A new drug prevents weight gain and fatty liver by controlling magnesium in cells. It made mice stay slim despite lifelong exposure to an unhealthy diet. Credit: Stock Scientists have unveiled a small-molecule drug that blocks weight gain and liver damage in mice forced to live on sugary, high-fat food. The compound works by limiting magnesium inside mitochondria—the cell’s power plants—so energy keeps burning instead of stalling. Treated mice quickly slim down and show no signs of fatty-liver disease, hinting at a future therapy against obesity, heart trouble, and cancer tied to poor diets. Breakthrough Drug Fights Fat and Liver...

A groundbreaking new collaboration is working to resurrect one of New Zealand’s most enigmatic lost species, the South Island Giant Moa. Blending ancient knowledge with cutting-edge science, the cooperative initiative has been launched between the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre in collaboration with U.S.-based biotech firm Colossal Biosciences and filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson. The initiative seeks to place indigenous values and ecological restoration at the forefront of de-extinction science, representing a historic development in conservation biology. The collaboration marks the first time that an indigenous-led research team will direct a de-extinction initiative of this scale. Based at the University of Canterbury,...

According to the Academy of Athens, scientists decoded the DNA of the famous Greek feta cheese. Recently, scientists from the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens studied a wide variety of feta cheese produced all across the nation of Greece in an effort to quantify the nutritional specifics of the popular Greek cheese. According to findings, feta cheese has 489 different types of protein, making it one of the most protein-rich cheese varieties in the entire world. Feta cheese is a white cheese produced in Greece and made of sheep’s milk, but it can also be made from...

The strangeness began when a research boat known as the Blue Heron started experiencing mechanical difficulties during a trip to Lake Erie and was dry-docked for repairs. While investigating the issue, Captain Rual Lee discovered a strange thick, black tar-like substance that seemed to be oozing out of the rudder. Unable to determine what it was, he sent a sample to the University of Minnesota Duluth. When researchers analyzed the substance, they discovered that it contained 20 DNA sequences and while many could be identified, several were completely novel and unknown to science. They concluded that the substance - now...

...Creating a synthetic human genome has the possibilities of improving human healthspans. ... but it also comes with extremely dangerous consequences..

Yeah forgive me if I feel a creeping sense of dread and foreboding about this one. From a UK non-profit called "Wellcome": Wellcome is providing £10 million funding to the new Synthetic Human Genome Project (SynHG) to develop the foundational tools, technology and methods to enable researchers to one day synthesise genomes. Building a full synthetic human genome is expected to take decades. Over the next five years, the SynHG project will build the foundational tools to enable this work. The "ability to synthesize large genomes, including genomes for human cells, may transform our understanding of genome biology and profoundly...

Scholars have long debated the origins of the House of Piast, Poland's first royal dynasty, who ruled the nation from the tenth through the fourteenth century. Some believe they were Slavic nobles, others Moravian exiles, and still others say they were Viking warriors. The Conversation reports on new DNA analysis that has revealed shocking new information concerning the Piasts' genetic background that might potentially rewrite history. Researchers led by molecular biologist Marek Figlerowicz of Poznań University of Technology extracted DNA from 33 individuals, 30 men and three women, belonging to the Piast dynasty. Most of the deceased, who lived between...

Gene editing holds the potential of suppressing mosquito species that carry deadly diseases — and raises ethical questions. Yet the development of this technology also raises a profound ethical question: When, if ever, is it okay to intentionally drive a species out of existence? Simoni said he hopes Target Malaria can move beyond the lab and deploy some of the genetically modified mosquitoes in their natural habitats within the next five years. The nonprofit research consortium gets its core funding from the Gates Foundation, backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Open Philanthropy, backed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and...

A new round of DNA testing exonerates a homeless man who has spent nearly four decades in prison for the killing of a Santa Ana nanny, according to defense attorneys who are asking Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer to declare Kenneth Clair innocent of the 1984 slaying. Clair, who spent years on death row before an appellate court overturned his death sentence and he was re-sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. ...

President Bill Clinton criticized President Trump's actions attacking the rule of law, and predicted that the president would pay a price among those who believe his actions are un-American. "We've never seen anything like this before in my lifetime – somebody that says, 'Whatever I want should be the law of the land. It's my way or the highway.' And most Americans don't agree with that," Clinton said in an interview with "CBS Sunday Morning." "But I like to think that he's paid a price for this, you know, name-calling and throwing his weight around … I think it's made...