The Intriguing Story of the Dingo

 

The Australian dingoes descend from domesticated dogs coming from East Asia, probably with the Austronesian expansion into Island Southeast Asia around 6000 years ago. They were introduced from a small population of dogs and have since roamed wild in most of Australia.

That is the belief of some researchers. However, others question whether dingoes’ ancestors were ever domesticated. The dingo is a genetic intermediate between domestic dogs and wild wolves. This is probably because dingoes spent thousands of years isolated from other dog species. Modern domestic dogs didn’t arrive in Australia until 1788, when they were introduced by Europeans.

Bill Ballard at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, believes that the dingo may have been introduced to Australia as a tamed wild animal, one accustomed to living alongside people but not domesticated through selective breeding.

In 2017, the dingo won the “World’s Most Interesting Genome” competition held by US biotech company Pacific Biosciences.

Read more here and here.

Reference Human Genome Almost Complete

 

Work remains to finalize the reference genome (the Y chromosome still needs to be finished) but researchers are close to finally sequencing every last nucleotide of human DNA.

Ever since the launch of the Human Genome Project more than 30 years ago, genetic sequencing technologies and data-processing pipelines have been getting faster, cheaper and more precise, allowing researchers to sample, sequence and compare more genomes with every passing year.

But huge chunks of DNA – amounting to around 8 percent of the human genome – were still missing from the most recent reference sequence that scientists use as a template to assemble newly-sequenced DNA samples.

Now, scientists have pieced together those parts of the human genome which have long been 'unsequenceable' to assemble the most complete reference genome to date, sharing their findings in a collection of six papers, published in the journal Science.

Read more here and here.

Gene Edited for Sickle Cell Disease

Victoria Gray is the first person with a genetic disorder to be treated in the United States with the revolutionary gene-editing technique called CRISPR.

As the one-year anniversary of her landmark treatment approaches, Gray has received good news: She is functionally cured. The billions of genetically modified cells infused into her body are alleviating virtually all the complications of her sickle cell disease.

Gray hasn’t had any severe pain attacks since the treatment one year ago. Nor has she had to receive any emergency room treatments, hospitalizations, or blood transfusions.

In each of the previous two years, Gray required an average of seven hospitalizations and emergency room visits due to severe pain episodes as well as requiring regular blood transfusions. She has been able to significantly reduce her need for narcotics to relieve her pain.

Source: Genetic Literacy Project

Assessing the Health of Bee Colonies

Honey is full of proteins, but sugars in the sticky substance make those proteins hard to study. Now, one scientist has figured out a way to pull proteins from the honey, revealing the world bees encounter.

The biochemistry researcher Rocío Cornero of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., is examining proteins in honey. Cornero described her unpublished work December 9 at the annual joint meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology and the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Amateur beekeepers often don’t understand what is stressing bees in their hives, whether lack of water, starvation or infection with pathogens, says Cornero, whose father kept bees before his death earlier this year. 

Cornero says, “What we see in the honey can tell us a story about the health of that colony.”

Bees are like miniature scientists that fly and sample a wide variety of environmental conditions, says cell biologist Lance Liotta, Cornero’s mentor at George Mason. As bees digest pollen, soil and water, bits of proteins from other organisms, including fungi, bacteria and viruses also end up in the insects’ stomachs. Honey, in turn, is basically bee vomit, Liotta says, and contains a record of virtually everything the bee came in contact with, as well as proteins from the bees themselves.

Read more here.

Humans Descend From African Ancestors

Archaic human footprint found in Ileret, Kenya dating to 1.5 million years

Several sets provide evidence of males travelling in groups.

All non-Africans alive today can trace their roots back to ancient humans who left Africa between about 72,000 and 50,000 years ago. That’s the conclusion of three separate groups of scientists. They all published new studies online September 21 in Nature.

These studies examined DNA from different groups of modern people. The earliest human explorers left Africa in a single wave of migration, each study concluded. Then those explorers bred with Neanderthals and spread across the world. On that much, all these teams agree. But many details of that history remain unanswered.

Scientists often have wondered when humans first left Africa. And did it happen once, twice or many times? Archaeological evidence from modern humans in Asia dates back 80,000 years. And human DNA from remains of a Neanderthal woman in what’s now Siberia suggested some humans left Africa more than 110,000 years ago.

Read more here.

Related reading: Artifacts of Great Antiquity; Facts About Human Origins

New DNA Structure Found

This is an artist's impression of the i-motif DNA structure inside cells, along with the antibody-based tool used to detect it. Credit: Chris Hammang

The i-motif is a four-stranded knot of DNA that is very different from a double helix, where 'letters' on opposite strands recognize each other. In the i-motif knot structure, C letters on the same strand of DNA bind to each other.

To detect the i-motifs inside cells, the researchers developed a new tool -- a fragment of an antibody molecule -- that could specifically recognize and attach to i-motifs with a very high affinity. With the new tool, researchers uncovered the location of 'i-motifs' in a range of human cell lines.

"What excited us most is that we could see the green spots -- the i-motifs -- appearing and disappearing over time, so we know that they are forming, dissolving and forming again," says Dr Mahdi Zeraati, whose research underpins the study's findings.

Dr Zeraati says, "We think the coming and going of the i-motifs is a clue to what they do. It seems likely that they are there to help switch genes on or off, and to affect whether a gene is actively read or not."

Read more here.

Francis S. Collins

Francis Sellers Collins is an American physician-geneticist noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project. In August 2009, he became the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. Under his direction the the Human Genome Project (HGP) was completed in April 2003.This was an international research effort to sequence and map all of the genes of members of Homo sapiens. With this data, scientists are now able to read the complete genetic blueprint for humans.

Collins is a Christian. Here are two excerpts from his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.

“Will we turn our backs on science because it is perceived as a threat to God, abandoning all the promise of advancing our understanding of nature and applying that to the alleviation of suffering and the betterment of humankind? Alternatively, will we turn our backs on faith, concluding that science has rendered the spiritual life no longer necessary, and that traditional religious symbols can now be replaced by engravings of the double helix on our alters?
Both of these choices are profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate and beautiful - and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans can start such battles. And only we can end them."

"The comparison of chimp and human sequences, interesting as it is, does not tell us what it means to be human. In my views, DNA sequence alone, even if accompanied by a vast trove of data on biological function, will never explain certain special human attributes, such as the knowledge of the Moral Law and the universal search for God. Freeing God from the burden of special acts of creation does not remove Him as the source of the things that make humanity special, and of the universe itself. It merely shows us something of how He operates."

Related reading: Timeline of Human Genome Project Developments; Fact Sheets - National Human Genome Research Institute

Honoring Lab Mice

Learn more about molecular genetics at the Genetics Literacy Project.

Is this the best statue ever? Russian scientists built this 6-foot tall monument to honor lab mice used for DNA research. The statue is in the city of Novosibirsk in Siberia.

Related reading: Genetics: A Few Basics; Haplogroups of Interest to Biblical Anthropologists; Gregor Mendel: The Father of Genetics; The Sub-Saharan Genetic Ancestry of Modern Jews; DNA Confirms Mixed Ancestry of Jews; Ashkenazi Jewish Women Descended Mostly from Italian Converts; Y-Chromosome Profile of 64% of European Men

Does Knowledge of One's Genetic Ancestry Matter?

Csanad Szegedi stands in front of a Budapest Synagogue. (Credit: AP Photo/Peter Kohalmi, May 2014)

Here is an interesting story, told my Michael Cook, Editor of BioEdge:


One of the recurring themes thrown up by assisted reproduction is the importance of genetic ties. Are we determined by our origins, or can we forge our own identity? Does it matter whether our nearest and dearest are our kith and kin or whether they are just the people we hang around with?

By chance I just stumbled across the astonishing story of a Hungarian politician whose life was transformed when he discovered his true genetic identity.

By the time Csanad Szegedi was 24, he was vice-president of Jobbik, a far-right, nationalist and virulently anti-Semitic party. He was elected to the European Parliament as a Jobbik MEP in 2009 and wrote a book, I Believe in Hungary’s Resurrection.

Then he learned his family’s deepest secret: he was a Jew. His grandfather and grandmother were actually Auschwitz survivors.

Szegedi’s life fell apart. He was forced to resign from Jobbik.

Suddenly he did a complete about-face. Under the tuition of a Lubavitch rabbi from New York who was living in Budapest he became an Orthodox, observant Jew; he had himself circumcised, adopted the name Dovid and burned a thousand copies of his book. Now he is migrating to Israel with his wife and two children. He is interested in joining the Knesset.

Szegedi is obviously a complex, intense man. He could even be a charlatan. But his astonishing journey does suggest that there is something to the idea that our personal identity is incomplete if it lacks the genetic heritage.


Related reading:  A Whole New Jew; Keep Quiet: The Jewish Anti-Semite

Genetic Types: a few basics

A haplotype is a group of genes in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent.

A haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor with a single-nucleotide polymorphism mutation.

Haplogroups pertain to a single line of descent, usually dating back thousands of years. When it comes to tracing the point of origin of Abraham's male ancestors biblical anthropologists are especially interested in males carrying R-M173 in modern populations. These populations which live in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Eurasia comprise two subclades: R1a and R1b. Identifying haplotypes, haplogroups, and subclades is the work of molecular genetics.

Genetics has provided significant information about the point of origin of humans. It is agreed that the first humans lived in Africa. That is also where the oldest human fossils have been found. Among these archaic humans there was diversity of appearance, as is evident from studies of their anatomical structure.

Y-DNA is passed solely along the patrilineal line, that is, from father to son. The mtDNA is passed down the matrilineal line, that is, from mother to offspring of both sexes. Since neither recombines, Y-DNA and mtDNA change only by mutation at each generation with no intermixture between parents' genetic material. Molecular geneticists investigate when these mutations took place in the lineage they are studying.

The haplogroups most commonly used to identify human populations are Y-chromosome (Y-DNA) haplogroups and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups. In human mitochondrial genetics, the root of the human phylogenetic tree is L. Here is a map showing the dispersion of human populations according to mitochondrial (maternal) DNA. (Click on the image for a closer view.)

By User: Maulucioni
Migraciones humanas en haplogrupos mitocondriales.PNG, CC BY-SA 3.0 

L is the mitochondrial DNA macro-haplogroup that is at the root of the human mtDNA phylogenetic tree. As such, it represents the most ancestral mitochondrial lineage of all currently living humans. It is evident that all modern humans have ancestry that is traced to Africa.

It is evident that from the beginning there was great genetic diversity among human populations living in Africa, especially among peoples living along the Nile. That diversity is evident in African populations even today.

New research based on study of fragmentary fossils suggests humans have come in different shapes and sizes since our origins over two million years ago. The great anatomical diversity found in humans today emerged much earlier than previously thought.

Molecular genetics has demonstrated that the notion of "race" is a false understanding of human populations. The term "race" does not appear in the Bible either. The Bible does not use the word race because that word represents a conception of human diversity which is untrue. All humans living today have African ancestry and from the beginning there was great diversity of appearance. Consider the example of the ancient Nubians, shown below.

The San Bushman are one of the oldest known people groups in the world and they have a yellow skin tone that we associate more with the Chinese. Recent genetic research has demonstrated that the ancestors of the Chinese came from Africa about 80,000 years ago.

There have been numerous movements of people out of Africa. This genetic study identified an "ancient trace" in Papuan genomes that indicates one movement took place as early as 120,000 years ago.

The movement of human populations out of Africa is especially evident when we consider Haplogroup R1b. This traces the Y chromosome DNA which is passed along the father's side. Y-DNA R1b is found in Africa, Southern Europe, France, and the British Isles. This dispersion took place over thousands of years, from about 80,000 to 8,000 years ago.

In the Bible, the Kushites are identified as one of the latter groups to disperse out of the Nile Valley. These people are identified with Kush (Cush), Noah's grandson. One of Kush's sons was Nimrod who established his kingdom in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. Abraham was a descendant of Nimrod.

Both Lake Chad and the Upper Nile were populated by people in the R1b haplogroup. This haplogroup is usually regarded as European, rather than African, but it is both, as is evident from the map below showing the R1b distribution. 

The dark red spot in central Africa is the region of Lake Chad,
Noah's homeland.

Haplogroup R1b, also known as haplogroup R-M343, is the most frequently occurring Y chromosome haplogroup in Western Europe, some parts of Russia (especially the Bashkir minority), Central Asia (e.g. Turkmenistan) and in the region of Lake Chad and along the Nile.

This is the haplogroup of Abraham's Proto-Saharan ancestors who dispersed widely and are identified in history as Kushites, Kushan, Ainu, Saka, Hittites, Horites, etc. Among them was a caste of priests known in ancient texts as 'Apiru, Hapiru, Habiru or Hebrew.

The English word "Hebrew" is equivalent to Ha'biru. The Habiru were already widely dispersed in the 14th-13th centuries B.C. Their spread was driven by their unique marriage and ascendancy pattern by which some sons were sent away to established their own territories.

Abraham's Habiru ancestors served at the archaic pillared temples built by the archaic rulers who are called "the mighty men of old" in Genesis 6:4. They are described as heroes and men of renown. They constructed temples, palaces, fortified shrine cities ("high places") and pyramids.

Related reading: The Bible and the Question of Race; Getting the Facts About Human Origins; Angelika Lohwasser, Kush and Her Neighbours Beyond the Nile; Matthew Adams, Manetho's 23rd Dynasty and the Legitimization of Kushite Rule Over Egypt; Who Were the Kushites?; Abraham was a Descendant of Both Shem and Ham