A New DNA Study Leads Map to Genetic Diseases

A massive DNA database has generated a map of the genetic switches which impact everything from hair loss to cancer and opened the door to revolutionary treatments for a host of deadly diseases, researchers said Sept. 5. “This is a major step toward understanding the wiring diagram of a human being,” said lead researcher Michael […]

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First lady, Michelle Obama, Traces Her Ancestry Through DNA

      Matching DNA samples, scientists and historians have been working to trace the ancestry of  first lady Michelle Obama, which they have currently traced back to Northern Georgia. According to the New York Times, her ancestors were both slaves and the slave masters because of interracial couplings through the years. Her white relatives have been sent […]

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Children Born to Older Fathers May Have a Genetic Predisposition to Increased Life Expectancy

     Reaserchers analyzed the DNA structure of 1,779 young adults and their mothers. What they found was, children of older fathers have genetic benefits including traits that could increase life expectancy as well as the ability to procreate later in life.    Geneticists have already known that life expectancy is linked to the length of the […]

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Study: Neanderthal DNA Lives On in Modern Humans

Correction Appended: May 8, 2010A decade after scientists first cracked the human genome, researchers announced in the May 7 issue of Science that they have done the same for Neanderthals, the species of hominid that existed from roughly 400,000 to 30,000 years ago, when their closest relatives, early modern humans, may have driven them to extinction. Led by ancient-DNA expert Svante Pbo of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, scientists reconstructed about 60% of the Neanderthal genome by analyzing tiny chains of ancient DNA extracted from bone fragments of three female Neanderthals excavated in the late 1970s and early ’80s from a cave in Croatia.

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Study Shows Progress With Stem Cell Alternative

Study Shows Progress With Stem Cell Alternative Scientists say they’ve found more efficient way to make alternative to embryonic stem cells Scientists reported more progress Thursday with a method of creating stem cells without using embryos. The advance in cell reprogramming by researchers in Boston was praised as a more efficient way of turning skin […]

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Sheriff: Bone fragment found near Garrido home ‘probably human’

Bone fragment found near the California home where Jaycee Dugard is said to have been confined for 18 years is “probably human,” a sheriff’s spokesman said Tuesday. Investigators said they found the bone last week on a neighbor’s property in an area that Dugard’s accused captor and rapist, Philip Garrido, had access to

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Holbrooke: If Pakistan Taliban leader were alive, he’d be on TV

The United States knows that the leader of Pakistan’s Taliban is dead because he has not appeared in public to prove that he is alive, the top U.S. envoy to the region told CNN on Monday. Richard Holbrooke said that the Pakistani Taliban have not confirmed the death of Baitullah Mehsud because of an ongoing power struggle over his successor

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Childless man released from child support debt

A Georgia man who spent a year in jail for nonpayment of child support — despite the fact he has no children — has been cleared of the debt, his attorney said Tuesday. Frank Hatley, 50, spent 13 months in jail for being a deadbeat dad before his release last month. In June 2008, a judge ordered him to jail for failing to reimburse the state for public assistance that was paid to support his “son” — a child who DNA tests proved was not fathered by Hatley

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