“DNA is your blood in you, we can use DNA as evidence if someone’s been stabbed. We can run tests in suspects.” (Girl, 12, central Queensland)
“DNA has to do with blood types and fingerprints, it helps…
Allowing patents that capture categories of unique genomic DNA damages the principle of open access.
Nestlé/Flickr
Public investment in the Human Genome Project was expected to deliver a global public good that would help generate scientific breakthroughs. But open access to our genetic blueprint is a precondition…
Colorized low-temperature electron micrograph of a cluster of E. coli bacteria. The individual bacterium are rectangular and brown.
Microbe World/Flickr
Bacteria are single-celled microorganisms abundant in nature that can’t be seen with the naked eye. In fact, there are approximately five multiplied by 10³¹ bacteria on the earth, constituting 90% of its…
Personalised nutrition helps us understand the unique nutritional requirements of each individual.
Cayusa/Flickr
The father of western medicine Hippocrates famously said: “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”, arguing disease was not a punishment from the gods, but the consequence of a poor diet.
Today…
It makes sense to exercise caution when we’re fiddling with genes in food.
Food Ethics Council
Most genetically modified (GM) crops are based on moving DNA from one organism to another to introduce a new protein. Now a growing number of genetically modified crops are based on intentionally changing…
The use of the term “junk DNA” has always been controversial.
Nick Kidd
A controversy at last: most of our DNA is junk, no it isn’t, yes it is. Actually, I think it is – up to 90% really is junk.
Last year The Conversation published an article with an exciting headline…
The Falkland Islands wolf was marooned for thousands of years before going extinct.
Michael Rothman for Ace Coinage, Inc
A long-standing natural history mystery has been solved, as my colleagues and I explain today in the journal Nature Communications.
The Falkland Islands wolf, or warrah, may have been the world’s loneliest…
Biodiversity matters, even in your mouth.
Mandy Jouan
The more we look, the more we realise just how important intact ecosystems are for our own well-being – and it really doesn’t matter at which scale we are looking.
When Alan Cooper, Director of the Australian…
The skeleton of Richard III was discovered beneath a car park in Leicester, and identified using the DNA of his descendants.
EPA/HO
In the past few days news has come to light of the confirmation that skeletal remains discovered in an excavated site of a Leicester car park are indeed that of the famous English king Richard III. But…
We’re all familiar with the double helix structure so vital to life, but DNA can take other forms.
ctbroek/Flickr
DNA has been called many things: the king of molecules, the blueprint of life, and less excitingly but perhaps more accurately, the genetic code.
DNA’s double helix, discovered in 1953 by James Watson…
You could fill this with coffee … or the equivalent of millions of DVDs.
raindog/Flickr
Biological systems have been using DNA as an information storage molecule for billions of years. Vast amounts of data can thus be encoded within microscopic volumes, and we carry the proof of this concept…
The Indian Myna is an invasive species – but has its behaviour changed in Australia?
Wikimedia Commons.
Plants and animals that are seemingly harmless in their native habitats can become quite aggressive or even destructive in a new location.
Think of the rats that have been a source of human and animal…
The human brain can write plays and build robots, but where did this intelligence come from?
ores2k
Intelligence is our most complex characteristic. Some would even say it defines us, setting us apart from other primates. And now, a new study – published this week by Hennady P. Shulha and colleagues…
Could DNA-based prevention efforts spell trouble for illegal loggers?
jimmedia
Illegal logging is a major contributor to tropical deforestation and forest degradation. Australia is currently considering legislation to prevent the importation of illegally logged wood. But if the legislation…
DNA in bone appears to decay at a rate almost 400-times slower than previously thought.
M.Bunce
Moa birds disappeared from New Zealand following the arrival of human settlers in the 13th century, but their fossils now provide us with a valuable clues about long-term DNA survival and how DNA decays…
More than 99.5% of the genome is identical between two humans, but that still leaves 15m positions to search through.
fdecomite
Imagine a future where doctors take a strand of your hair or a drop of your blood and tell you your DNA predicts a 78% risk of developing heart disease. On the plus side, it also predicts exactly which…
DNA barcoding uses a few standard genes to provide a sure-fire genetic species identification method.
Conor Lawless
We’ve written previously on The Conversation about how taxonomy – the science of describing and naming species – can be quite a subjective science. But taxonomists can broadly be split into two camps…
What part do superstition and inconsistency play in contemporary genetic research?
DNA Art Online
I’ve been an ecologist in Australia for the last ten years, working for both government agencies and as a university researcher. Over this time, funding for fieldwork has been increasingly hard to secure…
Technical, financial and legal barriers stop the sharing of vital information in medical research.
Frans de Waal/ Wikimedia Commons
A paper published today in Science Translational Medicine calls for the open sharing of clinical trial data among the medical research community. Researchers argue data sharing would lead to faster, more…
A whole genome test is meaningless unless you can interpret it.
Dave Faryam
By Rony Duncan, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and Martin Delatycki, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute
It’s now possible to access genetic testing from your living room or office, without the need to visit a health professional.
There are many reasons why you might like to get a genetic test. Maybe someone…
Lack of genetic diversity makes it hard for island-bound species to survive when threats arrive.
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
We have all heard at some time or another that Australia has the worst record of mammal extinctions in history, with many of our unique and vulnerable critters succumbing only years after the first Europeans…
The Red Deer Cave people and humans could be part of different evolutionary lines.
Peter Schouten
The origin of the human species remains one of the most fascinating and difficult topics of modern science.
One of the main reasons for this is a continuing lack of agreement about how we should define…
The demise of the woolly mammoth could teach us much about our effect on other species.
George Teichmann
When we think of the last 50,000 years of prehistory, particularly the “Ice Age”, extinct species such as the woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros often spring to mind.
Did humans bring about the extinction…
Landscape is the star in The Hunter, but science plays a respectable supporting role.
Matthew Nettheim
All over the planet, a new wave of exploration and exploitation is taking place. Bioprospectors are searching for new and useful biological samples and compounds from previously unstudied animals and plants…
We may have pinpointed the event that started modern Y. pestis epidemics.
Steam Pirate.
Could contemporary plague outbreaks such as those that have hit Peru and the USA have their origins in the medieval era? It would seem so.
A paper published in Nature today reports a genome sequence taken…
So what’s it to be, buddy, my cave or yours?
Kaptain Kobold
We humans had sex with Neandertals; we bonked the relatives of Neandertals; we got down and dirty with members of an as-yet unrecognised African population; and we, of course, got jiggy with each other…
GM is not being used to make fishbread Frankenfoods.
Dave Lifson/Flickr
The Conversation asked CSIRO scientist, Richard Richards, to look at the top five myths about genetic modification (GM), and correct the public record.
Myth one: GM is just haphazard, imprecise cross…
The man behind the mask. Ned Kelly’s skeleton can finally be laid to rest.
the euskadi 11
By Dadna Hartman, Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine
The remains of iconic bushranger Ned Kelly have been positively identified by forensic scientists more than a century after his hanging in 1880.
The identification was made after an exhaustive forensic…
A US court has recognised Myriad Genetics' patent for an isolated gene, which plays a role in breast cancer.
Mel Rowling
The recent US Federal Court of Appeals decision relates to the patent law status of inventions based on the discovery that particular mutations in BRCA genes predispose women to breast and ovarian cancer…
Understanding DNA is vital to developing our knowledge of complex diseases.
DNA Art Online
Imagine taking a thousand copies of a phone book, shredding them all together, then trying to use the overlapping pieces to reconstruct a copy.
This is a simple problem compared to assembling the human…
Animals aren’t to blame – the bacteria came from humans.
The genomes of the recent German E. coli outbreak have revealed crucial insights into the origins of this deadly strain. The bacteria was found in German bean sprouts but it didn’t originate from the gut…
Try as you might, there’s no proof you can control your genetic expression.
mutsmuts/Flickr
Can the way we think influence the way we feel? Most of us would say yes. But can thinking affect the way our bodies behave on a genetic level? Can we, in essence, think ourselves better? A growing band…
