geekosystem

Remember that scene in Jurassic Park where the scientist is explaining to Ian Malcolm that all the dinosaurs on the island are female because they deprive them of a specific hormone at a specific moment? Science may have just found that hormone and that moment. A team of scientists have found the protein that kicks off the development of male sex organs in mice. It could even explain why the female dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were able to breed.

When a class of animal is made up of only one gender, those animals tend to go extinct. That's not the case with the bdelloid rotifers, which have been exclusively female for around 80 million years. Just like we learned in Jurassic Park, life finds a way. For the bdelloids, that way is by hijacking the DNA of other species for its own benefit. Clever girl.

An international team of scientists has achieved one of the holy grails of evolutionary biology, documenting the creation of new genes in a living organism for the first time. After introducing a gene engineered to be beneficial to protein synthesis into the DNA of salmonella bacteria in their labs, researchers from the University of California Davis and Sweden's Upsalla University have shown that strength in numbers may be the secret to success for mutant genes that stick around and become evolved traits of an organism.

New research suggests that modern humans may have inherited some of our immune system genes by interbreeding with closely-related non-homo sapiens. That is to say, our ancestors got it on with Neanderthals and we've reaped the benefits. The research focused on human leucocyte antigen (HLA) genes that help the body identify and destroy viruses, as well as other foreign bodies. Through their work, the researchers believe they've found a link between certain HLA genes in humans and those found in prehistoric Neanderthals and another group known as Denisovans. According to their study, the distribution of the genes obtained through interbreeding is not consistent across all humans:  People of European descent got over 50% of one class of HLA variant genes from interbreeding, those of Asian descent have 80%, and people from Papua New Guinean have about 95%. In another example, HLA variants common in West Asia are rare in African people. Stanford University's Peter Parham, who led the study, believes that this discrepency paints a picture of early human migration.

DARPA is hoping to develop a new, far-fetched technology that will be able to record the modifications made to a gene, similar to how "track changes" records versions of a Word document. And yes, there is a conveniently pronounceable acronym for this effort: CLIO, the Chronicle of Lineage Indicative of Origins. In their own words, the project is: “multidisciplinary research proposals in the area of genomic and proteomic technologies that can continuously and persistently record specific natural or human promulgated environmental, physical and genomic events within the genetic or epigenetic systems of microorganisms.” Elucidating, no? (No.)

The U.S. federal government has declared in a recently issued brief that naturally occurring genes should not be subject to patents, backing up a District Court judge who in March had struck down several attempts to patent human genes associated with cancer. While the impact of the government's brief should not be exaggerated -- it's not clear whether it will be implemented as policy by the U.S. Patent Office, which would have a major impact on the pharmaceutical and biotech industries -- it is a surprise. Law professor and patent watcher Dennis Crouch writes that "Last month, I heard a rumor that Obama administration science and legal advisors outside of the USPTO supported Judge Sweet's ruling [invalidating the patents].  At the time I disregarded that suggestion as unlikely. I was wrong."

Singularity Hub has a fascinating interview with Dr. David Koepsell, a J.D./Ph.D. who specializes in writing about the intersection between ethics and emerging technology. Koepsell's book, Who Owns You?, is currently being adapted into a documentary by filmmaker Taylor Roesch.

In short: Thanks to patents granted beginning in the early 20th century and a key 1980 Supreme Court case, Diamond v. Chakrabarty, both human genes and genetically modified organisms are patentable. According to the New York Times, roughly 20 percent of human genes have been patented, thanks to a blanket of more than 40,000 patents.