dailygalaxy.com: by Casey Kazan.

“Everyone has assumed we age by rust. But how do you explain animals that don’t age? Some tortoises lay eggs at the age of 100, there are whales that live to be 200 and clams that make it past 400 years.”

Stuart Kim, PhD, Stanford University professor of developmental biology and genetics

Prevailing theory of aging challenged by Stanford University Medical School researchers. Their discovery contradicts the prevailing theory that aging is a buildup of tissue damage similar to rust. The Stanford findings suggest specific genetic instructions drive the process. If they are right, science might one day find ways of switching the signals off and halting or even reversing aging. [ read more ]

seedmagazine.com: by PZ Myers

The idea of humankind as a paragon of design is called into question by the puffer fish genome - the smallest, tidiest vertebrate genome of all.

When I mention the Japanese puffer fish, or fugu, to friends and students who are even slightly pop-culture savvy, I get a predictable response: That’s the fish that almost killed Homer Simpson! The fugu is an actual fish, and a beautiful little advanced bony one. Among its claims to fame is that it protects itself from being eaten by secreting a potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin that blocks nerve impulses and can kill a person in a high enough dose. That’s part of the reason humans eat it, though: If carefully prepared and not eaten in excess, it can provide a peculiar tingle to the lips—and the thrill of a little danger. In the well-known episode of The Simpsons, Homer discovers the joys of sushi, overindulges in poorly prepared fugu, thinks he has only a day to live, and typical sitcom hijinks ensue (ruined slightly for us science geeks, who know that fugu poisoning leads to rapid paralysis, which would tend to interfere with hijinks).

Fugu has another property of greater interest to evolutionary and developmental biologists, molecular biologists, and geneticists, though: It has an unusual genome. Through genomes, biology organizes genetic material into different forms of life; what we often find is that the real surprises are deep, hidden, and require a delicate sense of appreciation. In order to explain what’s unusual about the fugu’s genome, a comparison with our own human genome is in order. [ read more ]

news.bbc.co.uk: By Helen Briggs, Science reporter, BBC News

A fragment of DNA from the Tasmanian tiger has been brought back to life. Australian scientists extracted genetic material from a 100-year-old museum specimen, and put it into a mouse embryo to study how it worked. It is the first time DNA of an extinct species has been used in this way, says a University of Melbourne team. [ read more ]

physorg.com: With a bit of genetic trickery, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have turned normal skin cells into cancer stem cells, a step that will make these naturally rare cells easier to study.

Cancer stem cells are thought to be the ones that drive a cancer, and are therefore the targets of any cancer therapy that must kill them in order to be effective. Understanding these cells has been a challenge, however, because they are rare, difficult to isolate and don’t grow well in the lab. [ read more ]

time.com: Why is it that when a group of soldiers share a horrific battle experience, some are able to work through it and get on with their lives while others suffer the persistent anxiety, emotional numbness and bomb-blasted nightmares of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)? The answer, researchers have long believed, is that an individual’s response to trauma — whether in battle, or as result of a natural disaster, a violent crime or some other horror — depends not only on the intensity of that trauma but also on a complex interplay of past experiences and genetic factors. A new paper, published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, provides remarkable support for this explanation and identifies a specific gene that influences susceptibility to PTSD. [ read more ]

motherjones.com: This past weekend in the Boston Globe, Pamela Ronald, a U.C. Davis plant pathologist, tackled the debate over genetic engineering in organic farming. Without mincing words.

It is time to abandon the caricatures of genetic engineering that are popular among some consumers and activists, and instead see it for what it is: A tool that can help the ecological farming revolution grow into a lasting movement with global impact.

Bold, to be sure. But are these fightin’ words? Probably. [ read more ]

nytimes.com: It is a basic tenet of human biology, taught in grade schools everywhere: Identical twins come from the same fertilized egg and, thus, share identical genetic profiles. But according to new research, though identical twins share very similar genes, identical they are not. The discovery opens a new understanding of why two people who hail from the same embryo can differ in phenotype, as biologists refer to a person’s physical manifestation.

The new findings appear in the March issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics, in a study conducted by scientists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and universities in Sweden and the Netherlands. The scientists examined the genes of 10 pairs of monozygotic, or identical, twins, including 9 pairs in which one twin showed signs of dementia or Parkinson’s disease and the other did not. [ read more ]

independent.co.uk: By tweaking our DNA, we could soon survive for hundreds of years – if we want to. Steve Connor reports on a breakthrough that has the science world divided

A genetically engineered organism that lives 10 times longer than normal has been created by scientists in California. It is the greatest extension of longevity yet achieved by researchers investigating the scientific nature of ageing.

If this work could ever be translated into humans, it would mean that we might one day see people living for 800 years. But is this ever going to be a realistic possibility? [ read more ]

ted.com:

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another. [ read more ]

ted.com:

“Can we create new life out of our digital universe?” asks Craig Venter. And his answer is, yes, and pretty soon. He walks the TED2008 audience through his latest research into “fourth-generation fuels” — biologically created fuels with CO2 as their feedstock. His talk covers the details of creating brand-new chromosomes using digital technology, the reasons why we would want to do this, and the bioethics of synthetic life. A fascinating Q&A with TED’s Chris Anderson follows (two words: suicide genes). [ read more ]