Swine Decoded

Oink, oink! Pigs have been getting a bad rap for some time now, but a group of international researchers are trying to change that perception. Scientists recently decoded the DNA of pigs; they hope to use their scientific breakthrough to find new treatments for people against swine flu.

The project’s leader Larry Schook, professor of biomedical science at the University of Illinois, and his team decoded the genome of a red-haired Duroc pig. “The pig is the ideal animal to look at lifestyle and health issues in the United States,” said Schook.

Hogs are used a lot in human research such as obesity, heart disease and skin disorders since they have similar size and makeup to humans.

The research team, which announced the results of their research at a meeting at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the United Kingdom, to discuss methods to use the new information.

Skullduggery of Hitler

Scientist at the University of Connecticut have examined a piece of skull with a bullet hole long thought to have belonged to Adolf Hitler, concluding the cranial fragment that’s housed at the Russian State Archive in Moscow actually belongs to a woman.

Though Russian officials claimed the skull and bloodstained pieces of the sofa where Hitler reportedly shot himself after taking a cyanide pill belonged to the Fuhrer, Connecticut archaeologist Nick Bellantoni, who was asked to examine the skull and several swabs of blood for a History Channel documentary on Hitler’s death, said the initial forensic exam was not conclusive with what he knew of Hitler’s biology.

“The bone was very small and thin, and normally male bones are much more robust in our species,” Bellantoni said Tuesday. “I thought it probably came from a woman or a younger man.”

Contributor Linda Strausbaugh, a professor of molecular and cell biology, said analysis indicate the DNA came from a 20 to 40-year-old woman, possibly Eva Braun, Hitler’s girlfriend who famously committed suicide with Hitler in a Berlin bunker in April 1945.

The blood DNA samples were severely degraded, making identification almost impossible but revealing some of it came from a man.

An autopsy supposedly shows Hitler’s body missing a part of his skull but Braun has long believed to have died of cyanide poisoning.

“My gut feeling is he did commit suicide there,” says Bellatoni. “If this is not him who is it?”

Cyberlution

It has been recently discovered that two years ago, Microsoft attempted to patent clustering phylogenetics methods, which is used by every evolutionary biologist. In other words, they were attempting to patent the studying of evolution.

Discovered by a University of Texas in Austin graduate student, Microsoft researcher Steve Ozer filed the patent in July 2007. The patent claims ownership of numerous common phylogenetics methods and the identification of evolutionary relationships from sequences.

By clustering algorithms and taking a collection of related sequences, like the amino acids in proteins or the bases in DNA, researchers can calculate the likely evolutionary relationships between them.

The filing has already been compared to attempting to patent the multiplication table, both which have been in existence for years.

It’s Alive!

The key to life has been discovered in a comet, according to scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. New research suggests that the amino acid glycine, which is an important biological molecule that helps build proteins and other key components of DNA and RNA, found inside the comet Wild 2 is an essential component for the existence of life on Earth.

“This is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet. Our discovery supports the theory that some of life’s ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts,” lead researcher Jamie Elsila said of the discovery.

Scientists have long believed that the fundamental properties needed for the existence of living organisms derive from space. Samples of Wild 2’s glycine were gathered by NASA’s spacecraft Stardust in 2004 and were the parachuted back to Earth in 2006. Since then, researchers have been analyzing the samples for life forming properties, as well as learning the secrets of comet formation and solar system’s history.