Moores Law dates the Origin of Life before Origin of Earth
Interessantes Modell von zwei Genetikern, die Moores Law – die Komplexität integrierter Schaltkreise verdoppelt sich alle 1-2 Jahre – auf die Evolution angewandt haben. Rechnet man in diesem Modell rückwärts datieren sie den Ursprung des Lebens aus rund 10 Millarden Jahre vor unserer Zeit, während die Erde grade halb so alt ist.
Erscheint logisch, auch wenn die Jungs Kritiker, die auf Evolutionssprünge (Stichwort Punktialismus und Kambrische Explosion) hinweisen, mit Religionskritik kontern („Sharov and Gorden reject this argument saying that it is suspiciously similar to arguments that squeeze the origin of life into the timespan outlined in the biblical Book of Genesis“), die hier meiner Meinung nicht hingehört – Religion hat im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs nichts verloren, ausgenommen sind Kulturgeschichte und (Neuro-)Psychologie. Sei’s drum, ziemlich interessanter Ansatz bleibt das hier dennoch.
These guys argue that it’s possible to measure the complexity of life and the rate at which it has increased from prokaryotes to eukaryotes to more complex creatures such as worms, fish and finally mammals. That produces a clear exponential increase identical to that behind Moore’s Law although in this case the doubling time is 376 million years rather than two years.
That raises an interesting question. What happens if you extrapolate backwards to the point of no complexity–the origin of life?
Sharov and Gordon say that the evidence by this measure is clear. “Linear regression of genetic complexity (on a log scale) extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life = 9.7 ± 2.5 billion years ago,” they say. And since the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, that raises a whole series of other questions. Not least of these is how and where did life begin.
The bioengineered Stingray-Sneaker Hoax
Die Sache mit den Sneakern aus dem Leder von genetisch modifizierten Rochen hat sich aufgeklärt, der Hoax kam von Next Nature, einer Bande niederländischer Futuristen, die sich vor allem mit Konsum in der Zukunft beschäftigen (siehe auch ihr Nano Supermarket). Well played!
Rayfish Footwear is a fictional company that offered personalized sneakers crafted from genetically modified stingray leather. The launch of the company website http://www.rayfish.com catalyzed a debate on emerging biotechnologies and the products it may bring us. It also questioned our consumptive relationship with animals and products in general.
While such discussions often remain abstract, we aimed to make them tangible in a concrete product you can love or hate.
The Rise and Fall or Rayfish Footwear
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Genetically Engineered Sneakers from Stingray Leather
Activists „liberate“ genetically modified Sneaker-Stingrays into the sea
Sony patents biometric/genetic DRM
Sony hat Antrag auf ein Patent für biometrisches DRM gestellt, das auch die Option auf einen DNA-Test enthält. Sony Music gibt’s demnächst nur noch für ‘nen Retina-Scan. Brave new World. Hier das PDF, Snip:
[A consumer electronic device] comprising a biometric sensor, wherein the user identification unit uniquely identifies the user includes using the biometric sensor to provide the metric by generating a digital identifier associated with a user biometric, wherein the biometric sensor is configured to sense the user biometric during normal operation of the device, wherein the biometric sensor is a fingerprint sensor, hand sensor, face recognition system, iris scanner, retinal scanner, voice pattern analyzer, or DNA analyzer.
PROCESS AND APPARATUS FOR AUTOMATICALLY IDENTIFYING USER OF CONSUMER ELECTRONICS (via Fefe)
Venus, the heterochromatic Chimera-Cat
Das hier ist Venus, eine heterochromatische Chimera-Katze. Die Dame hat ihre eigene Facebook-Seite und geht seit gestern dort steil, aus offentsichtlichen Gründen.
Chimera cat is one individual organism, but genetically its own fraternal twin. A chimera is typically formed from four parent cells (either two fertilized eggs, or two early embryos that have fused together). When the organism forms, the cells that had already begun to develop in the separate embryos keep their original phenotypes and appearances. This means that the resulting animal is a mixture of tissues and can look like this gorgeous (but bizarre) kitty. She also has complete heterochromia, a condition when the eyes are different colours.
Meet chimera cat (via Geekologie)
Activists „liberate“ genetically modified Sneaker-Stingrays into the sea
Ihr erinnert Euch an die völlig absurden Sneaker aus genetisch modifizierten Stachelrochen? Die Sneaker sind grade nochmal eine ganze Ecke absurder geworden: Am Wochenende sind Tierrechts-Aktivisten in die Bude von Rayfish Footwear eingebrochen, haben die Gen-Rochen befreit und ins Meer geschmissen. You can’t make this shit up!
Meine Originalquelle Dezeen hat sein Posting mit der Meldung aus irgendeinem Grund gelöscht und ich finde nur ein weiteres Posting auf Newsday.com, kann also sein, dass das alles Bullshit und ein Viral oder ähnliches ist. But I want to believe!
Hier das Video der Aktivisten:
Hier das Statement des CEOs von Rayfish Footwear:
RayFish Footwear, a family-run company based in Thailand, has been raising bio-customized stingrays for more than a decade with plans to turn them into leather shoes. By implanting synthetic genes based on color patterns of other animals into fetal stingrays, the company has been able to raise rays with predetermined, one-of-a-kind patterns.
An unknown group of animal rights activists broke into the company’s facilities Sunday, destroying equipment and sneakers and, according to a YouTube video documenting the break-in, releasing living stingrays into the ocean.
“Does it worry me that genetically engineered stingrays are now free in the ocean, free to be eaten by predators and free to interbreed with wild populations? Absolutely,“ RayFish CEO Raymond Ong said in a video response.
Animal rights activists raid RayFish Footwear
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Genetically Engineered Sneakers from Stingray Leather
How To design an Elvis-Mouse
Sehr schöne Arbeit von Koby Barhad, der ein Haar von Elvis auf Ebay kaufte, dieses von einem Gensequenzer analysieren lies und mit diesen Daten von einer anderen Firma eine Maus mit dem Gen-Material des King of Rock kreuzen lies. Die „Psyche“ der Gen-Elvis-Maus hat er dann mit an das Leben des King angepassten Maus-Käfigen auf Verhaltensweisen von Presley trainiert. OMG! Elvis-Mice!
The first online stop is Ebay where the designer bought a hair from Elvis Presley for $22. He sent it to a gene sequencing lab that advertise its services online. The scientists working at the lab are able to identify different behavioural traits (such as sociability, athletic performance, obesity or addiction) from one speck of hair. Koby then sent the data collected about the genes to another lab which is able to produce transgenic mice clones with parallel traits. The result is a mouse that is a genetically cloned model of Elvis.
In parallel to the works performed by these laboratories, Koby has been studying the scientific mouse model environments that have been used on lab mice over the past 100 years. The cages have been designed to study and manipulate psychological aspects of mice.
Koby then made his own cages. But his were intended to reconstruct some of the most influential moments in the life of Elvis. Each of these cages offers a specific environment that is designed to influence the psychology of the mouse and make it closer to Elvis’.
How to design an Elvis mouse, Seite zum Projekt: All that I am
DNA Font
Wissenschaftler in Harvard haben einen Font aus DNA-Strängen gebaut.
Scientists have developed a way to carve shapes from DNA canvases, including all the letters of the Roman alphabet, emoticons and an eagle’s head.
Bryan Wei, a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues make these shapes out of single strands of DNA just 42 letters long. Each strand is unique, and folds to form a rectangular tile. When mixed, neighbouring tiles stick to each other in a brick-wall pattern, and shorter boundary tiles lock the edges in place.
Genetically Engineered Sneakers from Stingray Leather
YT Direktsting, via Designboom
Rayfish Footwear bieten auf ihrer Website Schuhe aus dem Leder der Haut von angeblich genetisch modifizierten Stachelrochen an. DNA-Customized sozusagen, kostet auch nur 1500 Dollar. Sick.
at the rayfish footwear labs, they purportedly use the DNA which the have stored in their genetic library, to identify the genes responsible for color and pattern, implanting the synthetic ‘supergene’ cluster into fetal rays before they are born. as they grow and mature, they express the predetermined patterns on their skin. markings and coloration from dozens of varying species can be combined, resulting in an infinite variety of shoe designs.
using the brand’s online ‘grow sneaker tool’ you can select elements from dozens of animal patterns and remix them into something that nature itself could never have even imagined. working on the manufacturing principle of ‘one fish, one shoe’, rayfish footwear raises stingrays in their thai aquaculture facility where the family-run business creates these handcrafted shoes.
Mammoth to be cloned
Russische und japanische Wissenschaftler wollen innerhalb von fünf Jahren ein Mammut klonen, nachdem der Klimawandel im August Permafrost-Boden in Sibirien freigelegt hat und dort gut erhaltenes Knochenmark gefunden wurde. Jurassic Park next.
Within 5 years, a woolly mammoth will likely be cloned, according to scientists who have just recovered well-preserved bone marrow in a mammoth thigh bone. Japan’s Kyodo News first reported the find. […]
Russian scientist Semyon Grigoriev, acting director of the Sakha Republic’s mammoth museum, and colleagues are now analyzing the marrow, which they extracted from the mammoth’s femur, found in Siberian permafrost soil.
Grigoriev and his team, along with Japan’s Kinki University, have announced that they will launch a joint research project next year aimed at recreating the enormous mammal, which went extinct around 10,000 years ago.
WOOLLY MAMMOTH TO BE CLONED, Japan, Russia see chance to clone mammoth (Bild: Woolly mammoth [Mammuthus primigenius] von Mauricio Antón)
Mutant-Shortfilm: The Gate
THE GATE (CUTDOWN VERSION) from Joyrider Films on Vimeo.
Schicker Kurzfilm von Matt Westrup mit sehr schönem Creature Design: „95% of the human genome is composed of redundant gene sequences. They appear to have no known biological function. Could a chance event reactivate them? Genetic freaks wander the streets courtesy of irresponsible pharmaceutical companies.“
Building a Chickenosaurus
Wired hat einen schönen Artikel über Jack Horner, der Dinosaurier aus Hühnchen bauen will und dessen TED-Talk ich vor ein paar Wochen erst hier hatte.
So making a chicken egg hatch a baby dinosaur should really just be an issue of erasing what evolution has done to make a chicken. “There are 25 years of developmental biology underlying the work that makes Horner’s thought experiment possible,” says Carroll, now a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Every cell of a turkey carries the blueprints for making a tyrannosaurus, but the way the plans get read changes over time as the species evolves.
All Horner had to do was learn how to control the control genes. He had spent decades studying fossilized dinosaur embryos, tracking in minute detail the structural and cellular changes in their skeletons as they grew. Now he immersed himself in what biologists had figured out about the molecular control of those changes. Horner reads scientific papers the way he hunts for fossils—scanning a barren landscape for rare bits of useful material—and he has found enough of them to feel optimistic.
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Building a dinosaur from a chicken: Jack Horner on TED
Glow-In-The-Dark Cats vs AIDS
Genetisch veränderte Katzen, die im Dunkeln leuchten und Wissenschaftler bei der Bekämpfung von AIDS helfen. Ja, echt!
Genetically modified glow-in-the-dark cats not only make stylish, futuristic pets, but now provide insight into feline AIDS as well. The cats were injected with an antiviral gene from a rhesus macaque monkey that helps them resist feline AIDS, along with one that produces the fluorescent protein GFP. The latter gene, which is naturally produced by jellyfish, is regularly used in genetic engineering as a way to mark cells. If the cats aren’t glowing, then the AIDS-resisting gene might not have made it into the cell either.
PopSci: Glow-In-The-Dark Cats Could Provide Answers About AIDS, MSNBC: Green-glowing cats are new tool in AIDS research, hier die Website der Mayo Clinic, ist aber grade down. (via Martin)
Gummybears made with Human DNA
Wissenschaftler haben Hefe mit menschlicher DNA gekreuzt und daraus Gelatine gewonnen, die vielleicht demnächst die tierischen Zutaten in Süßigkeiten ersetzen könnten. Das Ergebnis wären Gummibärchen mit menschlicher DNA. w00t?!
This may sound like science fiction, yet a new technique for making gelatin from human DNA is attracting “increasing interest from research and industrial circles”, according to a new study by scientists from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. The paper, published recently in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, revealed that successful experiments had been carried out in which human genes were inserted into a strain of yeast to “grow” large amounts of recombinant (genetically engineered) human gelatin.
Gelatin has a long history of use as a gelling agent by the food industry – and, according to the journal’s publisher, the American Chemical Society, human-derived gelatin “could become a substitute for some of the 300,000 tons of animal-based gelatin produced annually for desserts, marshmallows, candy and innumerable other products”.
Do you fancy a jelly baby made from human DNA? (via Geekosystem, Bild: Head transplant gummy bears von ellajphillips)
Genome of Marijuana Sequenced and Published
Wissenschaftler haben die Gensequenz von Shit analysiert und veröffentlicht. Ab jetzt wird alles gut.
A Netherlands-based company called Medicinal Genomics has just announced the successful genetic sequencing of Cannabis sativa, the highly regulated annual plant that has been widely consumed for centuries as an intoxicant and a medicine. The plant, known in the vernacular as grass, tea, or mooster, has been legalized in 16 U.S. states for use as a medical treatment for various disorders over the last decade, and according to Medicinal Genomics’ Kevin McKernan, the legal market for the substance is currently growing by 50 percent every year.
Genome of Marijuana Sequenced and Published, Original-Meldung auf Nature.com: Weed sequenced. No really – weed. – August 18, 2011
Genetic Portraits
Sehr schicke Fotoserie von Ulric Collette, der Portraits von Familienmitgliedern vereint. Besonders spannend bei den subtilen Unterschieden von Zwillingen.
PORTRAITS GÉNÉTIQUES – Un travail de recherche photographique sur les ressemblances génétiques entre membres de même famille (via Petapixel)
