• After that whole horsemeat scandal, Burger King has announced that it will be testing its burger patties for non-beef DNA, including horse, pork, and lamb. So far, it has been testing specifically for horse DNA and hasn't found any in its beef, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's free of other kinds of animals... [url]
• The US FDA has officially adopted DNA barcoding to detect seafood mislabeling. Think you're eating "white tuna" sushi? Maybe you're actually eating "escolar" which has been banned in Japan since 1977 because the Japanese government is concerned about its "toxicity". [url]
• A laser "isotope ratio-meter," which was originally designed to study carbon isotope levels on Mars, is now being used to test the purity of honey. This kind of laser analysis can even match the honey to the flowers of a specific geographic region. Honey is expensive, so it's often adulterated with cheaper ingredients, like sugar, malt sweeteners, corn or rice syrup, to name just a few honey substitutes. [url]

• A recent project encoded all of Shakespeare's sonnets (along with some other text and images) on DNA, putting 5.2 million bits of information (including some error correction) into some tangible goo. It costs roughly $12,400 to encode a megabyte of data and $220 to read it, and since sequencing DNA will never become obsolete (and is getting cheaper to do), DNA storage could be an excellent archiving technology. [url]
• A milligram of DNA *could* contain all the text every book in the Library of Congress -- and all digital data that humans have ever created could be stored on a handful of DNA. We'd just have to make sure never to forget how to translate the digitized data from DNA back into a comprehensible form. [url]
• Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) created the first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell in 2010 -- and included a genetic watermark in the bacteria's DNA. The DNA watermark encoded some extra data such as the names of 46 researchers who worked on the project, as well as a URL and some famous quotations. [url]

• Printing at about 100,000 dots per inch in full color has been achieved by researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. As a proof of principle, a test image of Lenna was formed on a silicon wafer covered with a nanoscale metal coating. [url]
• Amazon is starting to offer archival storage for just $0.01 per gigabyte per month. This Glacier storage service is aimed at replacing old tape archives and geographically distinct facilities, but retrieving the data isn't so convenient: data retrieval requests can take hours (hence the name Glacier) and there's also a retrieval fee after you've accessed more than 5% of your data vault in a month. [url]
• Geneticists in Boston have stored a 5.27-megabit book (containing 53,246 words, 11 JPG image files and a JavaScript program) on DNA. This is the highest density of non-biological data ever encoded by DNA, and a gram of material could store 455 exabytes of data. [url]

The importance of this case is highlighted by the amicus curiae brief filed by James Watson, co-discoverer with Francis Crick of the structure of DNA, for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 (along with Maurice Wilkins for related work.) Watson makes his views plain from the start:

what the Court misses, I fear, is the fundamentally unique nature of the human gene. Simply put, no other molecule can store the information necessary to create and propagate life the way DNA does. It is a chemical entity, but DNA’s importance flows from its ability to encode and transmit the instructions for creating humans. Life’s instructions ought not be controlled by legal monopolies created at the whim of Congress or the courts.

Aside from his position as one of the people that discovered the structure of DNA in the first place, Watson has another reason why his views on patenting genes carry some weight. As he relates in a footnote to his submission to the court:

Amusingly, after I gave my first presentation of our DNA structure in June 1953, Leó Szilárd, the Hungarian physicist and inventor of the nuclear chain reaction, asked whether I would patent the structure. That, of course, was out of the question.

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Companies like 23andMe are already offering people the ability to find out about a range of important genes very simply, and for relatively low cost:

The concern is that someone might learn of that same risk [for breast cancer] for $499 by spitting in a tube and hitting the "breast cancer result" button at 23andMe, a company that will test saliva samples for diseases as well as for DNA ancestry. No one should take an action, such as prophylactic surgery without confirming results from 23andMe, which reports on only the three most common mutations.

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The UK Biobank addresses this issue in its FAQ:

Will access be allowed for purposes other than health-related research?

The UK Biobank Resource has been established for health-related research that is in the public interest. Any attempts to use it for other purposes will be resisted. So, for example, insurance companies and employers will not be allowed to access the Resource to look at information, samples or test results for any identifiable participants. Nor will UK Biobank allow access by the police, security services or other law enforcement agencies, unless it is forced to do so by the courts.

And once they have a sample, they might well decide to sequence its DNA to help identify the likely hair, eye and skin color of the person concerned – and perhaps much else besides, as gene analysis techniques advance, including highly-sensitive areas such as mental and reproductive health.

Investing your DNA in a biobank might seem like a noble act today, but who knows what the payback will be in years to come?

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Even focusing on the DNA profile alone, the analogy to fingerprints is blind to the nature of DNA. Courts are well aware that—[r]ecent studies have begun to question the notion that junk DNA does not contain useful genetic programming material and that an intense debate on this subject is now taking place in scientific and legal communities. ... Like the DNA laws of almost every other state and federal law, the DNA Act is silent as to how long these specimens and samples may be kept, and it is reasonable to expect they will be preserved long into the future, when it may be possible to extract even more personal and private information than is now the case. ... [T]he Act places few restrictions on the law enforcement uses to which such information may be put. This raises questions both about the kind of personal and private information that may be derived from the DNA samples in the DOJ's possession, and the uses of that biometric data as scientific developments increase the type and amount of information that can be extracted from it. For example, commentators have discussed the potential for research to identify genetic causes of antisocial behavior that might be used to justify various crime control measures. Fingerprinting presents no comparable threat to privacy.

It is undisputed that Myriad’s claimed isolated DNAs exist in a distinctive chemical form--as distinctive chemical molecules--from DNAs in the human body, i.e., native DNA. Native DNA exists in the body as one of forty-six large, contiguous DNA molecules. Each DNA molecule is itself an integral part of a larger structural complex, a chromosome. In each chromosome, the DNA molecule is packaged around histone proteins into a structure called chromatin, which in turn is packaged into the chromosomal structure....

Isolated DNA, in contrast, is a free-standing portion of a native DNA molecule, frequently a single gene. Isolated DNA has been cleaved (i.e., had covalent bonds in its backbone chemically severed) or synthesized to consist of just a fraction of a naturally occurring DNA molecule.

In this case, the claimed isolated DNA molecules do not exist as in nature within a physical mixture to be purified. They have to be chemically cleaved from their chemical combination with other genetic materials. In other words, in nature, isolated DNAs are covalently bonded to such other materials. Thus, when cleaved, an isolated DNA molecule is not a purified form of a natural material, but a distinct chemical entity. In fact, some forms of isolated DNA require no purification at all, because DNAs can be chemically synthesized directly as isolated molecules.

At the outset, it is important to identify the inventive contribution underlying Myriad’s patents. Myriad was not the first to map a BRCA gene to its chromosomal location. That discovery was made by a team of researchers led by Dr. Mary-Claire King.... And Myriad did not invent a new method of nucleotide sequencing. Instead, it applied known sequencing techniques to identify the nucleotide order of the BRCA genes. Myriad’s discovery of those sequences entailed difficult work, and the identified sequences have had important applications in the fight against breast cancer. But the discovery of the sequences is an unprotectable fact, just like Dr. King’s discovery of the chromosomal location of the BRCA1 gene.

Myriad is claiming the genes themselves, which appear in nature on the chromosomes of living human beings. The only material change made to those genes from their natural state is the change that is necessarily incidental to the extraction of the genes from the environment in which they are found in nature. While the process of extraction is no doubt difficult, and may itself be patentable, the isolated genes are not materially different from the native genes. In this respect, the genes are analogous to the “new mineral discovered in the earth,” or the “new plant found in the wild” that the Supreme Court referred to in Chakrabarty. It may be very difficult to extract the newly found mineral or to find, extract, and propagate the newly discovered plant. But that does not make those naturally occurring items the products of invention.

The same is true for human genes.

Perhaps it’s not surprising then to see some of the toughest proposed legislation coming from the New England hotbed of genetics research, specifically in Massachusetts and Vermont, where some bold politicians and health policy think tanks introduced in January a Genetic Bill of Rights for citizens, proposing that individuals should have property rights over their own DNA.

Their legislative proposals would go even further than Alaska’s statute. They would not only mandate consent for the collection and use of DNA but also spell out that individuals have a right to privacy with respect to their genetic information. They would also prohibit entities like auto insurers and money lenders from misusing DNA info. The statute recognizes that DNA has “a fair market value” and carves out only limited exceptions for violating someone else’s DNA property rights: those working under judicial order, such as police investigators. Intentional violations of the statute would carry both prison time and civil fines.

“To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.”

According to the chief of police the privacy of civilians is not as important as tracking down criminals, stating that society is "too careful" and that "if you want to make the world safer, there's a price to pay." In a statement released later he added that safety is partly paid for by reducing privacy.

Of course, one could argue that it's not the privacy-concerned people being "too careful," but that there are some people that are so obsessed with security that they're willing to have others pay the price in giving up their privacy. Such a database will not prevent crime, since most crimes don't originate from rational risk-calculation. Any errors in the database could also have disastrous effects on people's lives in the case of a mistaken identity for instance, not to mention the implications of potential function creep. It really is a big price to pay for a small piece of security in one of the safest places in the world.

After a few hours of outrage from civilians and politicians, the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security released a statement that they do not support the plan and stated that it was not the first time such ideas have been suggested. It is probably not the last time, either.

Some 34,000-year-old bacteria have been found in suspended animation -- trapped in a salt crystal. When 34,000 years old you are, look as good, you will not. [url]

During the Archaean eon, it looks like the Earth's atmosphere had increasing oxygen levels -- and a huge growth of new kinds of bacteria. It's actually pretty neat what we can learn about the biosphere a couple billion years ago by just looking at modern DNA samples. [url]

Mrs. T is the first discovered female pterodactyl, confirming that the male pterodactyls had large head crests. And Mr. T pities the fool who thought the female pterodactyls were the ones who had the head crests. [url]

A 30,000-year-old pinkie bone from a little girl has DNA that suggests there's another link in the chain of human ancestors. Or it could be another branch on our family tree.... Either way, someday she'll be cloned, and we'll see what she looked like. [url]

Close relatives are genetically similar. Parents, children, and siblings share, on average, at least half of their DNA. Not surprisingly, similar DNA generates similar DNA profiles, which are the stripped-down numerical records stored in DNA databases. So, even if a crime-scene sample doesn't exactly match any existing offender profile in CODIS, police may still find a partial match--an incomplete DNA match between the forensic evidence and a known offender. If this happens, police know the offender who partially matches the evidence did not himself leave the sample at the crime scene, but--and this is where it gets interesting--it's very possible one of his relatives did. After screening those relatives with follow-up DNA testing, police may have a new lead.

With these new techniques, relatives are effectively included in the database through their genetic similarity to a profiled offender. Think of it this way: If you've never been arrested, your DNA profile shouldn't be in CODIS. But if your brother has been arrested and is profiled in CODIS, then whenever these new searches are used, you, too, may be searchable--and targeted for investigation--through the database. These searches render offenders' relatives effectively searchable in CODIS, even though the relatives themselves have never been officially included.

California and Colorado are known to use familial search, and these states have at least publicly announced their new policies. But new survey results reveal that many other states also have familial-search or partial-match policies that went unannounced and were never even publicly debated. Most of these policies exist only in internal laboratory manuals, if they are written down at all. Nebraska, for instance, authorizes familial search in an internal lab manual. This policy decision evidently occurred without public discourse and has thus drawn virtually no public attention.

In fact, no state has specifically authorized familial search through legislation. Only Maryland has addressed familial search by statute--and it banned the practice.

"What we have not done so far has been achieved. I thank all those students who have helped it become a reality. We are doing this through open source drug discovery (OSDD) and anyone across the world is free to join the effort," [Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) chief Samir] Bramhachari told IANS....

"OSDD is a completely new formula across the world. Here we are making all our progress available to public. Anyone can take advantage and develop a drug based on our research. The aim here is not patents but drug discovery for a neglected disease," said Rajesh Gokhle, a senior scientist associated with the project.

The commission had received evidence from a former police superintendent that it was now the norm to arrest offenders for everything possible. "It is apparently understood by serving police officers that one of the reasons, if not the reason, for the change in practice is so that the DNA of the offender can be obtained," said Montgomery, adding that it would be a matter of very great concern if this was now a widespread practice.