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Dogs Were Domesticated in Two Different Places

June 5, 2016 By Chen Lai Leave a Comment

According to a new study published this week in the Science magazine, dogs were domesticated in two different places. It seems that the early humans were so in love with the canids, that they approached them independently in two different areas of the world.

Researchers have been asking themselves “where was the first dog domesticated” for quite some time now. It seems that, finally, one team of scientists is answering this question. The good news is that it has two correct answers seeing as two distinct populations decided that it’s a good idea to domesticate the canids at around the same time.

Laurent Frantz, a professor at Oxford University, declared that the results were surprising because usually a domesticated species has a single origin. However, seeing as the majority of early farmers were using the dogs with the same purpose in mind, it’s not at all surprising.

The paper that was published on Thursday stresses the fact that the theory on which the study is based on is only an assumption, the team needing more time to analyze the evidence and historical facts.

The study was based on archaeological records and genetics. Among others, it included the complete genome of a dog that roamed Ireland approximately 4,800 years ago. They also had samples of DNA from 59 dogs from Europe that lived 3,000 to 14,000 years ago.

The ancient canid genetic material was compared to that of a sample of 685 modern day dogs. After analyzing the differences, the team concluded that dogs were probably domesticated in two different places.

The most probable scenario is that the humans from Asia decided to domesticate the wolves that hung around their farms, while those from the Near East or Europe did the same thing with another species of canids.

When the Asian populations decided to travel to the Near East, they took their dogs with them, thus combining the two different breeds. This is how the dog population that presents different genetic features as the Asian dogs came to be.

Frantz declared that many modern-day dogs presented genetic components from both species.

The theory that dogs were domesticated in two different places is not that farfetched. At the beginning of the year, a group of scientists managed to demonstrate that cats, too, were domesticated in both Asia and Europe independently.

Image source: Pixabay

Scientists Reconstructed the Black Death’s Genome

January 23, 2016 By Deborah Nielsen Leave a Comment

Using DNA recovered from the teeth of plague victims, the scientists have managed to reconstruct the genome of the plague.

The Black Death or the Great Plague is considered to be one of the most devastating pandemics in the history of mankind. According to historical records, in just 5 years, the disease managed to engulf all of Europe, killing approximately 50 percent of its population. And is seems that the disease is still lurking around somewhere. Scientists reconstructed the Black Death’s genome using samples from plague victims.

Only bits of information have transpired regarding the disease and how it was transmitted. Most of the historians and medical specialists believe that the disease was transmitted by rats which had plague-carrying fleas. But the recent research was successful in determining what caused the disease in the first place, but it failed to determine its origin.

That’s where the new study comes in. A team of researchers from the Max Planck institute have started an investigation regarding the source of the contagion. The research performed by the Department of Science of Human History is crucial in determining the chronology of the events that led to the most devastating outbreak man ever knew.

In order to study the disease, the scientists from Max Planck institute focused on the Great Plague of Marseilles, which, according to historical records, took place between 1720 and 1722. It is the researcher’s belief that the outbreak which ravaged Marseille had its roots in the Medieval Black Plague, the pandemic which killed almost half of Europe’s population.

The scientists working on the project theorized that the rats carrying the fleas which induced the plague might have been brought in the city by merchant ships, coming in from different corners of the world.

Using DNA sample collected from the plague victims, the scientists reconstructed the Black Plague’s genome. They were successful in tracing the lineage of this disease. According to their results, the outbreak that ravaged Marseilles during the 18^th century was a remnant of the Black Death, the plague outbreak which decimated Europe in the 14^th century.

Alexander Herbig, a computer scientists working on the project declared that through computer projections, the team of scientists was able to identify several extinct forms of the disease. Also, Kirsten Bos, the lead author of the study made a few comments regarding the disease. It was she who declared that the disease might have been hiding in Europe, tucked away under our noses.

Although the scientists at Jena were unable to pinpoint the origin of the disease, the project was successful in mapping several extinct strains of the disease, which are crucial in understanding how the disease evolved and why it killed so many people.

Photo credits:www.wikipedia.org

Whatsapp Announced End-To-End Encryption For Millions Of Android Users

November 18, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

After experiencing childhood in Soviet Ukraine in the 1980s, Jan Koum, founder of Whatsapp figured out how to mistrust the government and despise its reconnaissance. After he moved to the United States and made ultra-popular messaging framework decades later, he pledged that Whatsapp would never make snooping simple for anybody. Presently, Whatsapp is following through on that anti-snooping pledge at a phenomenal scale.

Whatsapp reported on Tuesday that it’s incorporating end-to-end encryption, a move up to its privacy assurances that makes it almost unthinkable for anybody to peruse clients’ messages—even the organization itself. Whatsapp will incorporate the open-source programming Textsecure, made by security concentrated non-profit Open Whisper Systems, which scrambles messages with a cryptographic key that just the client can get to and never leaves his or her gadget. The result is for all intents and purpose un-crackable encryption for countless phones and tablets that have Whatsapp installed — by a few measures the world’s biggest ever implementation of this standard of encryption in a messaging service.

Moxie Marlinspike, Open Whisper System’s inventor and a well known software developer in the cryptography group said, “Whatsapp is incorporating Textsecure into the most prominent messaging application on the planet, where folks exchange billions of messages a day. I believe this is the biggest end-to-end encryption deployment ever.”

Textsecure has already been silently encrypting Whatsapp messages between Android gadgets for a week. The new encryption plan implies Whatsapp messages will now fly out the distance to the beneficiaries’ gadget before being decrypted, instead of simply being encoded between the client’s gadget and Whatsapp’s server. The change is almost undetectable, however Marlinspike says Whatsapp will soon add a peculiarity to permit clients to check each others’ identities on the basis of their cryptographic key, a resistance against man-in-the-center attacks that interrupt conversations. Marlinspike said, “Regular clients won’t spot the difference. It’s completely frictionless.”

In its beginning stage, however, Whatsapp’s messaging encryption is constrained to Android, and doesn’t yet apply to group messages, images or video messages. Marlinspike says that Whatsapp intends to expand its Textsecure rollout into other gimmicks and other platforms, including Apple’s iOS, soon. He wouldn’t point out a particular time period, and Whatsapp staff members declined to remark on the new encryption characteristics. Marlinspike says, the Textsecure execution has been in the works for 6 months, since soon after Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook last February.

So, for now, just Whatsapp’s Android users alone symbolize a huge new client base for end-to-end encrypted messages: Whatsapp’s page in the Google Play store records more than 500 million downloads. Formerly, Textsecure had been installed on just around 10 million devices running the Cyanogen mod variant of Android and around 500,000 different gadgets.

The only encrypted messaging framework that analyzes in size is Apple’s iMessage, which likewise claims of using a rendition of end-to-end encryption. As compared to Textsecure, nonetheless, Apple’s iMessage security has a few genuine weaknesses. iMessage doesn’t track which gadgets’ cryptographic keys are connected with a certain client, so Apple could basically make another key the client wasn’t known of to begin interrupting his or her messages. Also, numerous clients innocently back up their stored iMessages to Apple’s iCloud, which renders any end-to-end encryption debatable. Furthermore, dissimilar to Textsecure, iMessage doesn’t utilize an element known as “forward secrecy” that makes a new encryption key for each message sent. This implies that any individual who gathers a client’s encoded messages and effectively breaks a client’s key can unscramble all their conversations, not only the one message that uses that key.

Whatsapp’s rollout of such solid encryption to countless clients may be a disliked move among governments around the globe, whose scrutiny it could make significantly more troublesome. No doubt, Whatsapp’s client base is global, with extensive populaces of clients in Europe and India. In any case Whatsapp organizer Jan Koum has been vocal about his resistance to chipping in with government snooping. “I grew up in a society where all that you did was snooping on, recorded, squealed on,” he told Wired UK recently. “No one ought to have the right to listen snoop, or you turn into a totalitarian state — the sort of state I fled as a kid to come to this country where you have democracy and opportunity of discourse. Our objective is to secure it.”

Ancient Russian Skeleton Uncovered- Report Says

November 7, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

Researchers extracted DNA from a man who lives approximately 37,000 years ago in Russia. The DNA offered some really significant information regarding the genetic history of Europeans.

The most important thing that DNA reveals is the early interbreeding of man with the Neanderthals. Neanderthals lived in Europe nearly 54,000 years ago.

Experts make use of the DNA from the left tibia of that man in order to classify the genome of the most ancient man of Europe.

The scientists named that man “Kostenki”. Kostenki is the name of a Russian village from where the skeleton was discovered around 60 years ago. It makes easier for scientists to figure out when Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbreed.

Moreover, it offers a few evidence of interaction between people of Middle East and European hunter gathers. This proof indicates towards the exact time when man lived in Kostenki village that is 36,200 to 38,700 years ago.

Till that time the people of western Eurasia broke up with the people of East Asia. Afterwards they left for different continents, as per the reports of genetic makeup.

This study permits experts to solve the mystery if modern human populations. This skeleton is the second oldest genome ever found of the modern man.

Ramus Nielsen, Professor of computational biology stated that scientists are aware of the fact that this individual is connected to modern Europeans. They also know that a large number of genetic structures of Europe are associated with the time period of this skeleton.

Study Reveals; Skin Eating Fungus can Annihilate Salamander

November 1, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

Researchers found out a fungus while examining the massive decline in Netherland’s fire salamanders.

The fungus which basically belongs to East Asia traveled all the way to Europe. The researchers suggest that Bs reached Europe with the help of imported amphibians. It is originally from the family of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) .It was the chief reason behind the extinction of amphibians such as frogs, salamanders and toads. The fungus has nearly removed 40 percent of the amphibians in some particular areas.

An Martel, a researcher of Ghent University along with his colleagues analyzed around 5,000 species of amphibians. They accumulated these species from four different continents. The chief purpose of this study is to discover the danger Bs infection create for amphibians.

The study revealed that Bs infection is extremely deadly for salamanders. They have killed a large amount of salamanders in the past several years. However, it is not that hazardous for other amphibians like frog, caecilians and toads. They are commonly found in the Eastern North America and Pacific Northwest.

An Martel, the lead author informed that majority of the species which interact with Bs die in a short time period of two weeks. The mortality rate in salamanders increase up to 99 percent soon after this infection.

Unfortunately, the experts have failed to form any obstacle in order to stop the growth of this fungus in Europe.

The report is published in October 31^st edition of Journal Science.

Fatal Fungal Infection Threatening Salamanders Might Spreading Through Pet Trade

October 30, 2014 By Germaine Hicks 1 Comment

The scientists revealed Thursday, a rising infection, which is similar to the one that has caused the extinction of hundreds of frog and toad species worldwide is now killing salamanders in Europe and spreading towards the United States, with catastrophic effects.

The study is published in the ‘Science’ journal. An international team of 27 researchers said, “globalization and a lack of biosecurity” along with the importation of the fire-bellied newt in the pet trade with Asia are the major causes of the disease.

Dr. An Martel of Ghent University in Belgium and a lead researcher said, “Both Europe and the United States needed to start screening amphibians in the pet trade. When animals are traded they should be screened. It should involve the world.”

Vance T. Vredenburg of San Francisco State University, one of the scientists who has sounded the alarm about the extinction of hundreds of frog and toad species worldwide over the last four decades said, “Other scientists agreed. We need to pay attention to this study.”

“We need to think about biosecurity not just in terms of humans and food that we eat and crops that we grow, but about functioning ecosystems,” he added.

The co-author of the 2008 study was Dr. Vredenburg, who described the extinction of frog species as a prime example of what some scientists call the 6th extinction, a mass death of species going on now and caused by humans.

The culprit, in the case of the frog disappearance is a fungus known as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, and it was not identified, until decades, even after the extinctions had begun. The researchers are still unaware that from where it was originated.

Dr. Vredenburg said, the effects of that fungus, symbolize “the worst case in recorded history of a single pathogen affecting vertebrates,” causing an “extinction rate 40,000 times higher than in the last 350 million years for amphibians.”

Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, the fungus killing salamanders and newts, is of the same genus, and also kills animals by infecting the skin. However, this time, “We found it early enough to have a chance. The Titanic knows there’s an iceberg out there,” Dr. Vredenburg said.

The researchers revealed that the United States, having the greatest biodiversity of salamanders in the world, is still intact by the infection, and many of the species are already threatened or endangered. The animals are seldom noticed, but are an integral part of forest and aquatic ecosystems, as predators and prey.

The decline in the salamanders species could eventually affect climate change as the proliferation of some of the creatures that they used to eat could cause the greater release of carbon into the atmosphere.

Dr. Martel and his fellow colleagues first identified the fungus a year ago, and described its role in the deaths of fire salamanders in Europe. In the recent study, they investigated its origin, presence around the world and the vulnerability of different species to it.

The researchers experimentally infected 44 species of salamanders and newts (salamanders live on land, newts in the water) in the laboratory,. They wrote, “41 of them rapidly died.” It did not affect frogs and toads.

Moreover, numerous Asian species were defiant, and molecular biology studies of DNA suggested that there may be a reservoir of the fungus in Asian newts popular in the aquarium trade.

The evidence of the fungus was found in amphibians in Vietnam, Thailand and Japan, where the animals were not affected, and in the Netherlands and Belgium, where it killed numerous populations. Dr. Martel identified the shipping of live newts for the aquarium trade as the way the fungus spread.

Further investigation of the study was needed to prove that the pet trade was the culprit in the disease’s spread, since it was possible that the fungus was wind-borne, or spread by migrating birds, James Collins, at Arizona State University, who has studied the spread of fungal disease in frogs said.

Although, it was apparent that the fungus and the lack of screening in the shipping of live animals posed a major threat to salamanders in the United States and Europe, Dr. Collins said. Disease screening exists for threats to agriculture, he said, but not for animals in the pet or aquarium trade.

He further added, “International and federal agencies such as the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can act, when something like Ebola emerges. We need similar efforts here too.”

The University of Maryland’s Karen R. Lips, one of the co-authors of the Science paper met Thursday with Fish and Wildlife Officials to talk about the new fungus. She said that there were now bills in Congress that could enable the Fish and Wildlife Service to screen for infected wildlife. “If Congress wanted to, they could take action,” she said.

Ancient Europeans Were Lactose Intolerant for Thousands of Years

October 22, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

The recent study revealed, when agriculture flourished across Europe, the practitioners remain lactose intolerant while the consumption of milk and dairy products from domestic animals became trite. The researchers from University College Dublin studied the ancient DNA extracted from the skulls that dated from 5700 BC to 800 BC and revealed that the Europeans carried the genes for lactose intolerance. The findings of the study illustrating the genetic changes that lag behind the cultural shifts is published in Nature Communications Journal on 21^st October.

Daniel Bradley, co-author of the study told the Washington Post, “The genome do appear to shift as new technologies come around. You can’t look at this and think that farming and metallurgy are technologies that come into the culture by osmosis. They come with people. Genomes and technology migrate together.”

Besides the new insights they gathered concerning the genetic makeup of the ancient Europeans, the researchers of the study also contributed to the procedural methodological development of extracting useable ancient DNA by learning that the skull’s petrous bones are perfect for such analyses. Ron Pinhasi, co-author of the study from the UCD Earth Institute and UCD School of Archaeology, University College Dublin stated, “The increased percentage DNA yield from the petrous bones exceeded those from other bones by up to 183-fold. This gave us anywhere between 12% and almost 90% human DNA in our samples compared to somewhere between 0% and 20% obtained from teeth, fingers and rib bones.”

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