Study says near extinction threatened people 70,000 years ago

I find this type of stuff fascinating...



image from National Geographic

WASHINGTON - Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement. "Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."

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National Geographic- The Genographic Project

IBM- The Genographic Project

On the Horizon, Personalized Depression Drugs

The Human Genome should be providing more of this type of information...

Imagine that you are depressed and see a psychiatrist who explains that you have clinical depression and would benefit from an antidepressant. So far, so good. But then the doctor tells you there is a 60 percent chance that you’ll feel better with this antidepressant and that it could take as long as four to six weeks to find out, during which time you’ll probably have some side effects from the drug.

I have just described the state-of-the-art pharmacologic treatment of major depression in 2007. Don’t get me wrong; we have very effective and safe treatments for a broad array of psychiatric disorders. But in everyday clinical practice, we have little ability to predict which specific treatment will work best for you.

Laura is a case in point. A successful management consultant in her late 30s, she sought help for lifelong depression. Her treatment began with four weeks of the antidepressant Lexapro, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or S.S.R.I., without any effect. Next, I switched her to Zoloft, another S.S.R.I., since the chance of response to another member of the same drug family is about 60 percent. Again, no response. Then we moved on to Wellbutrin, an entirely different type of antidepressant, but this didn’t work either. Laura was now ready to call it quits, and who could blame her?

After nearly three months, I had still not found an effective treatment for her. Then she came in one day and said her father had recently revealed that he had been depressed and had done well on Prozac, another S.S.R.I., and she wondered if she could try it. Within three weeks, she felt markedly better, and the symptoms of her depression began to melt away.

Instead of the hit-or-miss approach I had to use with Laura, it will soon be possible for a psychiatrist to biologically personalize treatments. With a simple blood test, the doctor will be able to characterize a patient’s unique genetic profile, determining what biological type of depression the patient has and which antidepressant is likely to work best.

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Scientist Gets Own Personal Genome Map

I want one!!!...

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who helped discover the molecular structure of DNA has become the first person to receive his own personal genome map.

The map, a breakdown of his DNA that shows illnesses he is predisposed to contracting, is the first step in making the sequencing of individual human genomes quick, affordable and a routine part of medical care, according to researchers.

"I knew I was risking possible anxiety when I saw it," said 79-year-old James Watson, who was presented the map during a ceremony at Baylor College of Medicine. "But it's much more that if I don't sleep at night it's due to thinking about Iraq rather than about my genome."

Watson was chosen for the project because of his contributions to the field, and the map was completed after he submitted a blood sample.

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Googling brain proteins with 3-D goggles

Cool new technology...

RICHLAND, Wash. — The Allen Brain Atlas, a genome-wide map of the mouse brain on the Internet, has been hailed as “Google of the brain.” The atlas now has a companion or the brain’s working molecules, a sort of pop-up book of the proteins, or proteome map, that those genes express.

The protein map is “the first to apply quantitative proteomics to imaging,” said Richard D. Smith, Battelle Fellow at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who led the mapping effort with Desmond Smith of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.
“Proteins are the lead actors, the most important part of the picture,” PNNL’s Smith said. “They are the molecules that do the work of the cells.”

Fine-tuning such proteome maps will enable comparisons of healthy brains with others whose protein portraits look different. Contrasts in location and abundance of proteins may display the earliest detectable stages of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases. They hope such diseases might be curbed if caught and treated early enough.

The National Institutes of Health-funded study, performed at DOE’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on PNNL’s campus, is published in the advance online edition of Genome Research and featured in current Nature online Neuroscience Gateway (http://www.brainatlas.org). PNNL staff scientists Vladislav A. Petyuk, Wei-Jun Qian and UCLA’s Mark Chin are co-lead authors.

To produce the map, the team characterized center-brain slices as several dozen 1 millimeter cubes, or “voxels,” to “show us where proteins appear in the brain and where they vary in abundance,” PNNL’s Smith said. “We labeled all the proteins so we would have reference points so we know we’re looking at the same protein between different parts of the brain and from one mouse to another.”

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