Scientists have engineered the first ever 'semi-synthetic' organisms, by breeding E. coli bacteria with an expanded, six-letter genetic code.

While every living thing on Earth is formed according to a DNA code made up of four bases (represented by the letters G, T, C and A), these modified E. coli carry an entirely new type of DNA, with two additional DNA bases, X and Y, nestled in their genetic code.

The team, led by Floyd Romesberg from the Scripps Research Institute in California, engineered synthetic nucleotides - molecules that serve as the building blocks of DNA and RNA - to create an additional base pair, and they've successfully inserted this into the E. coli's genetic code.

Now we have the world's first semi-synthetic organism, with a genetic code made up of two natural base pairs and an additional 'alien' base pair, and Romesberg and his team suspect that this is just the beginning for this new form of life.

"With the virtually unrestricted ability to maintain increased information, the optimised semi-synthetic organism now provides a suitable platform [to] ... create organisms with wholly unnatural attributes and traits not found elsewhere in nature,"the researchers report.

"This semi-synthetic organism constitutes a stable form of semi-synthetic life, and lays the foundation for efforts to impart life with new forms and functions."

Back in 2014, the team announced that they had successfully engineered a synthetic DNA base pair - made from molecules referred to as X and Y - and it could be inserted into a living organism.

Since then, they've been working on getting their modified E. coli bacteria to not only take the synthetic base pair into their DNA code, but hold onto it for their entire lifespan.

Initially, the engineered bacteria were weak and sickly, and would die soon after they received their new base pair, because they couldn't hold onto it as they divided.

"Your genome isn't just stable for a day,"says Romesberg. "Your genome has to be stable for the scale of your lifetime. If the semisynthetic organism is going to really be an organism, it has to be able to stably maintain that information."

Over the next couple of years, the team devised three methods to engineer a new version of the E. coli bacteria that would hold onto their new base pair indefinitely, allowing them to live normal, healthy lives.

Semi-synthetic life

The first step was to build a better version of a tool called a nucleotide transporter, which transports pieces of the synthetic base pair into the bacteria's DNA, and inserts it into the right place in the genetic code.

"The transporter was used in the 2014 study, but it made the semisynthetic organism very sick,"explains one of the team, Yorke Zhang.

Once they'd altered the transporter to be less toxic, the bacteria no longer had an adverse reaction to it.

Next, they changed the molecule they'd originally used to make the Y base, and found that it could be more easily recognised by enzymes in the bacteria that synthesise DNA molecules during DNA replication.

Finally, the team used the revolutionary gene-editing tool, CRISPR-Cas9 to engineer E. coli that don't register the X and Y molecules as a foreign invader.

The researchers now report that the engineered E. coli are healthy, more autonomous, and able to store the increased information of the new synthetic base pair indefinitely.

"We've made this semisynthetic organism more life-like,"said Romesberg.

If all of this is sounding slightly terrifying to you, there's been plenty of concernaround the potential impact that this kind of technology could have.

Back in 2014, Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, a Canadian organisation that aims to address the socioeconomic and ecological issues surrounding new technologies, told the New York Times:

"The arrival of this unprecedented 'alien' life form could in time have far-reaching ethical, legal, and regulatory implications. While synthetic biologists invent new ways to monkey with the fundamentals of life, governments haven't even been able to cobble together the basics of oversight, assessment or regulation for this surging field."

And that was when the bacteria were barely even functioning.

But Romesberg says there's no need for concern just yet, because for one, the synthetic base pair is useless. It can't be read and processed into something of value by the bacteria - it's just a proof-of-concept that we can get a life form to take on 'alien' bases and keep them.

The next step would be to insert a base pair that is actually readable, and then the bacteria could really do something with it.

The other reason we don't need to be freaking out, says Romesberg, is that these molecules have not been designed to work at all in complex organisms, and seeing as they're like nothing found in nature, there's little chance that this could get wildly out of hand.

"[E]volution works by starting with something close, and then changing what it can do in small steps,"Romesberg told Ian Sample at The Guardian.

"Our X and Y are unlike natural DNA, so nature has nothing close to start with. We have shown many times that when you do not provide X and Y, the cells die, every time."

Time will tell if he's right, but there's no question that the team is going to continue improving on the technique in the hopes of engineering bacteria that can produce new kinds of proteins that can be used in the medicines and materials of the future.

As Romesberg asserts, "This will blow open what we can do with proteins."

The research has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Last March, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth after spending nearly one year in space. During his 340 days aboard the International Space Station, or ISS, scientists were also observing Scott's identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, while he hung out on Earth. 

Because Scott and Mark have the same DNA, scientists have had the rare opportunity to take a closer look at the changes in the human body that might be connected to spaceflight by comparing changes in Scott's genes with changes in Mark's over the same time period.

Scientists already know that living in a weightless environment for six months or less can have negative effects on the human body, like stretching your spine, shrinking your muscles, or messing up your sleep cycle. But the effects of long-term exposure to space are less well-known. The results from NASA's Twin Study, which were first released at the end of January, can be used to prepare for future deep-space missions. 

Researchers took biological samples from each twin before, during, and after Scott's space mission, and they are still combing through the data. It might be some time before the full results of the Twin Study are published due to the amount and the sensitivity of the information, some of which the twins may want to keep private, according to Nature.

Some of the most interesting results so far

• Scott's telomeres got longer, then shrunk back to normal. Scott's telomeres, or the caps at the end of chromosomes, became longer than his brother's while he was in space, but quickly returned to their normal length once he returned home."That is exactly the opposite of what we thought,” Susan Bailey, a radiation biologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, told Nature. That's because shorter telomeres are generally associated with getting older. Scientists are still studying what this means, but it could be linked to more exercise and eating fewer calories while in space, according to NASA. 
• Scott's methylation levels decreased. The level of methylation, a process that can change the activity of a DNA segment without changing its sequence, decreased in Scott's white blood cells during flight and increased in Mark half-way through the study. "These results could indicate genes that are more sensitive to a changing environment whether on Earth or in space,"according to NASA.
• The twins hosted different gut bacteria. Scott and Mark hosted different gut bacteria, or the "bugs" that aid in digestion, throughout the year-long study. This was probably a result of their different diets and environments, NASA writes.
• Scientists are looking for what they're calling a "space gene." By sequencing the RNA in the twins' white blood cells, researchers found more than 200,000 RNA molecules that were expressed differently between the brothers. It is normal for twins to have unique mutations in their genome, but scientists are "looking closer to see if a 'space gene'  could have been activated while Scott was in space," according to NASA.

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In the name of science, former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly recently shoved himself into the top of a rocket, accelerated to 17,500 mph, and fell around Earth for 340 days — nearly an entire year.

The lack of gravity, radiation exposure, Kelly's diet, and other facts of life in orbit affected his body in significant ways — including, as NASA is learning now, even his genetic blueprint.

The Twin Study, which is still in progress, uses Scott Kelly's identical twin brother and fellow former astronaut, Mark Kelly, to unmask the subtle but important effects of long-duration space travel on the human body.

Business Insider's Dina Spector reported on some of the most fascinating preliminary results of the study, which NASA released at the end of January, including bodily changes caused by the possible existence of a "space gene."

Here are eight other biological oddities that happen to your body if you're in space for a year.

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Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn explains the phenomenon of apparent aging that happens overnight. When a person experiences a massively stressful event, they can appear to have aged several years. This is a direct result of the cells not being able to rejuvenate properly.

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Genetic data collected from roughly 770,000 tubes of spit are helping researchers get a better idea of the migration patterns that took place once immigrants moved to North America. 

Published Tuesday in Nature Communications, the study used Ancestry's DNA test along with information users provided about their family trees to find more than 60 different genetic communities that sprang up in the US from the 1800s to the 1900s.

Before this point, we had a good idea of what pre-colonial migration patterns looked like from a genetic perspective, but once European settlers got into the mix, things got a bit more complicated.

But this report changes things. "Because we have so much more genetic data than ever before, and we have all these supporting family trees showing where they came from, we are able to not only able to come up with the structure of North America, we are able to annotate that structure with the people they’re descended from," Cathy Ball, chief scientific officer at Ancestry, told Business Insider.

Ancestry conducted the research alongside a history professor from Harvard. This helped the team corroborate historical observations in a way they hadn't been able to before with genetics. 

"It's an unprecedented use of the two datasets," Jake Byrnes, one of the study's authors and a manager of population genetics at AncestryDNA, told Business Insider.

One of the most notable findings was that the genetic communities were the same from Maine to Louisiana. Historically, that shift happened when the Acadians, descendants of French colonists, moved to Louisiana — another French colony — following the French and Indian War. 

Here are two maps of those groups, plotted out in clusters. (These show what the groups looked like around the 1850s to 1900s, not what they'd look like today.)

Something that surprised the researchers is the amount of structure there was at that time — with pretty clear clusters of Scandinavians up in the Midwest sticking together even after immigrating to the US.

Ancestry plans to integrate the results of the study into its test results, Ball said. That's expected to launch sometime this spring. 

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Although not ready yet, powerful gene editing tools may one day be used on human embryos, eggs and sperm to remove genes that cause inherited diseases, according to a report by U.S. scientists and ethicists released on Tuesday.

The report from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy of Medicine said scientific advances make gene editing in human reproductive cells "a realistic possibility that deserves serious consideration.”

The statement signals a softening in approach over the use of the technology known as CRISPR-Cas9, which has opened up new frontiers in genetic medicine because of its ability to modify genes quickly and efficiently.

In December 2015, scientists and ethicists at an international meeting held at the NAS in Washington said it would be "irresponsible" to use gene editing technology in human embryos for therapeutic purposes, such as to correct genetic diseases, until safety and efficacy issues are resolved.

The latest NAS report now says clinical trials for genome editing of the human germline could be permitted, "but only for serious conditions under stringent oversight."

CRISPR-Cas9 works as a type of molecular scissors that can selectively trim away unwanted parts of the genome, and replace it with new stretches of DNA.

Genome editing is already being planned for use in clinical trials of people to correct diseases caused by a single gene mutation, such as sickle cell disease. But these therapies affect only the patient.

The concern is over the use of the technology in human reproductive cells or early embryos because the changes would be passed along to offspring.

Research using the powerful technique is plowing ahead even as researchers from the University of California and the Broad Institute battle for control over the CRISPR patent.

Although gene editing of human reproductive cells to correct inherited diseases "must be approached with caution, caution does not mean prohibition," the committee said in a statement.

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A startup that wants to build a blood test to screen for cancer just raised more than $900 million.

Grail was created in January of last year by the gene-sequencing giant Illumina, and it was originally funded by its former parent company and a group of Silicon Valley investors including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Google Ventures.

Now, it's pulling in more big names from the pharmaceutical, tech, and healthcare industries:

• Johnson & Johnson Innovation, which led the round along with ARCH Venture Partners
• Amazon
• Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Celgene
• McKesson Ventures
• Merck
• Tencent Holdings Limited
• Varian Medical Systems

This is just the initial close, Grail said in a release. It's still expecting to raise more than $1 billion in its series B after a second close with life-sciences institutional investors.

The initial funding is already the largest to date for a medical diagnostics company, though it's not alone in the field. On Wednesday, Freenome, another startup that wants to build out a blood test that screens for the earliest signs of cancer, raised $65 million in a series A round. And from 2015 to 2016, medical diagnostics companies raised roughly $1.8 billion.

The idea behind a cancer-screening test is to identify the tiny bits of cancer DNA that are hanging out in our blood but are now undetectable. If Grail or Freenome are successful, the companies would be the first to pull off a cancer-detecting blood test that works proactively. The concept is similar to liquid biopsy tests, which use blood samples to sequences genetic information in that blood to figure out how tumors are responding to a certain cancer therapy.

With one sample of blood (the same you might have drawn at the doctor's to check your cholesterol or blood-sugar levels), Grail's plan is to sequence and screen for those bits with the hope that it will help catch cancer before it starts to be a full-blown problem.

But getting a test that will be accurate will take a lot of time and require huge clinical trials. Fast Company reported the company was seeking to launch trial in the United Kingdom with as many as 500,000 people. Another trial, called the Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas study, launched in December.

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By now, I should have a crystal-clear picture of my ancestry.

Both 23andMe and AncestryDNA have done a good job of confirming my Scandinavian origins.

So when I decided to try National Geographic's new Geno 2.0 test, I expected my results to be roughly the same.

National Geographic's Genographic Project has been around since 2005, making it one of the earliest genetics tests. A few months ago, it switched over to Helix's next-generation sequencing platform for its Geno 2.0 test.

What I got in my inbox looked nothing like what I'd seen before.

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A box containing my Genographic Project Geno 2.0 test arrived at my office in December, and I couldn't wait to check it out.

Inside the sleeve was a booklet and a box from Helix. A company spun off from the sequencing giant Illumina, Helix is positioning itself as the app store for your DNA. Once I sent in the tube of spit containing my DNA, Helix could apply that information to other tests down the line — not just the National Geographic one I was trying.

Source: Business Insider

The box was unlike other DNA tests I've tried. The combination of geometric shapes and bright boxes made it fun, and when I lifted up the pink box I found a helpful tip written underneath: "Having trouble salivating? Think about lemons!"

The life insurance business is all about betting on how long you're likely to live. Now, one company is turning to the hot, but still unproven, field of epigenetics to try to make that bet more scientific.

GWG Life, which buys life insurance policies from people who don't want or can't afford them anymore, last month started requiring those people to turn over a saliva sample. Its quarry: patterns of DNA methylation. In layman's terms, it analyzes the samples to see whether certain genes are switched on or off at hundreds of specific spots.

In theory, that could help the company predict your life span. In theory.

"Is that more predictive than whether someone smokes or drinks or has a hobby of alligator wrestling? I don't see that," said Mark Rothstein, a bioethicist at the University of Louisville who studies the use of genetic and epigenetic information.

GWG is just the latest in a rush of entrepreneurs peering into DNA for clues about how fast people are aging.

Several companies have started marketing mail-order tests to measure the lengths of people's telomeres. (Those are the caps of DNA at the end of chromosomes; frayed telomeres have been linked to disease risk.) A California biotech called Zymo Research last year launched a service that uses DNA methylation analysis to help researchers determine the biological (as opposed to the chronological) age of a sample.

Then there's GWG, which hopes that its model will not only boost its own business but transform the entire life insurance industry.

"We just think that we may have stumbled on something that has some pretty broad and important applications for a much larger industry," GWG chief executive Jon Sabes said.

Based in Minneapolis, GWG operates in most states and bought 315 life insurance policies last year. Its sales pitch: We'll pay you up front for your policy. We'll pay your premiums for the rest of your life. And when you die, we get the insurance money.

To make a profit, it's crucial for companies like GWG that operate in this somewhat macabre niche to accurately predict how long each policy holder is likely to live. (They don't want to pay out too much up front to people who are likely to stay alive for many years, postponing the company's payday.)

The problem: They're bad at such predictions.

"For the past 10, 15, 20 years, they've been very poor at judging how long people are living. People have lived a lot longer than the [companies that] bought those policies thought they would," said Steve Weisbart, an economist at the Insurance Information Institute who studies life insurance.

Sabes was convinced there must be a better way. He tasked his team with finding an "InsUber"— a technology that would do for life insurance what the ride-sharing app has done to transportation.

That quest led Sabes to Steve Horvath, the UCLA biostatistician behind a predictive method now known as "Horvath's clock." Horvath reported in 2013 that he had developed a statistical model to estimate the biological age of tissue from noting whether chemical tags known as methyl groups are attached at 353 spots in a person's DNA. The model was seen in the scientific community as intriguing — but still preliminary.

Last September, Horvath coauthored a meta-analysis evaluating a handful of epigenetic clocks (some developed in his lab) to see how well they predicted longevity. They identified one algorithm as the best of the bunch — and GWG quickly swooped in to option it.

A key developer of that algorithm and the lead author of the meta-analysis was Brian Chen, a trained epidemiologist who has worked closely with Horvath. Chen recently signed on with GWG. The company isn't using the saliva samples it's collecting to set prices yet; it's still refining how to deploy its prediction models.

"What we're trying to do is like precision medicine, but 'precision insurance' — and so you get more customized, personalized rates," Chen said.

Several independent scientists questioned whether the technology is ready for prime time.

"I would doubt whether it gives a prediction of life expectancy … that is by itself accurate to any useful extent," said John Greally, a geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who has studied DNA methylation.

As for Horvath, he told STAT by email that he's "not a businessman and cannot comment on the commercial utility" of his work.

Sabes and Chen acknowledged that the algorithm isn't perfect. But Sabes said it doesn't have to be.

"The level of accuracy, so to speak, has to be at such a high level before it has economic value in most applications," Sabes said. But in the life insurance industry, he said, "if you can just be a little bit better, it can have a pretty big implication, because we work in the law of averages."

GWG currently tries to predict life expectancy by looking at policy holders' medical records, reviewing their prescription drugs, and conducting phone interviews. (It plans to continue to take these factors into account even after it integrates epigenetics.) To get life insurance in the first place, consumers often need to fill out questionnaires about their family history, or submit to a urine or blood test.

Laws at the federal level and in most states prevent health insurers and employers from requiring genetic information or discriminating on that basis. (A bill moving through Congress, however, would let employers demand workers' genetic test results, with financial penalties for those who refused.)

The bar is much lower for life insurers, which if challenged must simply convince state regulators that there's a plausible scientific basis for using a certain factor in underwriting. So, for instance, if a customer's medical records show she tested positive for a gene variant linked to breast and ovarian cancer, the insurer could take that into account when setting premiums.

In the past month, GWG has collected saliva samples using a sponge from about 40 of the people from whom it's bought policies, Sabes said. Only a few refused.

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LONDON (AP) — Britain's Newcastle University says its scientists have received a license to create babies using DNA from three people, the first time such approval has been granted.

The license was granted by the country's fertility regulator on Thursday, according to the university.

In December, British officials approved the "cautious use" of the techniques, which are intended to prevent women from passing on fatal genetic diseases to their children. The new procedures fix problems linked to mitochondria, the energy-producing structures outside a cell's nucleus. Faulty mitochondria can result in conditions including muscular dystrophy and major organ failure.

Last year, U.S.-based doctors announced they had created the world's first baby using such techniques, after traveling to Mexico to perform the methods, which have not been approved in the United States.

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A genetics testing company is launching a new database where patients can contribute information that could be used to research certain diseases. 

Invitae, the company behind the Patient Insights Network, hopes that by having patients input their own information, it could create a better starting point for researchers looking for potential treatments to diseases. 

"What we're trying to do is generate high-quality data that's available to advocacy groups," Invitae CEO Sean George told Business Insider.

As part of the genome network, patients can enter in genetic data they might already have (not necessarily collected from an Invitae test), answer questions about their medical history, and the database will link up with information from the patients' electronic health records. 

The PIN is a little different from other approaches that tend to capture specific data for one project and often don't directly involve patients.

"It's really never been done before," Bonnie Addario, founder of the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (or ALCF) told Business Insider. The ALCF is setting up its own database with the help of Invitae and hopes to pull in data from its existing patient network as well as other lung cancer organizations. Addario said she plans to keep her database as an open-source platform. "It puts patients in the driver's seat," she said.

For now, the PIN will be open to people who have a family or personal history of cancer. Later this year, Invitae hopes to add other conditions.

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As of April 6, anyone who buys a $199 spit-in-a-tube genetics test from 23andMe will automatically learn if they're at an increased risk for developing certain diseases including Parkinson's and late-onset Alzheimer's.

Until then, the only way to get these kinds of results involved seeing a specialist (and, often, a genetics counselor).

But how much can you really learn from one of these tests? We spoke with Robert Klitzman, a bioethicist and psychiatry professor at Columbia University and the author of the recent book "Am I My Genes?" to find out.

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In most cases, they can't tell you whether you'll develop a specific disease — only whether you're at a higher risk.

You carry two copies of all of your genes — one from each of your parents. 23andMe's latest test is designed to tell you if your chances of developing a disease are higher than those of the average person. To do that, it scans your DNA for genetic mutations, or tweaks in your genetic material, that have been linked with specific diseases. If it finds one, it adds that information to your profile.

Before you freak out, you should know that having a mutation does not necessarily mean you will develop that illness. It simply means you're more likely to get it than someone without that genetic tweak. In other words, "you could have the mutation and not get it, or you could not have the mutation and get it," says Klitzman.

If 23andMe wanted to tell you whether you'd actually get a disease, they'd have to account for a whole lot more than just your genes.

Genetics play a big role in whether we develop certain diseases, but so do our environment and our behavior. Everything from what we eat to where we're raised and how often we exercise can affect our risk of developing diseases like cancer and obesity, for example.

"Research suggests that some 50% of all depression cases are linked with genetics," Klitzman says. "The other 50% is environment. So if you're just looking at the genetic factors, you're missing everything else."

For psychological illnesses like depression or anxiety, the picture is even blurrier.

Some of our traits, like the color of our eyes, are connected to one or two genes. But this isn't the case with psychiatric characteristics like intelligence or illnesses like depression. Identifying the genetic links to those illnesses is far more complex, so don't expect your test to tell you anything about your risk of mental illness.

"For things like intelligence there's easily 100 different genes involved," Klitzman says. "So the notion that you're going to test for a few of them and that's going to be predictive, that's not reflecting the complexity of genetics and of the mind and brain."

The board of a luxury New York City apartment complex raised concerns about "dog racism" in 2015, when it started requiring residents to test their dogs' DNA before granting the animals permission to reside in the building.

The board reasoned that certain dog breeds are aggressive by nature. (The complex has a list of banned breeds, which includes Pomeranians, according to DNAinfo.)

Dog DNA tests claim they can tell you about your pet's behavior, estimate how big a puppy will get, and indicate whether it will play nice with children or other pets.

Having experimented with testing my own DNA, I decided to find out more about my pup. In honor of National Pet Day, here's how it went:

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This is Izzie. When I adopted her over a decade ago, I was told she was a mixed-breed golden retriever.

She was only a year old at the time, so no one knew how big she'd get (most goldens reach their full size, about 60 lbs., around age 2) or how she'd behave. Our veterinarian told us she was likely a (smallish) golden retriever mutt.

But Izzie stayed roughly the same size, and we stayed curious about her heritage. Now 15 years old, she's friendly and loyal.

Most people get dog DNA tests so they can find out what kind of behavioral traits to expect — golden retrievers tend to be loyal and good with kids, for example, while dalmatians are super active and generally make good guard dogs.

Source: American Kennel Club

When I got the chance to test her DNA, I seized it. There were several options, but I picked the Wisdom Panel DNA test developed by MARS Veterinary, the world's largest pet healthcare provider.

At $79.99, the kit isn't cheap.

Forget about that new "Star Wars" trailer— the most important thing that happened last week was the release of Kendrick Lamar's newest album, titled "DAMN." 

If you're not already enjoying it, you're in luck: It's available to stream on everything from Apple Music to Spotify, and you can buy it digitally or physically if you're so inclined. 

But before you do any of that, you should check out the latest video for the song "DNA"— it's from the new album (the second track) and it's a relentless, repetitive song. That's not intended as a slight; the song uses repetition to hammer out line after line of storytelling.

The new video for the song puts Lamar in the position of a prisoner being interrogated by none other than acclaimed actor Don Cheadle:

Though the video starts with Cheadle in the position of power, the situation soon flips to one where Cheadle is channeling the lyrics to "DNA" directly at Lamar — a bizarre situation for Cheadle, no doubt, as he was tasked with rapidly rhyming Lamar's own song back at him for the filming of the video. 

The two meet in the middle, dueting for a bit before Lamar's escape.

Check out the full video right here:

And don't miss that full album! It's really good!

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NOW WATCH: Nobody had a bigger impact on music this year than Kendrick Lamar

The INSIDER Summary:

• Kendrick Lamar's video for DNA is the second video off of his new album, "DAMN."
• The music video gained over 7 million views in less than 24 hours.
• The video stars Don Cheadle; the actor lip syncs to Kendrick's first verse in the piece. 
• Commenters on Reddit and YouTube have speculated the symbolism behind the video. Many are alluding to Kendrick's messages of the complexity of the black experience in America. Others are picking up ties to the movie, "The Day The Earth Stood Still" staring Keanu Reeves.

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I've sent my spit off for more genetics tests than anyone else I know.

These tests analyzed my saliva sample to find out a host of different things that my DNA can tell me about my ancestry and health. 

Genetic testing companies have proprietary sets of data and various ways of analyzing information, so each one I tried offered a distinc approach to how they presented my results and what information they gave me. One provided details about my great-grand relatives, while others listed how much Neanderthal DNA I have. 

Every so often, someone asks me which test I recommend. And my answer boils down to one question: What do you want to get out of the test? 

Let's compare the three direct-to-consumer ones I've tried out: AncestryDNA, 23andMe and National Geographic's Geno 2.0 test. 

23andMe

23andMe currently offers two versions of its tests: The $199 version comes with health and ancestry components, whereas the $99 version just has the ancestry test.

The health reports can tell you information about your physical traits, (like if you're likely to have dimples or curly hair), wellness (how well you metabolize caffeine or if you're a sprinter), and carrier status for certain genetic mutations. In April, the FDA began allowing 23andMe to provide reports on a person's genetic health risk for certain diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. In total, the test now has more than 74 reports. 

To analyze your DNA, 23andMe uses a technique called genotyping. Humans have 3 billion base pairs of DNA in our genome — that's a lot of information to sift through — so genotyping technology looks for specific parts of DNA and pieces them together.

With 23andMe's ancestry reports, users have access to information about their ancestry composition (which geographic regions your genes most closely align with), haplogroups (genetic populations that share a common ancestor), and Neanderthal ancestry. They also get access to something called a DNA Relatives tool, which 23andMe users can opt into to connect with other users and find out whether they have relatives in the system.

Verdict: If you're looking at this test as a science experiment, using it as a way to get involved in research, or viewing it as a chance to learn about your genetic health risks, then this is the test for you. And if you just want to know your ancestry percentages and how much Neanderthal variants you have, the $99 version is a good bet. If you do opt for the full test, however, there are some considerations patient groups and genetic counselors would like users to take into account. 

If you're primarily interested in retracing your ancestry, though, read on.

AncestryDNA

Ancestry's test, as its name suggests, is all about family histories and genealogy. You won't find health and wellness reports in its $99 test, but you will find information about where your family comes from and how that lineage connects you to potential ancestors. Like 23andMe, Ancestry uses genotyping technology to analyze your DNA. The service also helps you link up your DNA test to a self-reported family tree. 

There's a lot to discover within that ancestry data — for example, I was matched up with ancestors dating back to the 18th century, and could explore how I was connected to them. 

If you simply want to know what percent Scandinavian you are, Ancestry's site makes it easy to focus on those numbers. Those who want to dig deep into your family tree can do that as well. I would definitely consider purchasing this test for a relative who enjoys researching family history.

Verdict: If the idea of tracing your family tree through the generations and connecting with distant relatives gets you excited — but you're less interested in receiving health information — this is the test for you. 

National Geographic

National Geographic has an ancestry test called Geno 2.0.

The test — which currently costs $149.95 but originally was $199.95— is different from the others in that it uses next-generation sequencing instead of the genotyping technology that AncestryDNA and 23andMe rely on. 

Unlike genotyping, which just looks for specific parts of DNA and pieces them together, next-generation sequencing looks at only the protein-encoding parts of your genome — called the exome. The next-generation sequencing analyzes roughly 2% of those 3 billion base pairs. The additional information this technique picks up could lead to new, more specific genetic testing features in the future, especially as our knowledge of the genome and exome continues to grow.

Based on next-generation sequencing, National Geographic's test provides three ancestry reports.

• Regional, which tells you where your ancestors came from more than 500 years ago. This didn't get into as many specifics in my case as AncestryDNA and 23andMe's tests did. 
• Deep, which shows your ancestors' migration patterns thousands of years ago.
• Hominin ancestry, which tells you how much DNA you have in common with a Neanderthal.

The verdict: For what you get, the test doesn't have nearly the range that other ancestry tests have. And it's more expensive than the other two $99 options, though National Geographic says the revenue funds nonprofit "conservation, exploration, research, and education" efforts.

Other ancestry tests:

There are, of course, other tests I have yet to try.

MyHeritage, for example, has a DNA test that's currently going for $79 (originally $99). Its tests, like Ancestry's, are focused on building family connections and trees. 

Others, like FamilyTree DNA (which offers tests from $59) are also geared toward those wanting to find genetic links to relatives.

Conclusion: Each company has its own methods, algorithms, and data, and the reports can differ a bit. Because the three main direct-to-consumer genetics tests come in at around the same price point, you should go with the one that will answer your most pressing questions.

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A child in Europe has become the second individual ever to receive a commercial gene therapy, according to GlaxoSmithKline.

The treatment, called Strimvelis, can provide an outright cure for a rare inherited immune deficiency by revising a patient's genetic makeup (see “Gene Therapy’s First Out-and-Out Cure Is Here”).

Gene therapy has been widely explored in experimental medical studies, but its commercial potential is largely untested. Prior to now, only a single other individual, also from Europe, had ever accessed gene therapy to treat an inherited ailment outside of a clinical trial. That individual received a different drug, Glybera, in 2015.

On Tuesday, GlaxoSmithKline spokesperson Anna Padula said the company treated its first patient in March, nearly a year after Strimvelis was approved for sale in Europe in May 2016. The company declined to provide the nationality of the patient or say how the treatment was paid for.

In March, GlaxoSmithKline’s project leader for Strimvelis, Jonathan Appleby, said difficulty organizing cross-border European reimbursement for Strimvelis, which is offered at a single center in Milan, Italy, was to blame for the delay in commercialization.

The commercial fate of Strimvelis is being closely watched as several new gene-therapy treatments edge toward the market, including in the U.S., where Spark Therapeutics plans to seek approval for a blindness treatment this year.

Gene therapies are more complex than ordinary pills, and the diseases they treat affect few people. But sky-high prices have raised questions about whether patients can access them. Strimvelis, used to treat an ultra-rare immune deficiency, has a list price of 594,000 euros, or $648,000, making it one of the most expensive drugs available (see “Gene-Therapy Cure Has Money-Back Guarantee”).

Gene therapy has had a rocky start in the market. Last month, the biotech company UniQure said it would pull its gene therapy Glybera from the market in Europe after treating just a single patient. The company, which got a regulatory green light in Europe in 2012, blamed lack of demand. Its drug cost $1 million and had become known as the world’s most expensive medicine.

After Glybera, Strimvelis is only the second gene therapy for an inherited disease ever to be approved for sale. “It’s definitely a bad sign for patients” that sorting out reimbursement took so long, says Casey Quinn, a health economist at the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation who specializes in European drug pricing. “It remains to be seen whether this represents some kind of watershed, or it will take just as long to go from one [patient] to two?”

Strimvelis treats a rare disease called severe combined immunodeficiency due to adenosine deaminase deficiency, or ADA-SCID, which leaves babies without a fully functioning immune system and vulnerable to infections.

It is what’s known as an “ex vivo” gene therapy, in which a patient’s bone marrow cells are removed and modified outside the body with an engineered virus that contains a working ADA gene. The repaired cells are then returned to the patient via an infusion drip into a vein.

Lucia Monaco, chief scientific officer of Fondazione Telethon, the research organization that originally developed the therapy and sold rights to GlaxoSmithKline, says administering Strimvelis requires a “specialized environment.”

That is why GlaxoSmithKline decided to offer the treatment only in Italy at the Ospedale San Raffaele in Milan. The company says children across the 28 countries of the European Union should have access to Strimvelis under cross-border health-care provisions, with their home countries picking up the cost.

ADA-SCID affects only an estimated 15 children per year in Europe, and GlaxoSmithKline never expected Strimvelis to be a big money-maker. What’s uncertain is whether companies can successfully commercialize hospital-based gene-therapy treatments for rare diseases at all.

In fact, instead of seeking GlaxoSmithKline’s therapy, some ADA-SCID patients have instead been joining clinical trials at hospitals offering alternative treatments.  One study, of a different ADA-SCID gene therapy, is under way at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Susan Walsh, director of the U.K.-based charity Primary Immunodeficiency UK, says the clinical studies at Great Ormond Street Hospital “have had good success and mean that patients can have therapy nearer home rather than traveling to Italy.”

For patients in the U.S. and Canada, gene therapy for ADA-SCID has also been available through a clinical trial at the University of California, Los Angeles. That treatment has been licensed by London-based Orchard Therapeutics, a startup staffed by former GlaxoSmithKline executives.

Appleby says GlaxoSmithKline is working on cryogenically freezing and transporting patients’ cells so the company could provide Strimvelis more widely in Europe. That way, patients wouldn’t have to travel to Milan for treatment. The company hopes that will happen within the next two years, he says.

Appleby says he expects several patients from around Europe to be treated with Strimvelis during 2017.

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Based on early research involving the storage of movies and documents in DNA, Microsoft is developing an apparatus that uses biology to replace tape drives, researchers at the company say.

Computer architects at Microsoft Research say the company has formalized a goal of having an operational storage system based on DNA working inside a data center toward the end of this decade. The aim is a “proto-commercial system in three years storing some amount of data on DNA in one of our data centers, for at least a boutique application,” says Doug Carmean, a partner architect at Microsoft Research. He describes the eventual device as the size of a large, 1970s-era Xerox copier.

Internally, Microsoft harbors the even more ambitious goal of replacing tape drives, a common format used for archiving information. “We hope to get it branded as ‘Your Storage with DNA,’” says Carmean.

The plans signal how seriously some tech companies are taking the seemingly strange idea of saving videos, photos, or valuable documents in the same molecule our genes are made of. The reason, says Victor Zhirnov, chief scientist of the Semiconductor Research Corporation, is that efforts to shrink computer memory are hitting physical limits, but DNA can store data at incredible densities.

Formatted in DNA, every movie ever made would fit inside a volume smaller than a sugar cube. 

“DNA is the densest known storage medium in the universe, just based on the laws of physics. That is the reason why people are looking into this,” says Zhirnov. “And the problem we are solving is the exponential growth of stored information.” 

Last July, Microsoft publicly announced it had stored 200 megabytes of data in DNA strands, including a music video, setting a record. The work, described in a paper published in March on the pre-print server Biorxiv, has been led by Carmean and Karin Strauss, both of Microsoft Research, and the University of Washington laboratory of computer scientist Luis Ceze.

Major obstacles to a practical storage system remain. Converting digital bits into DNA code (made up of chains of nucleotides labeled A, G, C, and T) remains laborious and expensive because of the chemical process used to manufacture DNA strands. In its demonstration project, Microsoft used 13,448,372 unique pieces of DNA. Experts say buying that much material on the open market would cost $800,000.

“The main issue with DNA storage is the cost,” says Yaniv Erlich, a professor at Columbia University who earlier this year reported a novel approach to DNA data storage. “So the main question is whether Microsoft solved this problem.”

The main issue with DNA storage is the cost, so the main question is whether Microsoft solved this problem.

Based on their publication, Erlich says, “I did not see any progress towards this goal, but maybe they have something in their pipeline.”

According to Microsoft, the cost of DNA storage needs to fall by a factor of 10,000 before it becomes widely adopted. While many experts say that’s unlikely, Microsoft believes such advances could occur if the computer industry demands them.

Automating the process of writing digital data into DNA will also be critical. Based on the several weeks it took to carry out their experiment, Carmean estimates that the rate of moving data into DNA was only 400 bytes per second. Microsoft says that needs to increase to 100 megabytes per second.

Reading the data out is easier. That was done using a high-speed sequencing machine, including to recall specific parts of the files, analogous to random-access memory on a computer. Even a two-fold improvement in DNA reading would make that aspect of the system efficient enough for commercial use, Microsoft thinks.   

Because writing and retrieving data into DNA is slow, any early use of the technology will be restricted to special situations. That could include data that needs to be archived for legal or regulatory reasons, such as police body-cam video or medical records.

Microsoft currently works with Twist Bioscience, a DNA manufacturer located in San Francisco. Twist is one of a number of newly formed companies trying to improve DNA production, a list that now includes startups DNAScript, Nuclera Nucleics, Evonetix, Molecular Assemblies, Catalog DNA, Helixworks, and a spin-off of Oxford Nanopore called Genome Foundry.

One exciting possibility being pursued by some of the startups is to replace the 40-year-old chemical process used to make DNA with one that employs enzymes, as our own bodies do. Jean Bolot, scientific director of Technicolor Research, in Los Altos, says it is funding such work at Harvard University, in the laboratory of George Church, the genomics expert.

“I am confident we will have results to talk about this year,” says Bolot, who adds that his company has been in discussions with movie studios about how they might employ DNA storage. He says half of all films made before 1951 are already lost because they were stored on celluloid. Now new formats, like high-definition video and virtual reality, are stretching studios’ ability to preserve their work, he says.

Zhirnov says computer chip makers are taking DNA seriously because there are physical limits to how much data can be stored in conventional media, like tapes or hard drives. His organization, which is funded by Microsoft, Intel, and others to perform applied research, began taking a closer look at DNA starting in 2013. He says semiconductor experts who believed DNA was too “soft” were surprised to learn that it lasts a hundred to a thousand times longer than a silicon device. The molecule is so stable that it is frequently recovered from mammoth bones and ancient human remains.

But its most important feature is density. DNA can hold 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (aka a quintillion) bytes of information in a cubic millimeter. “Density is driving everything,” says Zhirnov.

A spokesperson for Microsoft Research said the company could not confirm “specifics on a product plan” at this time. Inside the company, the DNA storage idea is apparently gaining adherents but is not yet universally accepted. “Our internal people believe us, but not the tape storage people,” says Carmean, formerly a top chip designer at Intel.  

In addition to being dense and durable, DNA has a further advantage that’s not often mentioned—its extreme relevance to the human species. Think of those old floppy disks you can’t read anymore or clay tablets with indecipherable hieroglyphs. Unlike such media, DNA probably won’t ever go out of style.

“We’ll always be reading DNA as long as we are human,” says Carmean.

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A startup that wants to build a blood test to screen for cancer just merged with a Hong Kong-based company that's also looking at early cancer detection. 

Grail and Cirina are combining, the companies announced Wednesday. Terms of the merger weren't given.

Cirina was cofounded by Dennis Lo, a professor of chemical pathology, who is known for his work on noninvasive prenatal testing. The test uses a sample of blood to screen for cell-free DNA that can check for chromosomal problems including Down syndrome. 

The hope is to possibly translate that work into other disease areas, including early cancer detection. Lo is joining Grail's scientific advisory board as part of the merger. The move also will help Grail one day commercialize in Asia. 

Since it got its start in 2016, Grail has raised more than $1 billion, from the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, along with big names from the pharmaceutical, tech, and healthcare industries, including Johnson & Johnson Innovation, ARCH Venture Partners, Amazon, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, and Merck.

The idea behind a cancer-screening test is to identify the tiny bits of cancer DNA that are hanging out in our blood but are now undetectable. If companies like Grail are successful, they would be the first to pull off a cancer-detecting blood test that works proactively. The concept is similar to liquid biopsy tests, which use blood samples to sequence genetic information in that blood to figure out how tumors are responding to a certain cancer therapy.

With one sample of blood (the same you might have drawn at the doctor's to check your cholesterol or blood-sugar levels), Grail's plan is to sequence and screen for those bits with the hope that it will help catch cancer before it starts to be a full-blown problem.

Getting to that point won't be easy, and Grail has started recruiting for large clincal trials, including one that plans to enroll 120,000 women. 

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