J. Craig Venter, the scientist who led the project to sequence the first human genome, is getting into the elite healthcare business.

Venter's company Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI) has announced plans to launch a medical testing service that includes full genome sequencing, medical imaging, and machine learning to provide "the most complete picture of individual health,"the company said a statement.

But it won't be cheap — each checkup at the new venture, called Health Nucleus, would cost $25,000 or $50,000 a pop, depending on the number of people being tested and the kind of testing they seek, Venter said, according to Xconomy.

The first Health Nucleus is opening in San Diego, at HLI’s headquarters, and others are scheduled to open in other US and international cities in 2016.

Here are the services it plans to provide:

• Whole human genome sequencing will give a readout of a person's full set of 6 billion DNA "letter" pairs (most DNA tests cover less than 2% of your genome, according to HLI)
• Microbiome sequencing will measure the combined DNA of the microbes that live in and on the human body
• Metabolome characterization will measure the unique chemical fingerprints of the processes that occur in living cells
• A comprehensive body MRI scan will screen for anything abnormal and provide a baseline picture of health
• Other customized laboratory tests and screenings

According to HLI, "An experienced team of clinicians, geneticists and bioinformaticians curate these data and produce an integrated report that can inform clients' care."

But some people are skeptical of the testing service's motives. New York Times science journalist Carl Zimmer tweeted:

(A false positive is a test result that incorrectly finds a medical condition that is not actually present.)

Venter called the comment "very naive," (though he didn't say why), adding only that "Technology has advanced in the last 10 years." 

Zimmer and others also pointed out that with all that genetic data, you might want some genetic counseling on what to do with it. For example, if you find out you're at risk of a certain disease — should you seek costly (and possibly unncessary) preventative treatment?

In addition, many of Health Nucleus' tests are not FDA-approved, since they haven't yet been tested. According to Xconomy, HLI was able to get around this by operating as a clinical research project subject to basic Institutional Research Board (IRB) protocols.

But Venter is optimistic about the venture's future.

"The Health Nucleus is our opportunity to lead the way to genomic health, enabling individuals and their physicians to pivot towards a more proactive, preventative and predictive healthcare future," he said in a statement.

As long as they can afford it, that is.

CHECK OUT: Experts just released a rough guide for advising parents about whether they should sequence their kids' DNA

NOW READ: We're about to enter a new era in medicine

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

Ever wonder why you only seem to catch a cold when it's, well, cold out?

Of course, germs — and not the weather — are the real culprits here: You have to come into contact with the bugs that cause illness to come down with one.

But there are several reasons why we may actually be more likely to get sick this time of year, and frigid temperatures are just one of them.

Our genes change with the seasons, just like the weather

A recent study found that as much as a quarter of our DNA actually changes with the seasons: During the winter months, the study found, our bodies pump up the levels of many of the genes linked with inflammation, triggering the tell-tale signs of swelling and discomfort that our bodies use to protect us from colds and the flu.

In the summer, on the other hand, an altogether different set of genes get more highly expressed, including some that help regulate our blood sugar, potentially curbing cravings and helping us burn off excess fat. 

Many parts of our immune system, which kicks into action to fend off an infection or cold, shift too.

The researchers combed through data from previous studies looking at people's DNA until they had information on roughly 1,000 people living in six different countries: Australia, Germany, the US, the UK, Iceland, and Gambia, a small West African country between Senegal and Guinea-Bisseau.

This way, they could get a look at people's genes and how they changed (if they did at all) over time and according to their location and exposure to sunlight.

They found that in Europe, the expression of inflammatory genes got ramped up during the winter months. But in Gambia, where there is virtually no winter, these inflammatory genes were amplified in the rainy months, when mosquito populations are at their peak and the risk of malaria is the highest.

Previous research has found similar seasonal changes in various components of the immune system. A study from last year, for example, found gene expression in red blood cells shifted with the seasons. 

Frigid temperatures force us indoors

When it's miserable out, we head inside.

Some research suggests that both the cold air from outdoors as well as the dry air from indoors may play a role in protecting the aerosol droplets we sneeze and cough into the air, allowing them to more easily spread from one sick person to another. 

Plus, stuffy, unventilated indoor air could make it easier for colds to spread; a 2011 study of crowded college dorms in China found that in rooms with poorer ventilation, colds were more likely to thrive.

Cold weather might help some germs prosper

Some research from the National Institutes of Health suggests that in cold temperatures, the outer shell of flu virus particles get tougher and more hardy so that it survives longer and could be easier to spread.  

And being outside when it's chilly may make it harder for the hairs and mucus in our noses to protect us from germs. A study of mice published last year found that rhinovirus, which causes the common cold, replicates more easily in cooler temperatures than at warmer ones.

So bundle up this winter, and keep in mind that your immune system is doing the best it can to keep you healthy.

UP NEXT: A geneticist says any new parent should 'roll their child on floor of the New York subway' — here's why

SEE ALSO: There's a fascinating reason why it feels like it gets harder to sleep as you age

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Video shot from a helicopter perfectly captures how cold it is in New York right now

Dogs have been man's best friend for thousands of years, but where that friendship first began has always been up in the air.

Most researchers agree that domestic dogs evolved from gray wolves, though theories on where modern canines emerged has varied from Europe and Siberia.

Now a new study adds Central Asia to that list, specifically modern-day Nepal and Mongolia.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at the genetic data of 4,676 purebred and mixed-breed dogs and 549 "village" dogs, feral and stray dogs that live near humans, from 38 countries.

It's the largest genetic study of dogs and the first to look at three different genetic markers, Cornell University researcher Ryan Boyko told the New York Times.

The research team analyzed genes from the nucleus, the mitochondria, and the male Y chromosomes found in blood samples. The researchers compared the DNA of dogs from different locations and found that dogs from Central Asia, East Asia, India, and Southwest Asia had the most diverse genes.

As people moved their dogs around and selectively breed them over time, we've created a situation in which most modern dogs have low genetic diversity. That means the dogs with the highest genetic diversity are likely descended from the oldest dogs, the researchers said.

This finding pointed to Central Asia, specifically Mongolia and Nepal, as the place where "all the dogs alive today" likely came from, Boyko told the New York Times.

Their findings also echoed previous findings that modern dogs emerged about 15,000 years ago, according to the study.

This latest finding doesn't necessarily close the book on the question. According to the study, there's a possibility that "dogs were domesticated elsewhere and subsequently arrived and diversified in Central Asia."

Oxford University researcher Greger Larson, who wasn't involved in the study, also told the New York Times that the genes of today's canine populations must be compared to ancient dog DNA to definitively answer the question.

The researchers also maintain that a closer analysis of dogs in Central Asia and the surrounding regions needs to be done, which means Boyko and his colleagues will have to return to the area armed with sandwiches and treats.

But, as he told the New York Times: "The great thing about working with dogs is that if you show up with food, you don't usually have trouble recruiting subjects."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A psychologist reveals how to get rid of negative thoughts

Personal genomics company 23andMe has officially resumed a service that tells curious customers what lurks in their DNA, including some inheritable diseases.

The move comes nearly two years after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent 23andMe a strongly worded warning letter, effectively shutting down the health-related aspects of the company's popular DNA reports.

After working closely with the FDA, however, 23andMe is again offering health information. The company and its CEO are billing the rebooted genetic testing service, announced Wednesday, Oct. 21, as "a totally new experience."

It's a major turnaround from where the tech startup was in November 2013.

Back then, the FDA noted 23andMe was providing "health reports on 254 diseases and conditions." Those included genetic risk assessments for complex, serious diseases like breast cancer and diabetes. After many conversations and meetings with 23andMe, an FDA deputy commissioner wrote, "we still do not have any assurance that the firm has analytically or clinically validated the [Personal Genome Service] for its intended uses."

The new offerings from 23andMe, which cost $199 (twice the price of its old test) are significantly more limited — and regulated. No one will learn about a very serious disease or the risk of one from these results, lowering the stakes considerably.

But there are 60 pieces of information in each report, including details about a customer's carrier status for certain diseases, a profile of some hereditary traits (e.g. "back hair" and "sweet taste preference"), and limited information about dozens of non-life-threatening health conditions like lactose intolerance. (See the full list below).

"It's a totally different type of report," 23andMe CEO and biologist Anne Wojcicki told Tech Insider Tuesday night, hours before the announcement went public. "We've established an infrastructure with the FDA, where we know that people understand it. We have comprehension levels of over 90%. We're confident people from all educational backgrounds can understand this information." As a result of collaborating with the FDA, Wojcicki said in a statement, "we are a better company with a better product."

Already, in February 2015, the FDA signaled that they were coming around on the company. That's when the agency approved a 23andMe test that could show whether someone was a carrier for a rare genetic disorder called Bloom syndrome.

At the same time, the FDA reclassified the carrier tests for similar genetic diseases so that companies marketing them did not need to seek review before doing so. The move "supports innovation and will ultimately benefit consumers," an FDA official said at the time, in a statement.

Getting knocked down by the FDA wasn't easy, says Wojcicki — especially since 23andMe now has to meet much more rigorous standards normally applied to medical devices. But she believes 23andMe's reincarnation has put the entire tech industry in a better place.

"The FDA has made a spectacular effort in the last year to understand Silicon Valley" while also helping health startups meet regulations, she says. "Part of what I see as my role now, as being known in the industry for 'the smackdown,' is helping other companies understand what that process looks like and having realistic expectations."

Still, 23andMe's rebooted service doesn't yet offer its former, more complete dump of health information hidden in a customer's DNA. And that pains Wojcicki.

"I'd be very disappointed if I could not at some point get there," she says.

Not everyone is sold on the idea though. As Davey Alba wrote in Wired, even when 23andMe couldn't offer its signature health reports, it still held onto "one of its most valuable assets"— its customers' genetic data. That's led to some concerns about privacy. "The Personal Genome Service isn't primarily intended to be a medical device," Charles Seife argued in Scientific American. "It is a mechanism meant to be a front end for a massive information-gathering operation against an unwitting public."

Wojcicki rejects these criticisms. She says about 80% of customers volunteer to participate in research and share their anonymized genomic data with researchers, including several pharma giants, and that the company has always been "extremely transparent" about this. Such partnerships have the potential to lead to some compelling information about diseases, and even possibly some new treatments.

"If 5,000 people with chronic fatigue syndrome say, 'screw it, we don't just want to wait around for treatment anymore,'" Wojcicki says, "well, then they actually have the power to come together and generate data together and use that in analyses and actually start to learn form each other."

With the relaunch of its genetic reports — which expand significantly on the ancestry information provided by other companies — 23andMe sets itself apart from the crowd, once again directly offering consumers something they can't get anywhere else.

And the reverse is true, too: 23andMe has troves of unprecedented genomic data.

"We are not a profitable company. We are doing deals because we feel it's the right thing to do to make a difference in the research world," Wojcicki says. "We are trying to show that there can be a consumer-driven research model that rivals — and potentially could be even be better than — the existing, academic-led, government-funded research model."

Here's the full list of what's in the new reports:

Carrier Status (36)

ARSACS

Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum with Peripheral Neuropathy

Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease

Beta Thalassemia and Related Hemoglobinopathies

Bloom Syndrome

Congenital Disorder of Glycosylation Type 1a (PMM2-CDG)

Cystic Fibrosis

D-Bifunctional Protein Deficiency

Dihydrolipoamide Dehydrogenase Deficiency

Familial Dysautonomia

Fanconi Anemia Group C

GRACILE Syndrome

Glycogen Storage Disease Type Ia

Glycogen Storage Disease Type Ib

Hereditary Fructose Intolerance

Leigh Syndrome, French Canadian Type

Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2D

Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2E

Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2I

MCAD Deficiency

Maple Syrup Urine Disease Type 1B

Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis (CLN5-Related)

Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis (PPT1-Related)

Niemann-Pick Disease Type A

Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome

Nonsyndromic Hearing Loss and Deafness, DFNB1 (GJB2-Related)

Pendred Syndrome and DFNB4 Hearing Loss

Primary Hyperoxaluria Type 2

Rhizomelic Chondrodysplasia Punctata Type 1

Sickle Cell Anemia

Sjögren-Larsson Syndrome

Tay-Sachs Disease

Tyrosinemia Type I

Usher Syndrome Type 1F

Usher Syndrome Type 3A

Zellweger Syndrome Spectrum (PEX1-Related)

Wellness (4)

Caffeine Consumption

Lactose Intolerance

Alcohol Flush Reaction

Muscle Composition

Traits (22)

Asparagus Odor Detection

Back Hair (available for men only)

Bald Spot (available for men only)

Bitter Taste Perception

Cheek Dimples

Cleft Chin

Earlobe Type

Earwax Type

Eye Color

Finger Length Ratio

Freckles

Hair Curliness

Light or Dark Hair

Male Hair Loss (available for men only)

Newborn Hair Amount

Photic Sneeze Reflex

Red Hair

Skin Pigmentation

Sweet Taste Preference

Toe Length Ratio

Unibrow

Widow's Peak

Ancestry (3)

Ancestry Composition

Haplogroups

Neanderthal Ancestry

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

Get ready for designer dogs.

Researchers in China have created the first dogs whose DNA was modified by gene editing.

By tweaking a dog’s DNA to cut out a gene for the muscle-limiting protein myostatin, they created a beagle with twice the normal amount of muscle, they reported last week in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology.

As MIT Technology Review reported, the researchers plan to tweak the DNA of dogs to make them develop diseases similar to Parkinson's and muscular dystrophy, so they can study how these diseases work.

Beagles are commonly used in medical research because they share similarities with humans in their physiology, anatomy, and metabolism, the researchers wrote in the study.

Meet Hercules and 'heaven dog'

A team of researchers led by Liangxue Lai of the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health used an increasingly popular technique known as CRISPR/Cas9, which makes it relatively cheap and easy to cut and paste bits of the natural DNA of any organism. Originally discovered in bacteria, the technique is now used in a wide variety of animals, and has even been used on human embryos.

They edited the DNA of dog embryos to cut out the mystatin gene, which produces a protein (myostatin) that limits muscle formation. The first attempt failed to produce any viable pregnancies. Their second attempt produced 27 puppies, but only one male and one female were found to have two copies of the altered myostatin gene.

They named the female dog Tiangou, after the "heaven dog" in Chinese myth, and the male dog Hercules after the mythical Greek hero, according to the study. The edits didn't completely take effect in Hercules, who still had some cells that produced myostatin. But it worked like a charm in Tiangou, who developed twice the amount of muscle as her littermates, especially on her thighs.

Additional testing showed that the myostatin mutation was present in some of Hercules' sperm, suggesting the change could be passed on to other generations through breeding.

This isn't the first time scientists have tinkered with an animal's DNA to give it more muscle. In June, researchers from South Korea and China created "double-muscled" pigs by tweaking the same gene.

Mutations in the myostatin gene can also happen naturally. A breed of cattle called Belgian Blues normally lack this gene, and grow to massive proportions. The only dogs known to have this mutation naturally are Whippets.

The photos below show dogs with two copies of the natural myostatin gene (column A), and one copy (column B) or two copies (column C) of the mutant gene:

The team that created the muscly dogs told MIT Technology Review that they don't have any plans to sell the animals as pets, but others have already been moving into this controversial area.

At the end of September, scientists at Chinese genomics institute BGI altered the genes of pigs to sell as pet "micropigs."​

NEXT: 10 times scientists genetically modified animals and came up with some weird results

SEE ALSO: Chinese scientists want to sell these teensy genetically-engineered pigs as pets

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Cloning your dog is easier than you think — here’s how it works

Personal genomics company 23andMe has officially resumed a service that tells curious customers what lurks in their DNA, including some inheritable diseases.

The move comes nearly two years after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent 23andMe a strongly worded warning letter, effectively shutting down the health-related aspects of the company's popular DNA reports.

After working closely with the FDA, however, 23andMe is again offering health information. The company and its CEO are billing the rebooted genetic testing service, announced Wednesday, Oct. 21, as "a totally new experience."

It's a major turnaround from where the tech startup was in November 2013.

Back then, the FDA noted 23andMe was providing "health reports on 254 diseases and conditions." Those included genetic risk assessments for complex, serious diseases like breast cancer and diabetes. After many conversations and meetings with 23andMe, an FDA deputy commissioner wrote, "we still do not have any assurance that the firm has analytically or clinically validated the [Personal Genome Service] for its intended uses."

The new offerings from 23andMe, which cost $199 (twice the price of its old test) are significantly more limited — and regulated. No one will learn about a very serious disease or the risk of one from these results, lowering the stakes considerably.

But there are 60 pieces of information in each report, including details about a customer's carrier status for certain diseases, a profile of some hereditary traits (e.g. "back hair" and "sweet taste preference"), and limited information about dozens of non-life-threatening health conditions like lactose intolerance. (See the full list below).

"It's a totally different type of report," 23andMe CEO and biologist Anne Wojcicki told Tech Insider Tuesday night, hours before the announcement went public. "We've established an infrastructure with the FDA, where we know that people understand it. We have comprehension levels of over 90%. We're confident people from all educational backgrounds can understand this information." As a result of collaborating with the FDA, Wojcicki said in a statement, "we are a better company with a better product."

Already, in February 2015, the FDA signaled that they were coming around on the company. That's when the agency approved a 23andMe test that could show whether someone was a carrier for a rare genetic disorder called Bloom syndrome.

At the same time, the FDA reclassified the carrier tests for similar genetic diseases so that companies marketing them did not need to seek review before doing so. The move "supports innovation and will ultimately benefit consumers," an FDA official said at the time, in a statement.

Getting knocked down by the FDA wasn't easy, says Wojcicki — especially since 23andMe now has to meet much more rigorous standards normally applied to medical devices. But she believes 23andMe's reincarnation has put the entire tech industry in a better place.

"The FDA has made a spectacular effort in the last year to understand Silicon Valley" while also helping health startups meet regulations, she says. "Part of what I see as my role now, as being known in the industry for 'the smackdown,' is helping other companies understand what that process looks like and having realistic expectations."

Still, 23andMe's rebooted service doesn't yet offer its former, more complete dump of health information hidden in a customer's DNA. And that pains Wojcicki.

"I'd be very disappointed if I could not at some point get there," she says.

Not everyone is sold on the idea though. As Davey Alba wrote in Wired, even when 23andMe couldn't offer its signature health reports, it still held onto "one of its most valuable assets"— its customers' genetic data. That's led to some concerns about privacy. "The Personal Genome Service isn't primarily intended to be a medical device," Charles Seife argued in Scientific American. "It is a mechanism meant to be a front end for a massive information-gathering operation against an unwitting public."

Wojcicki rejects these criticisms. She says about 80% of customers volunteer to participate in research and share their anonymized genomic data with researchers, including several pharma giants, and that the company has always been "extremely transparent" about this. Such partnerships have the potential to lead to some compelling information about diseases, and even possibly some new treatments.

"If 5,000 people with chronic fatigue syndrome say, 'screw it, we don't just want to wait around for treatment anymore,'" Wojcicki says, "well, then they actually have the power to come together and generate data together and use that in analyses and actually start to learn form each other."

With the relaunch of its genetic reports — which expand significantly on the ancestry information provided by other companies — 23andMe sets itself apart from the crowd, once again directly offering consumers something they can't get anywhere else.

And the reverse is true, too: 23andMe has troves of unprecedented genomic data.

"We are not a profitable company. We are doing deals because we feel it's the right thing to do to make a difference in the research world," Wojcicki says. "We are trying to show that there can be a consumer-driven research model that rivals — and potentially could be even be better than — the existing, academic-led, government-funded research model."

Here's the full list of what's in the new reports:

Carrier Status (36)

ARSACS

Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum with Peripheral Neuropathy

Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease

Beta Thalassemia and Related Hemoglobinopathies

Bloom Syndrome

Congenital Disorder of Glycosylation Type 1a (PMM2-CDG)

Cystic Fibrosis

D-Bifunctional Protein Deficiency

Dihydrolipoamide Dehydrogenase Deficiency

Familial Dysautonomia

Fanconi Anemia Group C

GRACILE Syndrome

Glycogen Storage Disease Type Ia

Glycogen Storage Disease Type Ib

Hereditary Fructose Intolerance

Leigh Syndrome, French Canadian Type

Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2D

Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2E

Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2I

MCAD Deficiency

Maple Syrup Urine Disease Type 1B

Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis (CLN5-Related)

Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis (PPT1-Related)

Niemann-Pick Disease Type A

Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome

Nonsyndromic Hearing Loss and Deafness, DFNB1 (GJB2-Related)

Pendred Syndrome and DFNB4 Hearing Loss

Primary Hyperoxaluria Type 2

Rhizomelic Chondrodysplasia Punctata Type 1

Sickle Cell Anemia

Sjögren-Larsson Syndrome

Tay-Sachs Disease

Tyrosinemia Type I

Usher Syndrome Type 1F

Usher Syndrome Type 3A

Zellweger Syndrome Spectrum (PEX1-Related)

Wellness (4)

Caffeine Consumption

Lactose Intolerance

Alcohol Flush Reaction

Muscle Composition

Traits (22)

Asparagus Odor Detection

Back Hair (available for men only)

Bald Spot (available for men only)

Bitter Taste Perception

Cheek Dimples

Cleft Chin

Earlobe Type

Earwax Type

Eye Color

Finger Length Ratio

Freckles

Hair Curliness

Light or Dark Hair

Male Hair Loss (available for men only)

Newborn Hair Amount

Photic Sneeze Reflex

Red Hair

Skin Pigmentation

Sweet Taste Preference

Toe Length Ratio

Unibrow

Widow's Peak

Ancestry (3)

Ancestry Composition

Haplogroups

Neanderthal Ancestry

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

Personal genetics testing company 23andMe is moving ahead with more than one groundbreaking aspect to its business.

Two weeks ago, the company announced that it had raised $115 million in late-stage funding, putting it at a $1.1-billion valuation.

Last week, the company re-launched the health component of its test, so now users will be able to submit their spit and learn about their family history, their traits (like eye color), wellness (like how well they metabolize caffeine), and whether or not they can pass on certain genetic diseases to their children.

The company is also taking steps towards developing drugs. 

The company hired former Genentech (the US arm of pharma giant Roche) executive Richard Scheller in March to lead its drug development team along with Robert Gentleman, an expert in the science of collecting and analyzing genetic code. The research team will use 23andMe's 1-million-person database, of which about 80% have consented to having their information used in this kind of development, to identify possible treatments for genetic diseases.

In addition to in-house research, the 23andMe database of consenting users are being used to create more specialized databases in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies. The Genentech partnership will target Parkinson's disease, a progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement, while the partnership with Pfizer is focused on developing databases of genes of people with the chronic autoimmune disease lupus and another database for those with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

So far, the company has hired a drug development staff, started researching possible treatments to diseases (called drug targets), and plans to start testing them out in a lab setting later this year, 23andMe president Andy Page told Business Insider.

And things are moving a bit ahead of schedule, said Page.

"When we hired Richard [Scheller] and Robert [Gentleman] in April, the objective for drug targets was by the end of year and early 2016," he said. "We're in the process of finding a lab space for this quarter."

CHECK OUT: 10 game-changing companies that are on track to revolutionize how we treat illness

UP NEXT: There's a plan to get the world's biggest club drug approved for medical use by 2021

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Turns out early risers and night owls have different DNA

Scientist have long debated how humans originally arrived in the Americas. The prominent idea has been that a sort of land bridge formed during the last ice age and people migrated from Asia.

But people may not have just waltzed over the land bridge and spread across the Americas. Instead, they may have settled in northern Alaska for a while first.

And the newest clues come from a surprising place: babies.

Scientists have sequenced the mitochondrial DNA from two infants found buried together at an Alaskan campsite some 11,500 years ago in a paper published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That ancient DNA revealed that the little ones did not share a mother. In fact, they are related to two different lineages of Native Americans found elsewhere in the Americas. 

It’s that genetic diversity that supports the “Beringian standstill model” that says humans may have spent as many as 10,000 years in the area around the Bering Strait known as Beringia before spreading south through the Americas.

“These infants are the earliest human remains in northern North America, and they carry distinctly Native American lineages,” study senior author and University of Utah anthropology professor Dennis O'Rourke said in a news release.

“It supports the Beringian standstill theory in that if [the infants] represent a population that descended from the earlier Beringian population, it helps confirm the extent of genetic diversity in that source population,” Professor O'Rourke said. “You don’t see any of these lineages that are distinctly Native American in Asia, even Siberia, so there had to be a period of isolation for these distinctive Native American lineages to have evolved away from their Asian ancestors. We believe that was in Beringia.”

Some 25,000 years ago the last ice age saw low sea levels. That revealed a sort of land bridge stretching from Siberia to Alaska where the Bering Strait is today. 

People would have migrated across this newly revealed land into what is present-day Alaska. According to the Beringian standstill model, these people would have had to settle where they arrived, in what is called Beringia, because any other path was blocked by gigantic glaciers. 

In that scenario, it wasn’t until the glaciers began to retreat, some 15,000 years ago, that these people were able to migrate further.

But these babies died some 11,500 years ago, after the Beringian population would have begun to disperse. 

Ripan Malhi, of the University of Illinois, and colleagues proposed the Bergingian standstill model in 2007, but Dr. Malhi isn’t so sure this new evidence is conclusive.

“It’s valuable information,” he told The New York Times, “but it’s a little bit late to be extremely informative to let us know if the Beringian Standstill hypothesis holds.”

Unfortunately, most of Beringia is now under water, limiting potential for more archaeological finds.

But O’Rourke thinks these specimens are still valuable. The community that buried them “may well be a remnant of that original Beringian group. It may give us a snapshot of that earlier time,” he told the Times.

The baby bodies were placed on red ocher and surrounded by hunting darts made from antlers, the Times reports. Found beneath the burial of a seemingly cremated 3-year-old, these specimens were discovered during a dig at the Upward Sun River site, an ancient campsite about 50 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska.

The infants neither shared a mother nor a later Native American lineage, so the researchers are puzzled as to why they were buried together.

“It’s not common to find infants buried together that are not related maternally,” O'Rourke said in the news release. “It raises questions about the social structure and mortuary practices of these early people.” Perhaps the babies shared a father.

One thing is for sure from this research, said Ted Goebel, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University. Humans walked their way into the Americas.

“It nails it shut that without question,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “The earliest Native Americans came from the Bering land bridge.”

SEE ALSO: A drought in Mexico has revealed the ruins of a 16th-century church

CHECK OUT: Archaeology has had an amazing month: Here are 7 of the most exciting discoveries

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This animated map shows how humans migrated across the globe

We want to protect the information that's most personal to us.

Yet our personal genetic blueprint — which can be used to identify a person, predict certain diseases and traits, and will likely reveal much more in the future, from personality to intelligence — is nearly impossible to secure.

You can take reasonable measures to try to keep something like your social security number private, but you leave your DNA everywhere: when you sneeze, spit out gum — even when you sweat. That DNA is already easy and cheap to sequence, and it will reveal more and more information as time goes on.

This is something that genetic experts know, but the general public may not.

"Your genome isn't really a secret," GV (Google Ventures) founder Bill Maris said recently at at Wall Street Journal conference, according to Bloomberg. Maris was responding to people who are concerned about the privacy implications of efforts by life-science companies to collect and digitize their customers' DNA.

"What are you worried about?" Maris asked.

Reasons to be concerned

There are plenty of legitimate reasons people want to protect their genomic privacy, bioethicist George Annas told Tech Insider earlier this summer. It's not just your medical records and genomic data that are personal, he explained — though many would be uncomfortable with sharing that information with acquaintances, coworkers, and employers.

But there are other things too. Genetic data might reveal something unexpected in a family with regard to paternity or adoption, Annas says. He asks: "What does it mean to have a genetic connection to your children?" If someone needed a sperm or egg donor to become pregnant, would they want that information easily accessed by anyone who looked at a database or who could do a basic DNA sequence with a machine bought at the drugstore?

In the book "Genomic Messages," Annas and his coauthor, Dr. Sherman Elias, write that genomic information provides details on a person's "probabilistic future," relationships, and decisions about health and pregnancy.

DNA data banks, places where genomic information is stored for research purposes (in the case of science companies) or for identification (government or police banks) mean that people's genetic blueprints are more and more frequently stored in computer systems of varying security, Annas and Sherman write.

Privacy might just be impossible

These genome databases are essential for researchers because they need to compare as many genomes as possible to pick out the important patterns that explain a trait or disease. That's how genomic science advances. In most cases, people agree to have their data included in these databases because identifying information is supposed to be removed.

But there's reason to think that these systems aren't as secure as we might hope.

A recent study in The American Journal of Human Genetics showed that some of the genome databases that researchers can access haven't adequately protected aspects of that data that could be used to identify individuals — removing names isn't enough when DNA itself can serve as a fingerprint for a person. That means that personal information might be accessible to anyone who can tap into those databases. And access is not particularly restricted right now, they write.

Even if the people controlling those data banks take the steps recommended by the latest study to protect that data, people who want to sequence someone's genome might soon be able to do so surreptitiously.

"The technology is moving so fast that you'll be able to walk into a Walgreens in five or ten years and pick up a device that will be able to sequence whatever you want," says Dr. Eric Schadt, Founding Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai.

Schadt says that many don't yet appreciate how easy it is for someone to find and analyze genetic data. It's "like a photograph," he says, where someone will be able to pick up a cup you've been drinking out of or something else you've touched and grab DNA from that. That makes it almost impossible to keep that information secure.

"People need to be educated" about their genomic information and what it means if we're going to make decisions on how to handle that information as a society, Schadt says. Either way it will be accessible, but we have to decide how we'll use it — and how we allow it to be used.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 7 incredible things ‘Back to the Future Part II’ got right about 2015

If ever there was a case of someone who didn't get the recognition she deserved, it's Rosalind Franklin.

The British-born chemist did pioneering work that led to the discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, the set of genetic instructions that tell cells how to carry out all of their normal activities.

James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for discovering DNA's structure. However, Franklin died of cancer in 1958 before the prize was awarded.

Today, some say Franklin was wronged by her male colleagues, while others say this view may itself be an oversimplification.

Whatever the truth, it's clear that Franklin's accomplishments have been largely overlooked.

Franklin's early life

The Rosalind Franklin Papers tell the fascinating story of Frankin's life, work, and legacy.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born on July 25, 1920, in London, to Ellis Franklin, a partner at Keyser's Bank, and his wife Muriel Franklin.

She was lucky enough to attend St. Paul's Girls School, one of the few at the time that emphasized careers over homemaking. There, she showed a natural aptitude for science and languages.

In 1938, she enrolled in Newnham College, one of two women's colleges at Cambridge University, where she studied physical chemistry. Her subsequent studies would be shaped by World War II.

Franklin graduated in 1941, and spent a year working in the laboratory of R. G. W. Norrish, a pioneer in the chemistry of light. The following year, she embarked on a PhD related to the war effort. She worked for the British Coal Utilisation Research Association, a nonprofit group promoting coal research, studying the microscopic structures of different coals and carbons.

After finishing her PhD, Franklin landed a job in the lab of French engineer Jacques Mering at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimique de l'Etat in Paris. There, she learned how to image carbon-based compounds using a technique called X-ray crystallography– crystallizing proteins and other compounds and imaging them using X-rays — which she'd become an expert in.

In fact, her X-ray images would play a crucial role in the discovery of DNA's structure.

'Photograph 51' and the structure of DNA

Franklin went back to England in 1950 to pursue a fellowship in the lab of a biophysicist named John Randall at King's College London.

Though Randall originally wanted her to build up the lab's work on crystalizing and imaging proteins, Maurice Wilkins, the assistant lab chief, suggested that she work on DNA.

Wilkins was planning to work together with Franklin, but a misunderstanding turned their relationship sour.

Instead, Franklin worked with graduate student Raymond Gosling to take X-ray images of DNA. They discoverd two forms of DNA, a "wet" form and a "dry" form. The wet form appeared to have a helix-shaped structure, like a spiral staircase, but the dry form didn't, so Franklin spent a year trying to discover which structure was correct.

Meanwhile, the British biologist Francis Crick and American biologist James Watson were developing a theoretical model of DNA at the University of Camridge's Cavendish Laboratory. In January 1953 Wilkins showed them one of Franklin's X-ray images of DNA, now known simply as "Photograph 51," as well as a summary of unpublished research which she had submitted to the Medical Research Council.

Watson and Crick published the structure of DNA that April in the journal Nature. They never told Franklin they had seen her photograph, but Crick later admitted she was only a few steps away from figuring it out.

Franklin and Gosling published X-ray findings in the same issue of the same journal, but the credit went to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins.

An unfair portrayal

Franklin ended up transferring to work in the lab of J. D. Bernal at Birkbeck College, where she studied the structure of plant viruses, especially tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and poliovirus. She made detailed X-ray images of the viruses, and her work was recognized by the Royal Institution in 1956.

That same year, she was diagnozed with ovarian cancer. She underwent a number of surgeries and other treatments, but the treatments only worked temporarily, and she died on April 16, 1958, at the age of 37.

Watson published his memoir, "The Double Helix," in 1968, depicting Franklin (whom he referred to derogatorily as "Rosy,"a nickname she hated) as bad-tempered and incompetent. In fact, many reviewers (including Crick and Wilkins) thought the portrayal was unfair.

"[If] ever there was a woman who was mistreated, it was Rosalind Franklin, and she didn't get the notice that she should have gotten for her work on DNA,"said Ava Helen Pauling, wife of famous scientist Linus Pauling, said in an interview with Lee Herzenberg in 1977.

In 1975, Anne Sayre published a biography of Franklin that attempted to set the record straight and give Franklin her due. Another biography of Franklin by Brenda Maddox told a more nuanced story.

While Franklin's life may have been tragically cut short, her contributions to our understanding of DNA and viruses live on.

CHECK OUT: The 15 most amazing women in science today

SEE ALSO: LEGO is slipping a feminist message into its newest line of characters

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

On a warm September afternoon on the verdant campus of Long Island's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an elite cadre of scientists gathered to discuss a simple yet incredibly powerful new genetic technology.

Jennifer Doudna was dressed casually in a blazer and jeans, with a scarf tossed gently around her neck to compliment a loose bob of blonde hair. Raised in Hilo, Hawaii, she retains a hint of the friendly islander vibe, even though she's been recently thrust into the scientific spotlight.

A biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, Doudna is widely credited as one of the pioneers of a genetic technology that lets scientists tweak the DNA of practically any living creature.

Known as CRISPR/Cas9, the technique has been credited with the potential to cure genetic defects, eradicate diseases, and even end the organ transplant shortage.

"We all kind of marvel at how fast this took off as a technology," Doudna told Business Insider. "There's just a really tremendous feeling of excitement for the potential of CRISPR."

But the technique has also drawn concerns. Some worry it could lead doctors and families to one day create "designer babies" whose genes have been carefully selected to make them smarter, stronger, or more beautiful.

There's a scarier possibility linked with CRISPR, too: Scientists — or anyone with access to a basic biology lab — could unleash genetic mutations that could spread fairly easily through a population of animals, and the results could be irreversible. For example, some have proposed using this method to prevent mosquitoes from spreading malaria, but the changes could get out of hand and wipe out other species or entire ecosystems. 

Hacking our DNA

All living things, from amoebas to humans, have a molecular blueprint called DNA in their cells, which directs the activities that keep the organism alive. DNA is made up of long, twisted strands of four molecular "letters" (A, T, G, and C), which pair up according to strict rules, and their order determines how proteins — the vital molecules that perform all the major tasks in our cells — are made.

Beginning in the '60s and '70s, recombinant DNA technology allowed scientists to combine DNA from different plants and animals in ways that don't exist in nature.

First, there was the discovery of proteins called restriction enzymes, which allowed scientists to cut DNA in specific places. Later, scientists discovered two important genetic tools — "TALENs" and zinc finger nucleases — which enabled them to edit DNA more precisely.

Now there is CRISPR.

CRISPR is short for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats," or repeated bits of DNA. A related set of "CRISPR associated genes" or Cas, contain instructions to make proteins that cut DNA.

Essentially, CRISPR gives scientists an unprecedented level of control in editing DNA. It allows scientists to cut faulty or unwanted portions and paste in more desirable bits. Doudna and French biologist Emmanuelle Charpentier are among those credited with discovering it, while studying the behavior of bacteria and their single-celled cousins, archaea.

But Feng Zhang, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute and MIT, claims he developed the technique independently. Zhang was awarded the first patent for CRISPR in April 2014, and a legal battle is now raging between his and Doudna's institutions.

Bacteria use the CRISPR/Cas system as a way to defend themselves against nasty viruses. The bacteria use a protein called Cas9, which acts like a pair of molecular scissors to cut DNA in a precise location. Then they use these "scissors" to cut out pieces of the invader's DNA, and incorporate it into their own genomes so they can recognize the enemy in future.

Doudna and Charpentier quickly realized this same system could be used to edit the DNA of any organism, including humans.

"It was kind of a like a lightning bolt," Doudna says of the discovery. "It was definitely an 'aha' moment."

It was kind of a like a lightning bolt. It was definitely an 'aha' moment.

Now scientists can choose which gene they want to modify, use the Cas9 "molecular scissors" to snip it out, and swap in a more desirable version.

Then the cell repairs the DNA.

Doudna and Charpentier published their foundational findings in a 2012 study. It's widely believed the pair will someday win a Nobel Prize for their work. Doudna calls CRISPR a "Swiss Army knife," because it can be used in a wide variety of contexts, from making permanent changes in DNA to turning genes on or off temporarily to start or stop the production of proteins.

The promise of genetic cures

CRISPR has already been used to fix genetic defects that lead to disease in a variety of animals, including humans.

Scientists have used CRISPR to cure a rare, muscle-wasting disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) in mice, and to stop the formation of deadly proteins in a mouse infected with Huntington's disease, a fatal disorder that causes the brain cells to progressively degenerate.

In April, Chinese researchers announced they had used CRISPR to modify human embryos in order to cure a fatal blood disorder known as beta thalassemia. The announcement sparked outrage among some in the scientific community, who felt the technology wasn't mature enough to be used in humans.

Now a biotechnology startup founded by Doudna and other early CRISPR pioneers has announced plans to use CRISPR in adult humans as early as 2017. The startup, Editas Medicine, plans to use it treat a rare form of blindness.

Other gene editing technology exists too. A rival method was just used to tweak a child's genes to cure her leukemia, as Sharon Begley reported for STAT.

Yet CRISPR, despite its promise, has yet to be proven safe for use in human therapies.

"In my opinion, the data is not there to say [the use of CRISPR] is safe or reliable," Joy Larsen Haidle, president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, told Business Insider.

And if we use it, she added, "Do we risk causing a different problem we didn't anticipate?"

Even if it were safe, CRISPR has people worried about the ethics of tinkering with our genetic identity.

'Designer babies' and playing God

There's a widespread concern that a powerful tool like CRISPR could be used by parents to create "designer babies." Some compare this ability to choose perfect genes for children — including what they'll look like and how healthy, talented or smart they'll be — to playing God.

Hank Greely, a lawyer and bioethicist at Stanford University, thinks that's kind of a non-issue.

"There's this idea that the human germline is the sacred essence of our species," Greely said at the Cold Spring Harbor conference. But that's nonsense, he added, because we share most of our genes with other species.

In fact, existing methods already allow parents some limited control over their children's DNA. The most common form of this combines genetic screening with in vitro fertilization (IVF).

For example, parents who are carriers for genetic disorders and diseases can undergo screening to ensure the faulty gene doesn't get passed on to their children. Doctors can simply pick out a sperm and egg that contain healthy genes, combine them through in vitro fertilization, and implant that embryo in the mother.

With such powerful tools already available to parents and scientists, some wonder why CRISPR would even be necessary for human trials.

"I haven't seen anybody give a legitimate medical reason [for using CRISPR in human embryos] that couldn't be achieved through other means," New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer told Business Insider.

"We're not going to see huge armies of modified humans anytime soon."

In the future, however, it's not hard to imagine that CRISPR could be used to endow children with traits that can't be screened for and aren't medically necessary, like intelligence or athleticism.

But these traits are controlled by dozens of genes or more, and it could be years before we can enhance them without causing other, possibly lethal, genetic problems. Even then, the procedure will probably only be available to the wealthy at first, which could lead to a society of genetically enhanced "haves" and "have-nots."

While "we're not going to see huge armies of modified humans anytime soon," Doudna said, "I realized fairly quickly that [CRISPR] was going to have the potential to make permanent changes in human embryos."

But despite all the focus on genome editing in humans, some of the first medical uses are likely to involve other animals.

A new source of organs 

Scientists are already working on using CRISPR to make animal organs suitable for human transplants.

Currently, about 22 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant. For years, scientists have proposed using organs from animals (preferably pigs), a process called xenotransplantation. But there's a problem: These organs contain harmful viruses in their DNA that can attack human tissue.

George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, wants to solve the problem with gene editing and CRISPR.

Church has spent years developing better methods for cutting and recombining DNA. He developed the first direct genome sequencing method in 1984, and helped start the Human Genome Project. He has also played a big role in the development of synthetic biology, Obama's BRAIN Initiative, and efforts to bring animals like woolly mammoths back from the dead.

Now, he wants to use CRISPR to make more organs available for xenotransplants. In early October, Church and his team announced they had modified more than 60 genes in pig embryos to get rid of some of the virus DNA that makes their tissue dangerous to humans.

Billions of dollars were invested in xenotransplantation research in the mid- to late-1990s, Church told Business Insider, but it fizzled out because scientists couldn't find a way to get rid of these viral bits of DNA. "Fast-forward 15 years later, we got rid of them in 14 days with CRISPR and a lot less money," Church says.

If all goes well, he hopes to be doing test transplants in monkeys next year, and human clinical trials could soon follow.

Meanwhile, Church is also pursuing a totally different avenue of CRISPR research that could have much more widespread consequences.

'Gene drive' and losing control

CRISPR can also be used to force a particular gene to be inherited by an organism's offspring — a phenomenon known as gene drive.

For example, some have proposed using gene drive in mosquitoes to make them less likely to infect people with deadly diseases like malaria. Church has already demonstrated the use of gene drives in yeast, and some of his colleagues have done it in fruit flies.

When two animals reproduce sexually in the wild, their offspring usually inherits two copies of a gene, one from each parent. But scientists at UC San Diego figured out a way to use CRISPR in fruit flies to convert one version of a gene into more desirable version. The resulting flies got two copies of the desired gene, ensuring it would get passed on to 100% of the offspring they had.

But if left unchecked, these change could spread like wildfire through a population. Once these mutant genes are unleashed, there's no way to control their spread, and if it backfires, we could accidentally wipe out an entire species.

That's why Church and others have called for stringent safety measures in doing gene drive experiments, so the modified organisms don't escape from the lab.

This is one of Doudna's biggest fears. "I think there's always the risk of something going rogue," she said.

In one recent study, scientists at Cornell University created a mathematical model to see how rapidly gene drive could cause a gene to spread through a population. The results were striking: Compared to a naturally occurring gene, which could take hundreds of generations to become widespread, the modified gene took only a few tens of generations.

For example, imagine scientists tweaked a gene in mosquitoes that prevents them from carrying malaria, but the modified gene somehow jumped into a related species. If it jumped into, say, honey bees — whose populations in the wild are already on the decline — farmers could have a hard time pollinating their crops, and the world could face food shortages.

And the scariest thing is, you don't even have to be a professional scientist to do such an experiment. The raw materials needed to use CRISPR are available online at relatively cheap costs, and some experts have suggested that amateur "biohackers" with basic biology skills could easily get their hands on them and send modified organisms out into the world.

Doudna emphasized the importance of international debate on these and other issues raised by gene editing.

In December, scientists and policy experts will convene at a summit hosted by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., to discuss concerns about using CRISPR in humans, specifically.

Given the enormous potential of gene editing, it's more important scientists handle the technology responsibly.

But as Church said, "There's almost always somebody who's in a bit of a rush, and they can mess up the party for everybody."

NEXT UP: CRISPR, the fancy new technology that lets people edit genes, could have an unprecedented and horrific consequence

SEE ALSO: 10 times scientists genetically modified animals and came up with some weird results

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

Malaria is a devastating disease, and all it takes to get infected is a mosquito bite.

But there may be a way to reduce its spread.

Using a new genetic editing tool known as CRISPR/Cas9, scientists modified the genes of mosquitoes to make them resistant to the malaria pathogen Plasmodium falciparum, according to a study published Monday in the journal PNAS.

Once they made the tweak, the mosquitoes were allowed to mate, and voila! By the third generation, the modified genes were passed on to more than 99% of the insects' offspring.

"This is really big step forward in the quest for genetic control of malaria," study co-author Ethan Bier, a geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, told Business Insider.

Malaria killed more than half a million people last year, mostly in low-income countries in Africa and in other developing countries as well, according to the World Health Organization. The use of new drugs, protective equipment, and environmental changes have helped reduce deaths from malaria by nearly 50% since 2000, but the disease still carries a huge burden.

Spreading malaria resistance

Scientists have had some success in creating "transgenic" mosquitoes whose DNA has been modified to prevent them from being able to spread the Plasmodium parasite. The problem with that is that when these mosquitoes mate with wild ones, only about 50% of the offspring inherit this ability, so it would take many more transgenic insects to reach a point where all mosquitoes stop spreading the disease.

So Bier and his colleagues used CRISPR to take it a step further.

Normally when animals reproduce sexually, they inherit two copies of a gene — one from their mother and one from their father, so any particular gene gets passed on to about half of the resulting offspring.

But using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing method, it's possible to introduce a gene that converts the other copy into the same version of the gene. Every time an animal reproduces, almost all of its offspring will inherit two copies of the new gene. In this way, a genetic change can rapidly spread through a population — a phenomenon knows as gene drive.

Bier and his team used gene drive to introduce a gene into Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes, which are responsible for roughly 12% of all malaria cases in India. They inserted the gene into a chromosome that controls eye color, so they could see which mosquitoes inherited the gene based on the color of their eyes.

In the 99.5% of the insects which inherited it, the gene worked by blocking the spread of malaria in two steps:

1. It blocked the parasite from spreading from blood in the insect's stomach to its body
2. It blocked the parasite from spreading from its body to its salivary gland

By stopping it in two steps, it's much harder for the parasite to develop resistance.

Ultimately, the researchers plan to insert the malaria-resistant genes into parts of the mosquito's genome that don't alter eye color, so the genetic changes don't affect the insect itself. These "neutral" changes are less likely to harm the ecosystem, Bier said.

Controlling it in the wild

One of the biggest fears about creating gene drives centers on the risk that they could escape the lab and get into another species, where they could cause ecological damage.

But Bier said the risk of these genes getting transferred to another species is "almost zero." That's because their approach can target a unique genetic sequence that is only found in the population of P. falciparum mosquitoes they are trying to modify. 

Mosquitoes aren't the first living things that scientists have tested the new technique in. Harvard geneticist George Church and his colleagues did it earlier this year in yeast.

"With 600,000 lives at stake each year, hopefully this [new work] will get thorough, high priority experiments on safety and effectiveness," Church, who was not involved in the latest study with mosquitoes, told Business Insider in an email.

However, he also highlighted the need for international approval from a body like the UN, "since mosquitoes do not stop at national borders."

Church and his colleagues have done similar research on the primary malaria-carrying mosquito in Africa, Anopheles gambiae, and they hope to extend this work to other animals, such as white-footed mice, which carry Lyme disease.

NEXT UP: Scientists may soon be able to 'cut and paste' DNA to cure deadly diseases and design perfect babies

SEE ALSO: CRISPR, the fancy new technology that lets people edit genes, could have an unprecedented and horrific consequence

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

Robert Grass says that though we believe information is here forever, it’s actually fragile. Hard drives and physical sources of information, like books, decay over time.

In a video for the BBC, Grass describes his quest to find a method of preserving information that could be stable for millions of years. The secret is DNA.

In 2012, research showed that you could translate a megabyte of information into DNA and then read it back again.

DNA has a language of its own, and is written in sequences of nucleotides (A, C, T, and G). Think of it as similar to binary, which breaks information down into ones and zeros. 

And DNA has the advantage of being able to put an enourmous amount of information in a tiny space. Theoretically, one gram of DNA could hold 455 exabytes of information. That's "enough for all the data held by Google, Facebook and every other major tech company, with room to spare,"according to New Scientist.

Now Grass and his researcher partner Reinhard Heckel, both of ETH Zurich in Switzerland, have come of up with a method for not only potentially fitting all of Facebook or Wikipedia into a small test tube, but preserving that forever.

Grass got his inspiration from ancient fossils, in which the DNA of the preserved animal is extremely stable (think Jurassic Park). DNA decays by reacting with water and oxygen, but by packing the synthesized DNA in stable glass, Grass can prevent the degradation.

But no preservation method is perfect, which is where Heckel comes in. Heckel came up with the idea of adding redundancies into the DNA, so that if you lose part of the information you can recover it.

They exposed their capsules to tests that mimic a 500,000 to a million years of cold storage, and they held up, Grass said.

The next question, he tells the BBC, is what we should store.

Watch the full video at the BBC.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This 28 year old is the most right-swiped man in New Jersey on Tinder

A controversial new genetic technology called CRISPR that offers a way to easily and accurately cut and paste bits of DNA inside the cells of any organism is taking the world by storm.

It's already been used to alter the DNA of non-viable human embryos, raising fears over safety and the potential to create "designer babies."

Several groups of researchers have even called for a ban on such research.

But two prominent scientists who pioneered the development of CRISPR are against a ban.

Chemist Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, and biologist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, argue in two recent op-eds in the journal Nature that a moratorium would limit important research — research that could, they say, lead to cures for genetic diseases.

On December 1-3, scientists and bioethicists will convene at a summit in Washington, DC to discuss these issues and others raised by the new genome editing technology.

Why researchers should be able to edit human genes

In Church's op-ed, he points out CRISPR's enormous potential to treat devastating genetic diseases — such as cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia. While it is possible to screen for some of these diseases during in vitro fertilization, they can't be eliminated in parents who have a deadly gene that is dominant, or two parents who have such a gene that is recessive.

Like any medical therapy, gene editing already has to undergo rigorous safety testing before it can be used in humans. The Nuremberg Code, a set of research ethics guidelines developed after World War II, requires that any human experiments "should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation."

And the field of gene editing isn't entirely new — tools for tweaking human embryos have existed for decades. Early gene therapy efforts aimed to treat disease by inserting entire genes, rather than cutting and pasting them, and there's no reason that these techniques couldn't be used in human embryos, in principle, Church says.

Church also responds to a point made by several researchers that CRISPR could be unsafe in humans because editing one part of the genome can inadvertently cause other changes to other, potentially unforeseen, parts of the genome, and these changes would be passed on to the next generation.

A call for caution

Doudna echoes Church's view that banning CRISPR research on humans would be inneffective:

"In my view, a complete ban might prevent research that could lead to future therapies, and it is also impractical given the widespread accessibility and ease of use of CRISPR/Cas9," she writes.

But when it comes to using CRISPR to produce enhanced human beings, Doudna urged caution.

"Human germ line editing for the purposes of creating genome-modified humans should not proceed at this time, partly because of the unknown social consequences, but also because the technology and our knowledge of the human genome are simply not ready to do so safely," she concludes.

In other words, CRISPR should not be used to create designer babies, because we don't know whether it's safe, or how it could impact society. 

And, if the scientist who discovered this technology is urging caution, maybe we should listen.

NEXT: Scientists may soon be able to 'cut and paste' DNA to cure deadly diseases and design perfect babies

SEE ALSO: We just got a step closer to genetically engineering human babies, thanks to this powerful lab technique

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

A controversial new genetic technology called CRISPR that offers a way to easily and accurately cut and paste bits of DNA inside the cells of any organism is taking the world by storm.

It's already been used to alter the DNA of non-viable human embryos, raising fears over safety and the potential to create "designer babies."

Several groups of researchers have even called for a ban on such research.

But two prominent scientists who pioneered the development of CRISPR are against a ban.

Chemist Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, and biologist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, argue in two recent op-eds in the journal Nature that a moratorium would limit important research — research that could, they say, lead to cures for genetic diseases.

On December 1-3, scientists and bioethicists will convene at a summit in Washington, DC to discuss these issues and others raised by the new genome editing technology.

Why researchers should be able to edit human genes

In Church's op-ed, he points out CRISPR's enormous potential to treat devastating genetic diseases — such as cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia. While it is possible to screen for some of these diseases during in vitro fertilization, they can't be eliminated in parents who have a deadly gene that is dominant, or two parents who have such a gene that is recessive.

Like any medical therapy, gene editing already has to undergo rigorous safety testing before it can be used in humans. The Nuremberg Code, a set of research ethics guidelines developed after World War II, requires that any human experiments "should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation."

And the field of gene editing isn't entirely new — tools for tweaking human embryos have existed for decades. Early gene therapy efforts aimed to treat disease by inserting entire genes, rather than cutting and pasting them, and there's no reason that these techniques couldn't be used in human embryos, in principle, Church says.

Church also responds to a point made by several researchers that CRISPR could be unsafe in humans because editing one part of the genome can inadvertently cause other changes to other, potentially unforeseen, parts of the genome, and these changes would be passed on to the next generation.

A call for caution

Doudna echoes Church's view that banning CRISPR research on humans would be inneffective:

"In my view, a complete ban might prevent research that could lead to future therapies, and it is also impractical given the widespread accessibility and ease of use of CRISPR/Cas9," she writes.

But when it comes to using CRISPR to produce enhanced human beings, Doudna urged caution.

"Human germ line editing for the purposes of creating genome-modified humans should not proceed at this time, partly because of the unknown social consequences, but also because the technology and our knowledge of the human genome are simply not ready to do so safely," she concludes.

In other words, CRISPR should not be used to create designer babies, because we don't know whether it's safe, or how it could impact society. 

And, if the scientist who discovered this technology is urging caution, maybe we should listen.

NEXT: Scientists may soon be able to 'cut and paste' DNA to cure deadly diseases and design perfect babies

SEE ALSO: We just got a step closer to genetically engineering human babies, thanks to this powerful lab technique

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

A genetics company called Parabon Nanolabs recently analyzed some remnants of DNA from a crime scene — not for fingerprints, but to create a digital likeness of the alleged criminal's face, Science News reported. 

Then, they sold the image (shown below) to the police:

Using DNA to create images of stranger's faces

This isn't the first time the company has used genetic remnants to create images of stranger's faces.

Back in May, the same company teamed up with a Hong Kong ad agency to shame local litterbugs for polluting the streets.

Using the DNA left behind on gum and cigarettes, Parabon zeroed-in on genes that code for physical traits like hair and eye color. Then, they drafted computer-generated sketches of each polluter's face, printed them out on giant wanted posters, and pasted the sketches on billboards throughout the city:

The science of creating a face from scraps

Unbenownst to many, the science behind the idea — of using DNA to predict a face — has existed for years.

In 2012, New York City-based artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg used the same technology to make sculptures of complete strangers using only the tiny bits of DNA left on discarded cigarettes and chewing gum that she collected from the streets of New York.

Each piece of trash that Dewey-Hagborg collected was rich in genetic data, typically in the form of DNA encased in dried spit or inside pieces of hair and skin.

To isolate that DNA, she did a simple lab procedure (so simple, I've done it myself) at a small community lab in Brooklyn. Then, using a computer code she wrote based on a face model designed by researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland and used that to comb through all the DNA and pick out only the genes that coded for physical traits, like hair and eye color.

Her exhibit, called "Stranger Visions," has been shown in galleries across the world. Here's an image of Dewey-Hagborg with one of her three-dimensional works of art, which she created with the same type of technology:

In addition to hair and eye color, these bits of our DNA dictates the shade of our skin, the width of our noses, and the distance between our eyes, but they can’t tell how old or physically fit we are, for example.

Likenesses, not exact replicas

While the masks aren't exact likenesses of the people they're based on, they do display what Dewey-Hagborg calls a "family resemblance."

The same rule applies to the images Parabon creates. They aren't exact likenesses, Ellen Greytak, Parabon’s bioinformatics director, told Science News. “We work with law enforcement to give them an idea of who they should be looking for.”

As vague as it is, a general idea is all the current science can guarantee. 

That's because each of us has 3 billion chemical base pairs of DNA — the letters A, C, G, and T — that altogether make us who we are. One method of analyzing all of these genes is looking only at single letter variations that've been linked to specific traits like hair and eye color, susceptibility to certain diseases, and ancestry. This method of DNA analysis is called SNP (pronounced "snip") sequencing.

The technique is far better at predicting certain traits than others. Scientists can use it to predict blue and brown eye color and red hair color, for example, with pretty striking accuracy. But blonde hair is much trickier, and things like height and face shape are another matter entirely.

SEE ALSO: I sequenced my DNA at a community lab in Brooklyn — and what I learned surprised me

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This 14-year-old has come up with a faster and cheaper way to detect pancreatic cancer

Scientists, bioethicists, and members of the public have descended on Washington, DC this week for an international meeting to discuss the ethics of a promising lab technique that lets scientists edit our genes.

The technique, known as CRISPR/Cas9, lets scientists cut-and-paste DNA inside cells to correct genetic defects or, potentially, add new capabilities. It offers enormous promise to improve our understanding of biology and to treat or even eliminate genetic diseases.

But there's a dark side to manipulating our genetics that few want to discuss: Eugenics, the racist practice of trying to "improve" the human race by controlling genetics and reproduction.

A disturbingly widespread practice

While eugenics is most commonly associated with Nazi Germany, it was alive and well in the US and in other countries well before World War II, Daniel Kevles, a historian of science at New York University, said during a talk at the gene editing summit on Monday.

"Eugenics was not unique to the Nazis. It could — and did — happen everywhere," Kevles said.

He and others worry that gene editing tools like CRISPR could bring back something similar to eugenics by allowing us to create so-called "designer babies" with specific mental or physical characteristics.

Eugenics first gained popularity at the turn of the 20th century. The term was coined by the English polymath Francis Galton, Darwin's half-cousin and one of the field's pioneers. At its core, eugenics is about promoting the reproduction of so-called "superior" people and preventing reproduction among so-called "inferior" people.

Many prominent scientists were also supporters, Kevles said, including Charles Davenport, the director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Genetics in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office, which pursued eugenics research from 1910 to 1939; its board included the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, according to the ERO archives.

Eugenics was popularized in books and articles, and newspaper headlines of the time heralded the "era of supermen." State fairs held fitter family contests, where teams of doctors performed psychological and physical exams on family members. The family with the highest eugenic health grade was awarded a trophy.

But it gets far worse than that.

Forced sterilization

The US also has a sordid history of involuntary sterilization. More than 60,000 people in over 30 states had forced sterilization laws, which were often applied to people with mental illness or minorities. In the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, the court ruled in favor of a Virginia law allowing state-sanctioned sterilization. Eighteen-year-old Carrie Buck was ordered sterilized because she was deemed "feeble-minded" after becoming pregnant (though she was allegedly raped).

These sterilization policies paved the way for similar laws in Europe, including Nazi Germany. In the wake of Nazi eugenics experiments, the practice became less popular, but it persisted in the American legal system for years.

Today, eugenics is a dirty word. But that doesn't mean we're immune to going down that path again, Kevles argued. With CRISPR, we have the ability to make changes to the human genome with unprecedented ease.

For example, sometime in the future you could imagine using CRISPR to create a child who was blond-haired and blue-eyed, like the racist Aryan ideal espoused by the Nazis.

We now know most of the genes involved in controlling eye color. But hair color and other "designer" traits are more complex, controlled by many genes, and today's gene editing tools are still fairly rudimentary.

Still, they're getting better all the time.

Kevles pointed to a number of forces that could drive gene editing technology in an uncomfortable direction: the economics of lowering medical costs, selection for races with a lower risk of a particular disease, overconfidence in genes as the basis of bad traits, and finally, consumer demand to improve ourselves.

The question is, he asked, how will couples who plan to have a baby respond to these pressures?

SEE ALSO: Scientists may soon be able to 'cut and paste' DNA to cure deadly diseases and design perfect babies

DON'T MISS: 2 leading biologists say we should allow gene editing on human embryos

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

A startlingly simply method for cutting and pasting DNA has been making waves lately.

Scientists and policymakers are meeting in Washington, DC December 1-3 to debate the use of CRISPR/Cas9, a tool that makes it possible to make changes to an organism's DNA almost as easily as cutting and pasting.

CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. These are short sections of DNA found in bacteria that help them fight off viruses, but can be used to modify the genome of many other organisms. Using a protein called Cas9, the cell can cut out a piece of DNA and replace it with a piece of one's choosing.

The technique has people excited for its potential to revolutionize our understanding of biology and help cure deadly genetic diseases. 

Here's how it works:

SEE ALSO: Scientists may soon be able to 'cut and paste' DNA to cure deadly diseases and design perfect babies

NOW READ: CRISPR, the fancy new technology that lets people edit genes, could have an unprecedented and horrific consequence

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds

This week, scientists gathered in Washington, DC for the International Summit on Human Gene Editing to discuss a technology called CRISPR-CAS9, which can insert, remove and change the DNA of basically any organism. It is relatively simple, inexpensive and accurate, and it’s already being used in laboratories around the world to make cells and breed laboratory animals with modified DNA for the study of diseases.

CRISPR could also be used to modify DNA in human embryos, but the question is whether this should be allowed. Among the concerns scientists and bioethicists have highlighted are heritable gene modifications and the use of this technology to create “designer babies.” CRISPR provides new opportunities for disease treatment and prevention, but with unknown and potentially substantial risks that warrant an ethical discussion. And this discussion should be rooted in an understanding of what can and cannot be meaningfully edited.

I study the genetic prediction of complex diseases and traits. Research in my field has consistently shown that human traits and common diseases are not genetic enough to be predicted using DNA tests. For the same reasons, it will be impossible to successfully program the presence of traits in embryos.

Any concerns that CRISPR could taken a step further to enhance babies by selecting favorable traits such as intelligence and athleticism may be unwarranted.

What can be edited?

The first (and failed) experiment of human embryo editing aimed to repair a single gene mutation for beta-thalassemia, a severe blood disorder. Other diseases mentioned as future targets for gene editing, such as sickle cell disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, are caused by single gene mutations.

These diseases are – at least hypothetically – easier to fix because the cause is entirely genetic and simple. For these diseases, research using CRISPR may lead to breakthrough discoveries for therapies and, potentially, for prevention.

But genetic editing of embryos for single-gene disorders also warrants caution. Not only could off-target cuts – unintended edits in the wrong places of the DNA – introduce heritable errors, but mutations may have so-called antagonistic pleiotropic effects.

This means that the expression of the gene increases the risk of one disease while decreasing the risk of another. Take beta-thalassemia or sickle cell disease, for example: carrying two mutated copies leads to severe illness, but carrying one mutated copy reduces the risk of fatal malaria.

Why traits cannot be designed in embryos

For a trait to be “programmed” with gene editing, it needs to meet two criteria.

First, the traits must be predominantly determined by DNA, which means that their heritability needs to be close to 100%. The lower the heritability, the more nongenetic factors such as lifestyle, education and stress play a role. The less likely the trait can be genetically programmed.

Parents who wish to enhance their offspring may be particularly risk-averse when it comes to the unknown adverse consequences of genome editing. That means that the heritability of favorable traits may need to be very close to 100%.

But a recent review, summarizing 50 years of heritability research, showed that only a few traits and diseases had an estimated heritability higher than 90%. Intelligence and higher-level cognitive function were around 50%, muscle power at 70% and temperament and personality at around 45%.

Second, the “genetic architecture” must be straightforward. Traits must be caused by a single mutation, like beta-thalassemia, or by an interaction between a limited number of mutations. It may technically become possible to edit DNA accurately at multiple places in the near future. But we still won’t know what exactly needs to be edited to program a trait when tens or hundreds of gene variants are involved.

Gene editing for favorable traits is not just a matter of tweaking the genes in the right direction. What makes people intelligent, for instance, isn’t a combination of the “right genes” and the “right environment,” but the “right combination” of genes and environment. Since the future environment of the embryo is unknown at the moment of editing, it will be impossible to know what the right genes need to be.

This is why the traits people might want to enhance can’t be programmed in the embryo, not even with the most accurate and reliable version of CRISPR. The technology is not the limitation for enhancing babies – nature is.

Despite the successes in gene discovery of the past 10 years, our knowledge of the combined contribution of all genetic variants is too limited for embryo editing. Even when all genes and their complex interactions are completely understood, our ability to use gene editing for favorable traits will remain limited because human traits are just not genetic enough.

We need to be clear about what cannot be edited

Urged by concerns about the safety and reliability of CRISPR technology and the unknown medical, societal, environmental and ethical consequences of human gene editing, a group of scientists are calling for a voluntary moratorium on “attempts at germline genome modification of clinical application in humans.”

The UNESCO International Bioethics Committee has also called for a moratorium citing concern over the creation of “heritable modifications” and “enhancing individuals.” Interestingly, their report acknowledges that CRISPR:

could be a watershed in the history of medicine […] even though it must be noted that there are only a few diseases for which the abnormality of one single gene is a necessary and sufficient condition.

This little side note, however, marks the boundaries of what can meaningfully be edited in the DNA of an embryo.

Gene editing technology warrants further study and refinement, which should be accompanied by evaluations of potential adverse consequences. But progress should not be hindered by an ethical debate about a potential misuse of the technology that will not be possible.

Polygenic diseases and traits are simultaneously too complex genetically and not genetic enough. This limits the opportunities for disease prediction, and will also prevent the genetic enhancement of babies.

A Cecile JW Janssens, Research Professor of Epidemiology, Emory University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: A scientific study links this body language with creativity

Little Amalya only lived for an hour and 20 minutes.

The child was born with anencephaly, a devastating and almost always fatal condition in which parts of the skull and brain to fail to develop. After Amalya died, his parents, Eric and Bethany Conkel, donated their son's organs and body for medical research, with the aim of saving the lives of other children.

And while it may not have helped Amalya, a promising new genetic tool that lets scientists cut and paste DNA could be used to replace defective genes in human embryos that cause some of the worst congenital disorders.

Amalya's illness, anencephaly, is what's known as a neural tube defect. During the first month of pregnancy, the neural tube — which will develop into the brain, skull, and spinal cord — fails to close properly. About one in every 4,859 babies born in the US have anencephaly, the CDC estimates, and almost all die soon after birth.

While the cause of anencephaly is not known, it appears to be the result of a mixture of genetics, behavior, and environment.

Dozens of genes may influence the risk of a child developing anencephaly. The most well-studied is a gene called MTHFR, which contains instructions for making a protein that is involved in processing folic acid (vitamin B9). Low intake of folic acid before and during early pregnancy is known to increase the risk of developing the disorder.

But other congenital diseases — like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia— are the result of simple genetic mutations, and might be within our reach to fix, thanks to a new gene editing technology.

A promising, yet controversial, tool

Known as CRISPR/Cas9, the technique has been compared to cutting and splicing analog film, only with genes. Researchers in China have already used CRISPR to modify human embryos, although the embryos were never meant to survive.

Many scientists hope that gene editing could ultimately be used to prevent or cure many genetic disorders.

But despite CRISPR's promise, some worry that gene editing technology is too risky, or that it could be used to create "designer babies" with traits that aren't medically necessary, such as intelligence or athleticism.

Bethany Conkel, a former special education teacher and founder and president of a nonprofit called Purposeful Gift, is of the view that we should continue developing gene editing technology if it could theoretically prevent a baby being born with a genetic disease.

That's not to say that parents of children with special needs don't love them just as much as any other child, but "having a healthy child is something wonderful," Conkel told Business Insider.

"If we can save the heartbreak and allow parents to have healthy children, that would be amazing," she said.

If gene editing could help cure genetic diseases and save some of the heartbreak she and her husband went through when they lost their baby, then it should definitely be explored, Conkel said.

The potential to save lives

The Conkels went to great lengths to donate their son's body and organs to research labs. They started Purposeful Gift to educate families and medical staff about fetal donation. 

"That research is going to save lives down the road," Conkel said. "That's why the new tecnology with gene editing should be explored more. The goal is to help save lives, and improve quality of life."

Just last week, some of the world's leading scientists and bioethicists met in Washington, DC, to debate the proper use of gene editing in humans.

During one of the sessions, one of Conkel's friends, a woman named Sarah Gray, got up to speak. Gray, a marketing director at the American Association of Tissue Banks, also had a child born with anencephaly. Her son died of the disease six days after he was born, but not before he suffered from severe seizures.

Gray made an impassioned plea to the scientists developing gene editing technology:

"If you have the skills and the knowledge to fix these diseases, then frickin' do it!" she said.

Watch a YouTube video of Gray's plea:

NEXT UP: A tool that lets scientists 'cut and paste' DNA could cure genetic diseases and much more — if we can control it

NOW READ: There are really good reasons why we should — and shouldn't — genetically engineer human embryos

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch science writer Carl Zimmer explain CRISPR in 90 seconds