Science Media Centre

Life was born complex, with the primordial ocean acting as a kind of genetic swap-shop over hundreds of millions of years as cells exchanged useful parts to effectively become a global mega-organism, says new American research. The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the label for a crude organism — probably one with structure sufficiently [...]

A single lock of Aboriginal hair has revealed the genetic origins the first Australians and offered insight into the spread of early man. Researchers have sequenced the DNA from a 100 year old lock of hair belonging to an Australian Aboriginal. The genome sequence has shown the Aboriginals were genetically separated from other human populations [...]

DNA analysis of feather cloaks dating back to 1810 has revealed fascinating insights about historical Maori trade and movement. Scientists from Massey, Auckland and Griffiths Universities, in collaboration with a host of Museums , have carefully analysed the DNA of feathers used in traditional Maori cloaks. Their samples came from 113 cloaks sourced from museums [...]

New Zealand scientists have helped establish a link between a mother’s diet while pregnant and the probability that her child will be obese. A team of scientists from New Zealand and the UK, including Sir Peter Gluckman of the Liggins Institute (NZ), examined epigentic modification (chemical changes in the DNA structure) in umbilical tissue from [...]

Beck Vass writes in the New Zealand Herald about the identification work being by disaster victim identification teams, who are asking families to bring in anything which might have DNA – toothbrushes and hairbrushes for example – to try and formally identify victim of Tuesday’s Christchurch earthquake. DNA is used as a last resort for [...]

Jill Galloway writes in the Waikato Times about scientists’ efforts to better understand beef and sheep genetics in a bid to improve Estimated Breeding Value (EBV) information. EBVs are widely used, but accurate genetic tests could potentially save farmers years and improve their stock. An excerpt: (read in full here) “Professor Goddard said EBVs work, [...]

Kiran Chug writes in the Dominion Post about Wellingtonian Alan Cooper and his involvement in scientists’ recently announced ability to reconstruct the blood of woolly mammoths. The technique could potentially be used to recreate the blood cells of other extinct animals. An excerpt: (read in full here) “Woolly mammoths are believed to have died out [...]

AusSMC: In a world-first study to be published in Nature, scientists have shown in human embryos a new technique developed last year in monkeys to treat maternally-inherited mitochondrial diseases. The study describes the first ever transfer of genetic material between fertilised human eggs which has the potential to ‘treat’ human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) disease at [...]

Paul Gorman reports in The Press on the first successful isolation of DNA from ancient eggshell fossils by an international team including researchers from the University of Otago. The eggshell fragments include those from moa, and it is hoped they will enable reserachers to better understand the history, and demise, of the birds. An excerpt: [...]

For the first time, DNA has been successfully extracted from fossilized eggshells, with some of the fragments being from moa. The international team, which included scientists from the University of Otago, published the paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.    Previous attempts to perform this kind of extraction had been unsuccessful, and it is [...]