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Air is full of DNA
- butvacuum 6mo agoburied the lede, imho: we have enough DNA profiles to match their sampling up with. I'm always stunned when reminded that a full genome sequencing has gone from Human Genome Project's extreme cost and (edit: glacial) speed to using seqencing as the easy button. I hear we've also got machines that'll seqence, fit on a bench, and cost high five/low six figures. They've got issues to work out still though- iirc something about damaged sections causing issues.
- cmrx64 6mo agofour figures these days. fits in your hand. nanopore is a revolution. https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/minion https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/minion there’s youtubers that have videos about doing this in a home wetlab. very achievable. some amateur soil biologists using this to try and sample microdiversity as the planet… humanifies.
- dubi_steinkek 6mo agoDo you have links to these youtubers? Sounds interesting
- samplatt 6mo agoNot OP, but The Thought Emporium is a personal favourite. Their name belies the hands-on nature of their videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0_q-fD_lyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0_q-fD_lyU
- robertlagrant 6mo agoEx-Nanopore employee here. One interesting thing we heard about internally was that OceanX[0] has one of our GridION[1] devices (slightly larger, and built-in compute) that they were using to track whales in the ocean by sequencing DNA found in seawater. Really cool. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OceanX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OceanX [1] https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/gridion https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/gridion
- netcraft 6mo agohuge if true had an episode about this recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HlLwG2xN_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HlLwG2xN_c
- the__alchemist 6mo agoI have a mol bio home lab, and decided against it because while the devices themselves are reasonably priced, the flow cells are an expensive disposable. I use Plasmidsaurus instead: Pay them $15/sample online, drop off the tubes in a styrophoam box labeled with a dinosaur in a nearby university building; get the results next morning. They use Oxford Nanopore, but are loading your sample along with many other samples to maximize flow cell use.
- butvacuum 6mo agonot suprised. the website seemed to indicate to me (a layman in this area) that it expired based on time, not use- so Seqiencing As A Service (ha!) makes financial sense for most people.
- smolder 6mo agoPaleontology has been really helped by the ease of sequencing, to the point where many evolutionary arguments are moot. Humans are apes, birds are dinosaurs. Some people still dispute it, but not with evidence on their side.
- Terr_ 6mo ago> Some people still dispute it I particularly like this Futurama clip on the subject. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VzGtk7Ip4NU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VzGtk7Ip4NU
- pfdietz 6mo ago> birds are dinosaurs Not that I doubt that, but how does DNA help, when we have no DNA samples from dinosaurs?
- mpaepper 6mo agohttps://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/scientists-discover-well-preserved-dino-dna https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/scientists-discover-well-pres...
- pfdietz 6mo agoThat claim is widely believed to be bullshit.
- throwaway27448 6mo agoBirds are dinosaurs because they are in the clade dinosauria. Their closest living quadrupedal relatives by genetic distance are indeed crocodiles. But you're right, it is the fossil record that provides the strongest evidence.
- pfdietz 6mo agoI meant, "we have no DNA evidence from non-avian dinosaurs". Saying that birds have the same DNA as birds is not evidence of much of anything. :)
- globular-toast 6mo agoShould be noted, though, the cheaper/quicker techniques do still come with compromises compared to the "gold standard" technique used for the Human Genome Project.
- dang 6mo ago[stub for offtopicness]
- cmos 6mo agoAs is the Ocean.
- tim333 6mo agoCool. I think they had to delete all the sequencing data from the Wuhan Institute of Virology so stuff in the air wouldn't show up.
- shevy-java 6mo agoThat was never a convincing argument, IMO. Just as US institutes would claim that China is responsible, by the same token the argument works on any other lab too - yet the media did not present in that way. Ever. That's not accurate reporting; that's an attempt at victim blaming. Next thing someone may do is give a powerpoint presentation about weapons of mass destruction in some far-away country ...
- popopo73 6mo ago>Just as US institutes would claim that China is responsible, by the same token the argument works on any other lab too - yet the media did not present in that way. Ever. That's not accurate reporting; that's an attempt at victim blaming. So your idea of accurate reporting is to apply whataboutisms?
- philipallstar 6mo agoActually, the US did a lot to downplay the idea that the nearby lab in Wuhan that was doing gain of function research on coronaviruses was in any way involved, to the extent that you'd get shadow-banned on Twitter for mentioning it.
- shevy-java 6mo ago[flagged]
- madaxe_again 6mo agoI was chatting with a biologist friend a while back, and one tidbit he dropped in was that any sample of air from anywhere on earth will likely contain the dna of organisms unknown to science, so abundant the tree of life is.
- scotty79 6mo agoI firmly believe that there are thousands of times more species of viruses in circulation that influence human health, almost always in minor fashion, than we currently know. Any random, sub-clinical symptom is in my belief highly likely to be caused by one of such viruses.
- rcxdude 6mo agoYeah, there's just so many microorganisms (and some evolve so quickly) it would basically be impossible to really enumerate the species.
- adzm 6mo agoMakes sense to focus on the pathogenic ones. There must be countless benign variations of life everywhere on a microscopic level
- cwmoore 6mo agoSibling comments seem motivated to misreading parent here. DNA is a molecule, not a microorganism or virus.
- seydor 6mo agoLet's wait for smartphones with nanopores
- alansaber 6mo agoImagine the potential for targeted ads
- azalemeth 6mo agoI do often wonder about stories like this in the context of forensic science – my (incomplete!) understanding a lot of the time suspect DNA samples are taken from small areas and amplified significantly with high-cycle count PCR. I'd worry that any jury presented with a statistical argument about a fragment of somebody's DNA being very unlikely ("1 in 100 million") to be different to the sample found at the scene would not be aware of all of the potential systematic reasons why the actual true probability may be much, much higher.
- Terr_ 6mo agoProbability seems to be one of those things humans habitually mess-up at. "The chances of this person's unique DNA showing up at the scene are a zillion to one!" "What does that really mean when the sample also contains unique DNA for a hundred other people? Did all of them commit the crime as a group?"
- chiph 6mo agoDepends on how they're using it. To find an unknown person and prove they were at a scene - yeah you'll have the 100 person's worth of DNA to sort through and then match against a (presently) incomplete DNA database. But if you already have a suspect and need to place them at the scene, if their DNA is one of the 100 then they have shown that.
- ch4s3 6mo agoBut we’re they at the scene or did they just bump into someone or something that was there?
- chiph 6mo agoThat's something that would have to be addressed at the trial by the defense attorney raising challenges. If the DNA is present, it's present - barring any procedural mistakes by the forensics technicians (mislabeled sample, dirty lab equipment, didn't follow manufacturers instructions, etc). Or deceit by one or more members of the forensics team to implicate the suspect.
- nelox 6mo agoWhat a wonderful title, a breath of fresh air.
- nasretdinov 6mo agoA breath of fresh _DNA_
- dkobia 6mo agoThis always blows my mind. We are currently breathing in the DNA of the trees, animals, and people around us—and we’re leaving ours behind for them, too. We’re all one big genetic soup.
- SideburnsOfDoom 6mo ago> This always blows my mind. We are currently breathing in the DNA of the trees, At this time of year, believe me, I am aware of the inhaled tree DNA setting off my pollen allergies.
- red75prime 6mo ago"Soup" is a good word. Pieces of DNA resulting from destruction by nucleases and other enzymes.
- gus_massa 6mo agoThe immune system destroy all the DNA in unexpected places in case it's a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viroid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viroid or something. Better safe than sorry. One of the important steps in mRNA vaccines was to surround the mRNA with a lipid to ensure it can survive long enough to enter a cell. Naked mRNA would not have worked.
- etiam 6mo agoOne has to wonder whether destroy is all it does though. Analyzing this as cues about the surroundings seems like it could be pretty useful for successful living, and something evolution could well pick up on. Will we find eventually that some of those nucleic acid fragments were being hauled off for identification in something like an extra inner sense of smell?
- cwmoore 6mo agoNo need to wonder if you study the lymphatic system.
- 6mo ago
- ksaj 6mo agoPeople thinking how complicated this must be to filter through for forensics, forget that during and following the Covid lockdown, cities monitored sewage water for Covid viral load. They even recognized and reported the specific strains and their dominance in the samples. This includes finding "new" strains, and all this among all the other DNA/RNA bits to be found in city sewage. So the technology is indeed there to find the needle they're after in the haystack they're provided.