NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  1. Content with the tag: “dna

  2. Detecting Our Martian Cousins


    Microfluidics Chip
    Some scientists believe that if life exists on Mars, it could have been delivered there from Earth on interplanetary meteorites. With funding from NASA’s ASTEP program, a team of researchers is now putting together an instrument that could test this theory. The Search for Extraterrestrial Genomes (SETG) project would send an instrument to Mars to search soil or ice samples for the presence of Earth-like DNA. SETG will have its first field test this year.

    Source: [astrobio.net]

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  3. Replicating RNA


    Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute have made important steps toward understanding how life originated by shedding light on the ‘RNA World’ hypothesis. The ‘RNA World’ refers to the idea that life on Earth went through a stage where RNA was used to store information and act as a catalyst, much like DNA and proteins are used in organisms today. A critical component of this stage would be that RNA molecules would have to replicate themselves. The team at Scripps has now synthesized RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of additional...

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    Source: [Astrobiology Magazine]

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  4. New World Frogs


    A new paper on the evolutionary relationships among New World tropical frogs was published online this week in PNAS. The authors, including members of the NAI Penn State Team, used DNA sequence and molecular clock analyses to further understand the frogs’ origin as more likely by dispersal over water from South America, than via land connections with North and South America.

    Source: [Link]

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  5. Microbial Diversity in the Deep Sea


    NAI PI of the Marine Biological Laboratory Team, Mitch Sogin, and his team have published a new paper in PNAS documenting astonishing new findings of microbial diversity in the deep sea. The findings are the result of a new DNA technique called “454 tag sequencing.”

    Image courtesy of Micro*scope

    Source: [Link]

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