Melon research sweetened with DNA sequence

Sat, 06/27/2009 – 15:20 – NLN

machineslikeus.com

People smell them, thump them and eyeball their shape. But ultimately, it’s sweetness and a sense of healthy eating that lands a melon in a shopper’s cart.

Plant breeders now have a better chance to pinpoint such traits for new varieties, because the melon genome with hundreds of DNA markers has been mapped by scientists with Texas AgriLife Research. That means tastier and healthier melons are likely for future summer picnics.

Colored melon flesh are full of nutrients. Plant breeders may develop even better varieties now that melon genome with hundreds of DNA markers has been mapped. Credit: Texas AgriLife Photo by Kathleen Phillips.

10 guilt-free foods you can add to your diet

KGO-TV – San Francisco,CA,USA

Friday, June 05, 2009

Affordably delicious and surprisingly healthful: 10 foods you can add back to your diet without guilt! Amy Albert, senior associate editor of Bon Appetit Magazine, shares her finds.

Every month, Bon Appétit features a column called “Health Wise,” where we offer a guide to eating healthfully while still enjoying your food. It’s designed to help our readers make sense of nutritional information that can sometimes be hard to decipher.

1. BACON

· Jennifer McLagan, author of Fat, tells us that 45% of the fat in bacon is monosaturated – which is a good-for-you-fat that can actually help lower bad cholesterol levels.

· This fat is the same fat found in olive oil (called oleic acid) – so our argument is that bacon is about half as good for you as olive oil and twice as delicious!

· Of course, it’s not a free ride – moderation is key and you should seek out artisanal varieties without preservatives.

· Also remember that when cooking with bacon, a little goes a long way – sometimes you just need one slice to spice up a pot of soup. Or use it as a yummy garnish for fish or sautéed greens.

2. WHOLE MILK

· Whole milk can be good for you – the saturated milk fats you find in whole milk may help us absorb calcium better, and contains big helpings of vitamins A and D. In fact, milk producers are required by the government to fortify low-fat and skim milk with synthetic vitamins that are found naturally in whole milk.

· Other studies have found that low-fat diets can actually be counterproductive to weight loss – so having some fat from whole milk can be good for you. In a Swedish study, researchers found that women who ate one serving of whole milk or cheese a day put on less weight than women who ate these foods less often. · Another study suggested that one or more servings of whole milk a day may even enhance a woman’s fertility

3. PINE NUTS

· You find about 11 grams of protein in about one half cup of pine nuts.

· They are also loaded with cancer-fighting antioxidants and pinolenic acid, a natural appetite suppressant – which will help you eat less.

· And if you are worried about fat in nuts, a 2003 study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found little evidence that eating nuts causes weight gain; some evidence actually pointed to weight maintenance.

· Here’s how you can use them in your cooking: Pine nuts are a terrifically easy way to add a little flavor, richness, and texture to everything from last-minute salads to weeknight pastas

4. DUCK BREAST

· Although duck has a decadent reputation, this doesn’t make it a bad thing to cook at home every once and a while.

· It has a thick layer of fat under the skin – but duck fat is considered to be among the healthiest of animal fast. With 63% unsaturated fat, it beats out beef and is right up there with chicken. And it is absolutely delicious! So you shouldn’t be afraid to splurge on duck breast every now and then.

· A great way to cook it: Score the skin and sauté it skin side down to render out much of the fat, and sprinkle with sea salt.

· We also have a great recipe for Seared Duck Breast in the June issue

5. WATERCRESS

· All greens are good for you, but watercress is especially healthful.

· A 2007 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that watercress has a high enough antioxidant count to make a measurable difference in reducing DNA damage to our white blood cells (a precursor to many forms of cancer).

· Eating watercress has also been found to consistently lower elevated blood triglyceride levels, a risk factor for heart disease.

· Watercress tossed with a Dijon vinaigrette is a perfect accompaniment to a grilled grass-fed skirt steak (or even duck breast!).

6. CANNELLINI BEANS

· These are a pantry staple – and are budget-friendly, versatile, and incredible good for you.

· Beans have cholesterol-lowering soluble fiber, potassium and magnesium that can help regulate blood pressure.

· Plus, their complex carbs and protein help keep you feeling full (so you aren’t temped to snack 30 mins after dinner).

· All beans are good for you, but cannellinis are especially great – they are building blocks for delicious soups, salads, sides and appetizers.

· The best place to buy beans is somewhere that moves them in large quantities so you know they haven’t been sitting around.

7. LEEKS

· Did you know that one medium-sized leek can contain more fiber than a bran muffin? Leeks are an incredible source of dietary fiber.

· They also have tons of folic acid, iron, potassium, vitamin C, and cancer-fighting antioxidants.

· They are incredible versatile to cook with as well – use them in potato-leek soup, try them in place of celery in stock and stew recipes, or slow-braise them for a great side dish for roasted meats.

8. ANCHOVIES

· Small, oily fish from cold northern seas – like anchovies – contain a high concentration of omega-3s with a minimum of mercury.

· These omega-3 fatty acids have been recommended by doctors for protection against everything from heart disease to depression.

· Anchovies have just as much omega-3 as salmon and nearly twice as much as halibut.

· Although the serving sizes aren’t the same, anchovies can add incredible depth of flavor to a wide variety of dishes – from pastas to salads to homemade mayonnaise.

· So you can easily get some omega-3′s in surprising and delicious ways.

9. FRESH STRAWBERRIES

· When it comes to healthful eating, scientists have discovered that color is key.

· Brightly colored fruits and vegetables (like strawberries) contain the highest levels of phytonutrients – powerful disease-fighting compounds.

· A study conducted at the University of Illinois found that strawberries may fight inflammation, cancer-causing compounds, and may even be capable of suppressing the progression of tumors

10. BUCKWHEAT

· Most people think that buckwheat is a grain, but it is actually an herb that’s related to rhubarb and sorrel.

· It contains all the essential amino acids, B vitamins, phosphorus, magnesium, iron zinc, copper and manganese, and a fatty acid critical to good health.

· It has 4.5 grams of dietary fiber in every cup – so it’s up there in nutrition with granola.

· You can eat buckwheat in soba noodles, French-style crepes, or use buckwheat flour to make pancakes.

· Because it’s high-protein, you will be getting a low-glycemic index meal that won’t leave you hungry an hour later.

Visit bonappetit.com for tons of recipes that use all of these ingredients.

DNAWellnessinfo.com Resource:  http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=view_from_the_bay/food_wine&id=6850949

DNA Nutrition Breakthrough:  http://www.dnaguidedwellnessproducts.com

Can taking a multivitamin extend life?

Los Angeles Times – Health

3:22 PM, May 29, 2009

Can DNA Test Predict ‘Super Athlete’ Possibility?

May 18, 2009 10:00 pm US/Central
DALLAS (CBS 11 News) ? Reporting Ginger Allen

A simple DNA test may be able to determine if a child has what it takes to become a ‘super athlete’. While some claim that, knowing the results could help parents make decisions about where their kids might excel; other local parents and doctors wonder if such a test is really a good idea.

Nico Rodvold of Dallas is an active 2-year-old who never seems to slow down. “Imagine the most active child you can imagine and that’s what I have. That’s Nico,” said the boy’s mother, Amparo.

Amparo has run in multiple marathons and Nico’s dad trained for the 1996 Olympics. But will great genes help the little boy become an Olympic sprinter in the 2028 games?

Mike Weinstein, of Atlas Sports Genetics, claims that his DNA test offers parents a glimpse of the future. “You can test a person directly right after they’re born,” he explained. “We’re really trying to design the test to open up the doors and widen the range of available sports that may be best suited for a particular person’s, the way they’ve been built.”

Considering Weinstein’s declaration, CBS 11 News asked Nico’s parents to give the test a try. After taking a small swipe inside Nico’s cheek, the family sent the test to a lab in Australia.

Once the sample was received, scientists would analyze the ACTN3 gene. Every human being has two ACTN3 genes; one from each parent. The testing in Australia would look for a variant on either gene. If there is no sign of the variant, the similarities may signal a future ‘elite athlete’.

Dr. Angela Scheuerle, medical geneticist at Medical City Dallas Hospital, is concerned that most parents don’t truly understand the science of genetics and she worries some will take the results too seriously. “Just ethically, I have difficulty with the idea of determining somebody’s future with a single sort of ‘wishy washy’ test as a baby,” she said.

It took two weeks to get the test results on Nico and his parents. His father read the results. “He may be equally suited for sprint and power and/or endurance.”

The Rodvold’s say the test results won’t change how they raise Nico or any of their three children, including one that is due any day now.

The Rodvold’s, Atlas Sports Genetics, and Dr. Scheuerle all agree that the test is just one of many factors that can determine whether a child will be an elite athlete. All say that coaching, skill, and desire are just as important.

The sports genetics DNA test costs $150.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

DNA News Resource: http://cbs11tv.com/local/super.athlete.sports.2.1012872.html

Revolutionary DNA Guided Nutrition – www.dnaguidedwellnessproducts.com

Helmsley grant launches Salk Center for Nutritional Genetics

DNA Guided Nutrition is here!

DNA guided nutrition has finally arrived – check it out.

Lab creates an all-it-can-eat mouse

Imagine you’ve bellied up to the all-you-can-eat pasta bar in Berkeley, only to meet one of the mice from Hei Sook Sul’s Nutritional Science and Toxicology Lab.

If you come here often, you know that loading up on carbohydrates is going to make you pretty chubby. But you notice that your fellow diner — the mouse — is pretty slim. How does he do it?

DNA Weight Control

Not only were mice whose DNA-PK gene had been knocked out 40% leaner than normal mice when all were fed a high-carb, low-fat diet; they also had better blood-lipid profiles, suggesting they’d be at lower risk of developing heart disease.

Sul said no one at this point was thinking about gene therapy as a treatment for obesity. Instead, drug developers might look at how the DNA-PK gene calls out other actors to set in motion the conversion of excess calories to fat and find an agent that might disrupt the process.

If they’re successful, you’ll be able to join that mouse at the pasta bar and look just as svelte as he does.

melissa.healy@latimes.com

DNA Wellness Resource:  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-carbs21-2009mar21,0,6500843.story

DNA Nutritional Breakthrough:  http://www.dnaguidedwellnessproducts.com

Triple Helix: Designing a New Molecule of Life

From the December 2008 Scientific American Magazine

Peptide nucleic acid, a synthetic hybrid of protein and DNA, could form the basis of a new class of drugs—and of artificial life unlike anything found in nature

By Peter E. Nielsen

Key Concepts

• A synthetic molecule called peptide nucleic acid (PNA) combines the information-storage properties of DNA with the chemical stability of a proteinlike backbone.
• Drugs based on PNA would achieve therapeutic effects by binding to specific base sequences of DNA or RNA, repressing or promoting the corresponding gene.
• Some researchers working to construct artificial life-forms out of mixtures of chemicals are also considering PNA as a useful ingredient for their designs.
• PNA-like molecules may have served as primordial genetic material at the origin of life.

For all the magnificent diversity of life on this planet, ranging from tiny bacteria to majestic blue whales, from sunshine-harv­­est­­ing plants to mineral-digesting endoliths miles underground, only one kind of “life as we know it” exists. All these organisms are based on nucleic acids—DNA and RNA—and proteins, working together more or less as described by the so-called central dogma of molecular biology: DNA stores information that is transcribed into RNA, which then serves as a template for producing a protein. The proteins, in turn, serve as important structural elements in tissues and, as enzymes, are the cell’s workhorses.

Yet scientists dream of synthesizing life that is utterly alien to this world—both to better understand the minimum components required for life (as part of the quest to uncover the essence of life and how life originated on earth) and, frankly, to see if they can do it. That is, they hope to put together a novel combination of molecules that can self-organize, metabolize (make use of an energy source), grow, reproduce and evolve.

A molecule that some researchers study in pursuit of this vision is peptide nucleic acid (PNA), which mimics the information-storing features of DNA and RNA but is built on a proteinlike backbone that is simpler and sturdier than their sugar-phosphate backbones. My group developed PNA more than 15 years ago in the course of a project with a rather more immediately useful goal than the creation of unprecedented life-forms. We sought to design drugs that would work by acting on the DNA composing specific genes, to either block or enhance the gene’s expression (the production of the protein it encodes). Such drugs would be conceptually similar to “antisense” compounds, such as short DNA or RNA strands that bind to a specific RNA sequence to interfere with the production of disease-related proteins [see “Hitting the Genetic Off Switch,” by Gary Stix; Scientific American, October 2004].

PNA’s unique properties potentially give it several advantages over antisense DNAs and RNAs, including more versatility in binding to DNA as well as RNA, stronger binding to its target and greater chemical stability in the enzyme-laden cellular environment. Many studies have demonstrated PNA’s suitability for modifying gene expression, mostly in molecular test-tube experiments and in cell cultures. Studies in animals have begun, as has research on ways to transform PNA into drugs that can readily enter a person’s cells from the bloodstream.

In addition to fomenting exciting medical research, these amazing molecules have inspired speculations relating to the origin of life on earth. Some scientists have suggested that PNAs or a very similar molecule may have formed the basis of an early kind of life at a time before proteins, DNA and RNA had evolved. Perhaps rather than creating novel life, artificial-life researchers will be re-creating our earliest ancestors.

Into the Groove
The story of PNA’s discovery begins in the early 1990s. To generate drugs with broader capabilities than antisense RNA, my colleagues Michael Egholm, Rolf H. Berg, and Ole Buchardt and I wanted to develop small molecules able to recognize double-stranded, or duplex, DNA having specific sequences of bases—no easy task. The difficulty has to do with the structure of the familiar DNA double helix.

It is the bases—thymine (T), adenine (A), cytosine (C) and guanine (G)—that store information in DNA. (In RNA, thymine is replaced by the very similar molecule uracil, or U.) Pairs of these bases joined by hydrogen bonds form the “rungs” of the familiar DNA “ladder.” C binds with G, and A binds with T, in what is called Watson-Crick base-pairing. A compound that binds with a stretch of double-helical DNA having a characteristic base sequence would therefore be one that acts on any gene containing that particular sequence of bases on one of its strands.

DNAWellnessInfo.com Resource:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=triple-helix-designing-a-new-molecule&ec=su_triplehelix

Customized vitamins a fix for genetic flaws?

(06-05) 20:01 PDT — UC Berkeley scientists are exploring whether high-speed gene-reading machines – like those used to decode the human genome – will be able to find subtle genetic flaws that can harm health and can be cured by treatments as simple as vitamins.

Forever Off-Menu: A Diet All Your Own

By Brandon Keim May 07, 2007 | 3:18:36 PM  WIRED

For a few hundred dollars, you can send away for a genetic test from companies that offer personalized nutrition information — and usually vitamin supplements — based on the results.

Decades from now, we may see these services as we now see miracle cures peddled by traveling salesmen in frontier America. Experts at the cutting edge of nutrigenomics say that current commercial products are based on a sliver of insight into the complex, multi-level system that is metabolism. But soon — perhaps, even, within a decade — personalized diets customized as carefully as a bespoke suit may be an everyday consumer reality.

That was the message of “Nutrigenomics, Nutritional Systems Biology and Personalized Nutrition – Truth or SciFi?,” an afternoon panel discussion at BIO. Genetics alone won’t make this happen, said the speakers; it will require an understanding of our metabolites — the substances made by the human body, with the production influenced by both diet, genetics and the emergent properties of different physiological symptoms. This is the purpose of such research as the Human Metabolome Project, which in January published our metabolome’s first draft.

Once scientists understand how our bodily compounds work, they can associate these with physiology — physical and mental health, energy, longevity, and so on. And then — this is where it gets fun! — people will be able to pose for metabolic portraits. Companies will measure, instead of a handful of genes, the metabolic effect of different foods upon each person. They’ll provide a personal list of nutrients; you’ll be able to plug these into dietary software that tells you what to eat. Send the information to a next-generation grocery store, and the basic components of your ideal diet will be delivered to your door.

Blue-sky? Certainly. Would it take some of the romance out of eating? In the picture painted by the scientists, it sure sounds like it. But while scientists may tell us what to eat, they’re not in the business of selling it to us. If the science ever does progress to that level of culinary customization, I’ve no doubt we’ll see a Julia Child of nutrigenomics, an endless line of chefs showing us how to fold our nutrigenomic recipes like so much origami, and we will eat like (healthy) kings.

DNA News Resource:  http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/05/forever_offmenu.html

DNA Nutritional Breakthrough:  http://www.dnaguidedwellnessproducts.com