Science Cheerleader

During a recent trip to the zoo, this silverback gorilla walked up to an observation window, leaned forward, stared into my son’s eyes and struck a pose remarkably similar to that of my son’s. They were frozen in this state for a good 5-10 seconds. Long enough to fire up some neurons and remind me of our early relationship to primates.

Last year, I met Lynn Fellman, a talented artist who creates portraits based on a person’s DNA (as an extension to National Geographic’s Genographic Project which traces a  participant’s genetic lineage). She’s fascinating and has a unique ability to help one visualize mankind’s historic and scientific place in this world. I asked Lynn to produce a DNA portrait of my family based on my kids’ DNA data.

Here’s the final product (even prettier in “real life”).

And here is Lynn’s detailed description of what this all mean and how the information was gathered (yes, I swabbed by kids’ inner cheeks to collect DNA samples).

Farmers in the fertile crescent: Haplogroup J2 The Men
Haplogroup J2, the paternal line, lands her son’s ancestors smack dab in Italy. Aligning with family history, once the Y chromosome arrived they stayed in the neighborhood. See the blue route coming out of Africa? The northern branch ends close to what would become 15,000 years later — Rome, Italy (the boot is highlighted). Notes from the Genographic Project say that “J2″ pioneered the shift from gathering to farming, kick starting the Neolithic Revolution. Very impressive but mere youngsters compared to the DNA lineage of the female line.

Amazing global travelers: Haplogroup X The Women
Her daughter’s lineage is one of the rare groups that traveled the furthest across the globe — Hap Group X. There are three female and two male groups that eventually crossed the ancient, now submerged continent of Beringa, to North America. Haplogroup X is one of them. When I first saw the results I double triple checked, thinking I made an error. But no, there was a small branch of the route curving to left. That group decided to stay, in what would become about 30,000 years later, the Hungarian empire. So the family story in current time matched the deep ancestry. How interesting though, that some family members broke away to travel across Asia and into the New World. People who survived to found the Native American tribes such as the Ojibwa, Sioux and Navajo. See the image at the top to see how the route continues.

Read more.

Lesson #17 of 18 in the Brain Makeover collaboration with Professor James Trefil/George Mason University, the 76ers Cheerleaders and the Science Cheerleader. See Brain Makeover Series.
17. All forms of life evolved by natural selection.

Scientists divide the development of life on Earth into two segments: chemical evolution, which involves the development of life from inorganic materials, and evolution by natural selection, which describes the process by which that early life form produced the diversity of modern life. The latter is what people associate with Charles Darwin and usually mean by the term ‘evolution’.

Evolution by natural selection depends on two things: first, that there are variations within populations (so that, for example, some rabbits can run faster than others) and, second, competition between individuals (so that fast rabbits are more likely to survive and reproduce). Over time, this selection process produces new species.

Evidence for evolution by natural selection comes from the fossil record and from the examination of genes in the DNA of modern life forms.

Lesson #15 of 18 in the Brain Makeover collaboration with Professor James Trefil/George Mason University, the 76ers Cheerleaders and the Science Cheerleader. See Brain Makeover Series.

All living things are made from cells, the chemical factories of life.

One of the most important discoveries of nineteenth century science was that life is based on chemical reactions, and that these reactions take place in complex structures called cells. In the twentieth century we learned that the instructions for carrying that chemistry are carried in DNA.

The best analogy for a cell is a complex factory—think of a big refinery. There is a front office where instructions for carrying out the factory’s activities are kept. DNA in the nucleus of cells plays this role. In a factory there is a place where energy is generated. In cells, this happens when complex molecules are combined with oxygen in organelles called mitochondria. There is a wall that separates the factory from its surroundings, and in a cell there is a flexible cell membrane that carries out this function. There must also be a way for material to enter and leave the factory, a function that in the cell is the job of large protein molecules called receptors in the cell membrane. The shape of these membranes matches that of molecules outside the cell.

The chemical reactions in a cell are run by protein molecules that serve as enzymes, and the information for building those molecules is coded in stretches of DNA called genes. Understanding how genes operate remains a major area of research in the sciences.

(Image credit.)

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Min Bid: $68,000

FYI: DNA Day is April 25 (Created by Congress in 2003 to commemorate the completion of the Human Genome Project and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix structure.)