PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 7-Jul-2014 Contact: Tiffany Trent ttrent@vt.edu 540-231-6822 Virginia Tech Scientists have long puzzled over the genetic differences between fruit flies that live hardly a puddle jump apart in a natural environment known as "Evolution Canyon" in Mount Carmel, Israel. Now, an international team of researchers led by scientists with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech has peered into the DNA of these closely related flies to discover how these animals have been able to adapt and survive in such close, but extremely different, ecologies. One reason lies in a startling abundance of repetitive DNA elements that, until recently, were considered little more than unused letters in a word game. The explanation will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We've come to understand that not all repeat sequences are junk DNA," said Pawel Michalak, an associate professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. "These repetitive sequences are increasingly being recognized as agents of adaptive change. We discovered a larger than expected amount of genetic variation in these repeating sequences between the fly populations and saw that the variation resulted in potentially functional differences in important biological processes, such as stress resistance and … Continue reading →

The results of DNA profiling of the 2013 deluge victims have begun to show results with 18 bodies being identified via DNA matching, the State Police Department data revealed on Monday. According to the State Police Department, 18 of the 191 DNA samples received have been matched. However, identification of deluge victims and search for corpses of those who went missing in the 2013 deluge continues even a year after the deluge. Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG) CID G S Martolia who is also the head of the Special Task Force constituted to trace the bodies in the Kedar Valley said, The kin of only 191 victims approached the State Police with the DNA samples for the purpose of identification of the bodies". Now that the process of identification via DNA sampling and matching has begun to show results we expect more people to approach us with the DNA samples so that more bodies can be identified, Mr. Martolia said. A total of the 630 bodies have been found in the deluge-hit areas of the State, including the Kedar Valley. The DNA samples of the bodies have been sent to the Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD). Rudraprayag … Continue reading →