Dash-cam video: Deputies save woman from burning wreckage of truck vs. car collision

Indian River County (FL) Sheriff's Office deputies make rescue

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How many synthetic genes does it take to sustain life?

Syn 3.0 bacterial cells magnified about 15,000 times by an electron microscope. This is the world’s first minimal bacterial cell. Its synthetic genome contains only 473 genes. Surprisingly, the functions of 149 of those genes are unknown. Photo by Tom Deerinck and Mark Ellisman of the National Center for Imaging and Microscopy Research at the University of California at San Diego

How many genes does it take to survive and grow strong? 473..if you’re bacteria. Synthetic biologists based in California have nailed down the essential genes for life in a species of bacteria, Mycoplasma mycoides. Engineered by many of the same people who sequenced the human genome, this minimalist microbe may serve as the broth for cooking up the core functions of life.

For example, scientists have cataloged the genomes of thousands of species, yet despite this prior research, no one knows the functions for 31 percent of the genes needed to sustain life in this synthetic germ.

“I think we’re showing how complex life is, even in the simplest of organisms,” geneticist and study co-author Craig Venter said of the work published today in the journal Science. One open question is whether the essential, yet mysterious genes of this synthetic microbe can reveal why so much of human genome — 85 to 92 percent — has lacked a discernible function so far.

This landmark find has been 20 years in the making at the J. Craig Venter Institute, and its origins formed the basis for the human genome project. In 1995, scientists at this institute sequenced the first genome for a free-living organism, Haemophilus influenzae. Later that year, the institute would partner with Clyde A. Hutchison III, a microbiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and publish the smallest genome ever found for a self-replicating organism. Its owner: the bacteria Mycoplasma genitalium. Everything to follow came from this diminutive collection of genetic code.

Venter, Hutchinson and their colleagues realized if they wanted to solve the basic questions of life, they would need to work with the most minimal genome.

“The only way to do that would be by trying to synthesize a genome, and that started our 20-year quest to do this,” Venter said. In other words, they would need to create synthetic life.

Mycoplasma provided the ideal starting ground, given these bacteria contain so few genes. In 2010, the institute announced that they had completed step one in this mission. The scientists had assembled nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, into a working synthetic genome for Mycoplasma mycoides. Mycoplasma mycoides is a relative of bacterial species that launched this project, but it grows faster, which expedites this brand of work.

That’s important because creating synthetic life requires numerous rounds of trial-and-error. To start, they had to stitch together 1.07 million DNA base pairs — the railroad tracks of genomic code — inside of a test tube. Each rail is chemically added one by one, but there’s a margin of error. The team wanted to create a precise replica, so they had to repeat the process until a facsimile of the microbe’s natural genome emerged. Six years ago, they announced their initial success and named this synthetic genome Syn 1.0. They named this genome Syn 1.0.

Steps in creating Syn 3.0. Major advances in DNA technologies have made it possible for biologists to now behave as software engineers and rewrite entire genomes to program new biological operating systems. Illustration and caption by J. Craig Venter Institute

Today, the researchers introduced Syn 3.0, which they created by introducing mutations, one by one, into 901 genes of Syn 1.0. Through multiple iterations, this process exposed which genes were truly essential for the survival of Mycoplasma mycoides. The team landed on 473 genes that maintained the cells replication.

Some genes initially thought of as non-essential, because of what’s known about their jobs in other species, turned out to perform the same critical function as a second gene. In other words, the cell could survive without one of these genes, but not without both of them.

“I love their approach; people can argue over scientific results about whether or not a gene is essential, but the synthesis of this genome draws a line in the sand, and shows unequivocally what is possible,” University of California Los Angeles biochemist Sriram Kosuri, who wasn’t involved in the research, told GENeS.

It’s worth emphasizing that Venter and his team didn’t create new life. In essence, they cut spokes from a bike wheel in order to see how many are required to keep rolling.

“[Syn 3.0] displayed substantial defects in growth and morphology that suggest it is extremely unlikely that such a cell would survive outside of the laboratory. Hence any potential risks associated with [Syn 3.0] are minimal,” Samuel Deutsch, head of DNA synthesis and Assembly at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, told GENeS.

Also, the 473 genes that are essential for Mycoplasma mycoides are not likely to be the same crucial genes for human life — or even other species of bacteria.

Still, there’s something special about starting from scratch. Syn 3.0 offers a foundation for adding new genes and seeing what they do, and the applications could be widespread, if not a long way from fruition.

“Our long-term vision has been to design and build synthetic organisms on demand where you can add in specific functions and predict what the outcome is going to be,” said Daniel Gibson, vice president of DNA Technologies at Synthetic Genomics who partnered on the project. “So we believe that these cells would be very useful for many industrial applications, from medicine to biochemicals, biofuels, nutrition and agriculture.”

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UN: Women and girls are ‘currency’ in South Sudan’s civil war

In a Skype interview, David Marshall of the U.N. describes findings in a new report on violence in South Sudan.

South Sudan’s government forces are encouraging its armed militias to take women and girls as “currency” in place of wages, a new U.N. report found.

Human rights atrocities, including rape, killings and looting, are taking place on both sides of South Sudan’s civil war, which has been raging for more than two years, according to the report released on Friday.

“In South Sudan, the reality is you’re either a loyalist (to the government) or you’re not. And if you’re not, you’re in peril of harassment, detention and death,” said David Marshall, coordinator of the U.N. human rights agency’s recent assessment of South Sudan.

“The youth (in government-aligned militias) were told by the army commanders to take what you can, including women and girls” since the fighters couldn’t be paid wages, Marshall told the PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan. The government sends its armed forces into areas thought to contain the opposition in order to take the residents’ cattle and destroy civilian property including homes, hospitals and schools. Government officials have denied the findings.

Both sides accuse the other of targeting places of refuge, including churches, hospitals and U.N. bases. U.N. forces sent into South Sudan to protect civilians were blocked by warring parties from certain areas.

A woman reported being tied to a tree as her child was gang-raped, said Marshall. “For me, one of the most shocking findings is after two-and-a-half years of extreme sexual violence, how it’s corroding … the fabric of the community. So mothers have seen children gang-raped, they’ve lost their husbands, they’re on the run, they’re starving. And the communities are broken.”

The campaign of violence has continued even though South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar signed a comprehensive peace agreement in August. “There appears to be little political will to explore issues of truth, justice and accountability,” according to the report.

Since the fighting began in December 2013, more than 600,000 have fled to camps in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia, and 1.5 million people have been displaced within South Sudan, putting them in danger of severe food shortages and possible famine, the report said.

In Sudan, and now South Sudan, over decades there have been cycles of extreme violence followed by reconciliation, forgiveness and amnesties, followed by more violence, said Marshall. “There’s no meaningful justice and this is clearly the problem.”

The U.N. report recommends the political and military leadership are removed from power, investigated, prosecuted and punished. And a transitional government should not include anyone who orchestrated the violence and commit to justice, he said.

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Results from 58th Annual Science and Engineering Fair

Winners were announced on Thursday at the San Joaquin County Office of Education of the 58th annual Science and Engineering Fair.

Judges had spent the last two days reviewing 300 individual, group and whole-class projects, submitted by more than 600 K-12 students in the county. Overall, 26 schools from eight school districts, three private schools and three charter schools participated.

Several winners of the fair will proudly represent San Joaquin County in the California State Science Fair in Los Angeles in May. The winners are listed below:

Kindergarten through second grade:

• Class winner: Mrs. Hoptry’s class for “Pop Goes the Kernel” (Bethany Elementary; Lammersville Unified)


• 1st place (tie): Cade Riesenbeck for “Hot Marshmallows” (Dent Elementary; Escalon Unified)


• 1st place (tie): Theodore Harp for “There is More Than One Way to Crack a Nut” (Dent Elementary; Escalon Unified)


• 2nd place: Wyatt Riesenbeck for “Operation Parachute” (Dent Elementary; Escalon Unified)


• 3rd place: Elijah Gori for “Let’s Race” (Lammersville Elementary; Lammersville Unified)

Third through fifth grade:

• 1st place Science: Jordan Prawira for “Egg-cellent Parachute” (Altamont Elementary; Lammersville Unified)


• 1st place Engineering: Genevieve Casazza for “Preventing a Water Pipe from Freezing Without Electricity” (Dent Elementary; Escalon Unified)


• 2nd place: Mathilde Beckman-Forman for “Superhydrophobia Coating” (Wicklund Elementary; Lammersville Unified)


• 3rd place: Jake Bowen for “The Effects of Video Games on Children’s Eyesight” (Bella Vista Christian Academy)

Sixth through eighth grade:

• 1st place Science: Jacqueline Prawira for “Coffee-Doh Battery” (Altamont Elementary; Lammersville Unified)


• 1st place Engineering: Anna Matthews for “Going Green-Water Detector” (Elkhorn School; Lodi Unified)


• 2nd place: Alicia and Ashlyn Roice for “Cure the Burning Heart” (Altamont Elementary; Lammersville Unified)


• 3rd place: Ashley Teele for “Save the Avocado!” (Bethany Elementary; Lammersville Unified)

Ninth through 12th grade:

• 1st place: Baani Minhas for “The Effect of Honey on Shelf Life and Vitamin C Content of Fruits” (Mountain House High School; Lammersville Unified)

Environmental Awards

Environmental Award winners receive cash prizes donated by the San Joaquin County Audubon Society and the Synopsys Outreach Foundation.

• Sanskriti Singh for “Does the Ocean Ever Freeze?” (Altamont Elementary; Lammersville Unified)


• Miles McCarthy for “Filtration Station” (Tom Hawkins Elementary; Jefferson Elementary School District)


• Bernice Lozasa for “Recycling Gray Water” (Questa Elementary; Lammersville Unified)

U.S. to Russia: 'Put up or shut up' on Syrian ceasefire

People rest in the ruins of a destroyed Medecins Sans Frontieres-supported hospital hit by missiles in Marat Numan, Idlib province, Syria, Feb. 16, 2016. Photo by Ammar Abdullah/Reuters

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration, frustrated by Syria's ongoing violence, told Russia on Tuesday to "put up or shut up" about implementing a ceasefire in the Arab country, even as the U.S. backpedaled from an agreement for the truce to begin by Friday.

RELATED LINKS

• Russia casts doubt on Syria ceasefire deal as army gains ground
• Russian airstrikes continue despite fragile Syrian cease-fire agreement
• Why are Syrian attacks targeting hospitals and schools?

Washington and Moscow announced after at a conference in Germany last week that the ceasefire would start by Feb. 19, raising hopes of a major breakthrough in a war that has raged for nearly five years, killed more than 250,000 people, beset Europe with its worst refugee crisis since World War II and helped the Islamic State emerge.

But State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Tuesday only stressed the need to "see some progress on a cessation of hostilities in the coming days." He said he couldn't "say categorically that ... there must be a cessation of hostilities" by Friday.

Toner blamed Russia for the impasse, condemning it for "unacceptable" attacks on hospitals and civilians. Russia must exert influence with Syrian President Bashar Assad's government to halt its ground offensives, Toner said. Russia says it is targeting terrorists, not civilians.

Speaking after a U.S.-Asian summit in California, President Barack Obama echoed the criticism.

"Russia has been propping up Assad this entire time," Obama said. He described Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to send troops and aircraft to Syria as "a testament to the weakness of Assad's position."

"A country has been shattered because Assad was willing to shatter it," Obama added. Russia, he said, "has been party to that entire process."

Despite all the recent talk of ceasefire, the conflict is threatening to escalate. Turkey said Tuesday it is pressing for ground operations in Syria amid fears that U.S.-backed Kurdish militants are making gains at the opposition's expense. Washington sees the Kurds as an effective fighting force against the Islamic State.

Little headway appears to have been made on securing humanitarian access to besieged areas throughout the country.

Last week's Munich agreement demanded that access be provided immediately amid Western charges that Assad is starving his opponents and civilians into submission. Toner said some aid has reached certain areas, despite no United Nations confirmation of successful deliveries. In Syria, U.N. peace envoy Staffan de Mistura said he hoped food and other supplies would make it through Wednesday.

The ceasefire announced by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart last week appears most unlikely at this point. Toner said a U.S.-Russian-led task force that is supposed to map out the details of the truce still hasn't even met. He expressed hope of an initial gathering Wednesday.

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Here's What Happened Last Time An Outgoing President Made A Supreme Court Nomination

Just minutes after news broke Saturday afternoon that Antonin Scalia had died at 79, Republicans said they would not confirm President Barack Obama's nomination to replace the conservative Supreme Court justice -- no matter who it is. "Justice Scalia was an American hero," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a presidential candidate and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tweeted Sunday. "We owe it to him, & the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement."

Republicans control the U.S. Senate, which must approve Supreme Court nominees. They believe the next president could be a Republican who would nominate a conservative replacement for Scalia, instead of the liberal Obama would be likely to nominate.

It's tempting to look to history to figure out what might happen now. But there aren't any directly comparable recent episodes.

No president in recent memory has faced a Supreme Court vacancy that opened during his final year in office. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's current swing vote, took office during Ronald Reagan's final year in office. But Reagan had nominated him the previous November. He was Reagan's third choice -- after Robert Bork, who was rejected by the Senate, and Douglas Ginsburg, who withdrew from consideration. And the vacancy he was filling had opened the previous July.

The most recent broadly similar situation occurred in June of 1968 (an election year), when President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had said he would not run for re-election, nominated Associate Justice Abe Fortas to take over as chief justice of the Supreme Court. Republicans and conservative southern Democrats filibustered Fortas' nomination, and Johnson eventually withdrew it.

But there are a few key difference between the Fortas situation and Scalia's passing.

First, Fortas was already on the court. The nomination was to make him chief justice, not to bring him on, and making him chief justice would not have changed the court's ideological makeup. (When Johnson nominated Fortas for chief justice, he also nominated Homer Thornberry, a judge and former congressman, to fill Fortas' seat. But when the Senate rejected Fortas for chief justice, Thornberry's nomination died, too.)

Second, there were ethical concerns involved. Fortas was criticized for accepting $15,000 for speaking at American University's law school -- money that was provided by corporations. Obama will aim to nominate someone whose ethics are beyond question.

Finally, today's politics -- in which most conservatives are Republicans and most liberals are Democrats -- are dramatically different than those of 1968, when both parties were split.

There's an informal Senate rule that came out of the Fortas fight that Republicans will likely claim applies here. That's the "Thurmond rule," named after former Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), which, in the words of my colleague Ryan Grim, means "no lifetime judicial appointments would move in the last six months or so of a lame-duck presidency." Obama has more than six months left in his tenure, but remember, this is an informal rule -- it's not written down anywhere.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, controls the Senate's agenda. He's already said that the next president should appoint Scalia's replacement. And there's no telling whether Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who heads the judiciary committee, will even allow Obama's nominee a hearing. He's been dragging his feet with lower court appointees as it is.

Expect a fight.

Also on HuffPost:

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2016 voters will be most diverse ever

By Nov. 8, nearly one-in-three eligible voters will be Hispanic, black, Asian or any other racial and ethnic minority. Photo by Evan Semon/Reuters

Voters in this year's presidential election will be some of the most diverse ever, according to the Pew Research Center. By Election Day, nearly one-in-three eligible voters will be Hispanic, black, Asian or any other racial and ethnic minority.

Young Hispanics are the driving force behind a diversifying voting population. Many of these new voters are American-born and will turn 18 by Election Day. Pew writer and editor Jens Manuel Krogstad says that that makes Latino millennials a key demographic.

"They're almost half of all eligible Latino voters," he says. "That really stands out compared to whites millennials at just 27 percent."

The number of eligible voters is growing steadily overall. There are more than 10 million new eligible voters this election cycle compared to 2012. That increase also includes non-Hispanic, white Americans. The white electorate isn't declining, it just isn't growing at nearly the same rates as blacks, Hispanics and Asians. Krogstad says there's several reasons, one being an aging population. More whites are getting older and dying.

"There are also fewer white U.S. citizens turning 18," he says. "So as a result, white voters' percentage of the electorate fell from 71 to 69 percent since 2012."

READ MORE: Latino millennials could be major voting bloc — if they turnout

While immigration reform is a hot-button issue among Latino voters on both sides of the aisle, it's Asian-Americans who experienced the largest increase in eligible voters due to naturalization. Since 2012, nearly 60 percent of newly eligible Asian voters gained the right to vote from becoming naturalized American citizens. And by 2055, Asians will be the largest immigrant group in the country, potentially growing the voting population even more in the future.

According to Pew, the percentage of all minority eligible voters will continue to climb. And the changing face of the American electorate poses new outreach challenges for political parties looking to gain support among young people and minorities. Hispanics, blacks and Asians largely identify with Democrats while whites are more evenly split. Generational differences are also more common among whites.

But it's one thing to register to vote, it's another to show up to the polls. Across racial lines, minorities have lower voter turnout rates, especially among young people. And despite their growing percentage of the electorate, Hispanic millennials have lower turnout rates compared to black and white millennials. Krogstad says for Latinos, the youth is their greatest strength in terms of growing their political power.

"There's a lot of potential there for young Latinos to influence the presidential elections," he says. "The question is whether they will turn out to vote."

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