so really genetic change in wild animals and plants in cities. it's all about understanding how species will be able to survive in this very human dominated context cities, a homo sapiens, most extreme intervention in nature with concrete and steel. we create new landscapes and alter the face of the us. ready already most people live in cities rather than in the countryside. how does this influence evolution, the development of new species? what selection precious does the city create? a summer evening in the dance capital amsterdam in the fond dell park in the center of the city biologist, men oh, shoot 1000 uses a light trap to catch insects. oh, he's leading a citizen science project to explore urban nature. aah! for insects and for some smaller plans. the diversity today in cities seems to be higher than in intensively managed agriculture areas. today, agricultural land is so intensively managed and every last bit of production is squeezed out of every square meter of surface area that there's no space for nature anymore in the countryside in

ah, isn't suitable for comprehensive genetic analysis. so the researchers take a tissue sample from the ear. ah, yeah, you got something? after collecting the samples and some measurements of the scientists release, the mice. genetic analysis can reveal the evolutionary trajectories of the mice. there we go. they point to a variety of physical and behavioral changes spreading among the animals. each of them unique to the challenges of each city park environment. so we're starting to fill in our gradient really nicely. i'm so here the my c as today from the color center. and you can see it's right in between highly urbanized new york city and then all these sites we have up here and what out here. so central park seems to be our most distinct population to date. it makes sense. yeah, yeah. most urban, probably the most isolated. so if you took a mouse from central park, some of its genes will be different from a mouse outside in the countryside, in a big park some way. so for this one, particularly the food supply and central park on much

can you explain the evolution of forensic genetic genealogy?ssaults allegedly happened, it was at the very inception of genetic genealogy. and then around the year 2010, just a little bit after these crimes happened, we started helping people solve more recent identity mysteries, such as adoption or donor conception. and that is really what laid the ground work for investigative genetic genealogy, and for being able to work with law enforcement to identify these violent criminals. >> reporter: moore says she and her team have helped law enforcement solve more than 270 cases using investigative genetic genealogy in the last five years. and studies found that genetic genealogy has been used to help solve more than 500 crimes around the country. it was also used in the investigation of the recent university of idaho quadruple murder. the suspect pleading not guilty on all charges. >> law enforcement sources telling abc news the identified suspect bryan kohberger by linking dna evidence from the crime scene to a public genealogy database. >> report

the genetic engineering of trees is following on the tradition of genetically engineering crops and many of the same traits that are being engineered and the trees are things that have been done in crops since about the eighty's. and so, yeah, it's, it's all, it's all done in a lab and it involves various techniques for inserting. in the case of the american chestnut, inserting jeans from a completely unrelated speech, sees a grass barley into into the genetically engineered, excuse me, into the america, chose not to create that genetically engineered americans just not so very, very process of genetic modification is very disruptive to the genome, so they're going in there and they're using either a bacterium in this case, or in some cases literally did a coded little bullet. so if they fire into the cell, and they hope that it land somewhere useful in the, in the genome on the, in the, excuse me, i'm one of the chromosomes so that they can then have a product that can be tested out, but can be replicated that could be eventually put out into the field. so in the case of the gene, just

mukherjee: again, we use genetic technologies.e sequence the virus and try to identify with the mutations are. you can use the sequence of the virus to figure out where the strain is coming from. is it a european strain, an asian strain, an american strain, the spanish strain? once again, you use the technology that has really emerged from the last 50 years of genetic sequencing. susan: you talked about therapeutic medicines. is the understanding of the gene also useful in the development of a vaccine? prof. mukherjee: absolutely it is crucial to the development of a vaccine. i do not want to push things that i write, but those other -- are the ones i am most familiar with. there are many, many pieces on the covid vaccine that should be read. maxine's come in various types. vaccines come in various types. one is to inactivate the virus. those vaccines are hard to make. they are hard to scale, i should say. you are working in order to produce them, you have to produce a live virus. even if you weaken the virus, which was done in th

does any of her genetic nuance remain. when a child is born, nine months later, will the child include some of the genetic heritage of that third woman? >> the good way to answer the question - you know, i'm a man. if i have a child, this - i will consider this person my child as much as i would consider this child the child of my partner. and so we don't really we the mitochondrial component that heavily. a man does not contribute any mitochondria, still the child that arises from human reproduction, natural reproduction is fully my child. so there's really bit of importance, in terms of identity, character, physical feature in the mitochondria. these things come from what both parents contribute equally, which is the nuclear d.n.a. i'm trying to understand how much of the second mother is inherent in this child. could it end up with the second mother's curly brown hair, or elongated nose or pointy chin. >> that's what i'm trying to say. a man does not contribute any mitochondria or genetic material. yet the child can oft

and a robust install, kermit, the bio prospecting for marines. genetic resources is the big issue as meters. talking about the and big pharma base to tell us more about of big pharma once a piece of vis action. why do they want and what's useful? yeah, well really kind of the thing that everyone is hoping for is to discover another aspirin in the ocean. and some really important drug that's going to benefit humanity. this is what the big pharma companies are dreaming up. and once in a blue moon they find it. so in the case of moraine drugs, they're about a dozen that have gotten f d a approval and are now on the market. and if you want to think about how much they're worth, if you look at just 5 of those drugs, and over the past 10 years, they've gotten sales and licensing revenues of $12100000000.00 us dollars. so this is the sort of dollar sign that's on people's minds when they think about marine kinetic resources. i should emphasize though, all of those drugs they're from are in genetic resources from within national jurisdiction. they're not from area, it's been national jurisdi

and so even the best scenario of genetic counseling, i think, it's still -- a genetic counselor would never be able to completely overcome the problem of how in the world a woman is supposed to decide what sort of risks to live with. it's, it doesn't seem to me particularly empowering at all. the other thing that is misleading, i think, about the way angelina jolie was talking about this was she said i've now eliminated my risk for cancer, and i can tell my children i will never get cancer, and i don't know how anyone could say that's true. and so there is -- you don't get that kind of certainty even if you elect to have these preventive surgeries. there's actually a lot of debate in the early '90s of whether to commercialize the test. the braca researchers, those early researchers just wanted to keep the testing within research settings, but they weren't able to control that. and so -- and now that myriad has lost its patents, it is a lot cheaper now and might very well become more common. >> last question

they actually protect the genetic material. this capsule protects the genetic material as it goes from cell to cell. it is really remarkable how a virus that entered the genome was domesticated or repurposed for a new use. if you look at some of the proteins that are involved in pregnancy those were also repurposed viruses. to the point where if you look at our genome 8% of our genome is derived from ancient viruses. if you look at our genome though. only 2% are our own genes. we had four are four times more genetic material inside our genome they are derived from the virus. it's really remarkable. it serves in memories in pregnancy and every other function as well. it just goes to show the mysteries inside our own genome. new technology allowing us to see evolution and whole new ways. in fact some of the most important new ways where we can look at evolution and most exciting new ways are related to this. this is one of the greatest puzzles of biology. what you see is a fertilized egg. that single cell from that single cell wi

. >> they affect our genetic outcome. they increase the possibility that we lose a baby. they change the activity of our hormones, our sex hormones, in a variety of different ways. >> we're seeing children starting puberty at younger ages. so there are many little girls that have, for example, breast buds by the age of 7 in the african american community and 8 in the white community. this is too young for our children. >> 980 endocrine disrupting chemicals have now been identified. among the most ubiquitous are a class of compounds called phthalates, bisphenol a, and flame retardants, including pbdes, chemicals so common that almost all of us have them inside our bodies. >> so you may have vinyl floors, you may have vinyl shower curtains, you may have vinyl toys that your kids are using. those, if it's soft and pliable plastic, it's leaching pthalates, which are known to be toxic, into the environment where you get exposed. >> pthalates are in many common products, including food packaging, building materials, and pharmaceuticals. they're in our cars, and even in new car

but when the genetic testing came back, i did not have the same genetic mutation that my dad and uncle and, by the way, their first cousin had. so, it was throughout my family but i did not have the gene, which has happened, like, five times in history. david: so, for people who were not familiar with als, it first became well-known to the public when lou gehrig, the popular baseball player, contracted it and died relatively quickly thereafter. since the 1930's, have we made that much progress in diagnosing or treating als? dan: there's been virtually no progress for 140 years, from the time it was discovered in 1870. my uncle died in 2010, and in 2010 i decided, you know, look, in my family it is hereditary. my dad had died of it in 2002. i have to do something. i hired a team of scientists to understand why there was so little progress made in the disease. and we came up with a set of theories and created an organization around those theories that included, you know, funding of consortia, funding of core scientific resources that anyone in the world can draw on bringing in biotech an

it was not a genetic lee -- genetically engineered food. look at the data, the animal testing data, chemical composition, nutritional volumes of the foods that are produced. give these products a stamp of approval. that has not been done. the fda takes a cursory look at a small sampling of the data that companies selectively provide. senator durbin has considered legislation, but there has been very little support for such legislation to ensure the safety of the gmo's. the industry does not want it, because it fears it will trigger the need for more expensive testing. i think genetic engineering can provide tremendous benefits in terms of reduced pesticide use, drought resistance and improved nutritional values. we need to take advantage of this technology. at the same time, we need to guard against risks such as cancer or dive believe that these may conjure up. labeling is a very crude instrument. if food has to be labeled, nobody would buy them especially regarding gmo's. we do not have the educated public that we would like. i think we n

the genetic component. i think i understand that 99% of our genes are all alike but the one percent is crucial. >> exactly. so we have known for a long time that a gene's play an important role in autism but it's really only been in the last several years that we've had the tools available to really make progress and get a good picture of the genetic landscape. and really a lot of that is because the advances in genomic technology have allowed to us look at that one percent. the part of the genome that varies between people in a way we have never been able to before so in doing that we found that there are different types of variation that we either didn't know about or didn't pay attention to that turn out to be very important for autism. >> and what are they? >> so we've known for a long time that if you look at twoif people and examine their genomes that there will be changes or there will be differences in the letter code of dna, say one particular position. and we've known that for a long time. but wha

you think the pilgrims asked the indians oh, is this maize genetically modified? is this squash locally sourced? >> no, they ate it because they were starving. and every day americans honor the pilgrims by eating as if we are starving. andç just forget, please forget labeling at restaurant chains. i'm not interested in the contents of starbucks lemon loaf cake. the word loaf tells me all i need to know. and don't tell me about the anti-foaming agent in my chicken mcnug ets. that ruins the surprise when my mouth doesn't foam. i say we get rid of all labels. all food should come in an unmarked box. like my new line of snack foods stephen colbert's just eat it. every box comes with a complimentary blindfold. you put on the blindfold, open the box, and stick it in your mouth. (laughter) though word of warning, don't let it near your rat, or he is a dead man. we'll be right back. cheers because is welcome back, everybody, my guest tonight hosts a show on public radio as a tribute i'll be calling this one in, please welcome brian lehrer. (applause) plaus. >> stephen: b

that they are eating genetically modified foods. over 60 countries around the world require gmos to be labeled but the u.s. does not. and why is that? according to the food and water watch, the ag biotech industry, which owns all of these gmos, have spent $572 million on campaigning and lobbying to make sure that they do not get labels. >> what is that? >> these are the companies that design these genetically modified foods but these are the companies that also sell the farmers the chemicals. they are not only selling them the seeds -- >> they are selling the chemicals that go along with it? >> exactly. >> a question that pops up in my head, aren't these people also eating these food? >> well, it's a really good question. i don't know if they are eating it or not but they may tell you that they are eating it. you and i know that people who care about their health, we're not eating them. so the mass population is being fed these foods but they are not being informed that they are eating these foods. >> wow. this is heavy. so we've go

i should emphasize though, all those drugs they're from are in genetic resources from within national jurisdiction. they're not from areas the national jurisdiction, though, there's a big question mark, right, ron, what's out there? what that worth? nobody knows it's exactly what's tricky to negotiate about. right, well that's the thing is that we could find many, many great things of incredible value to science, but also have incredible value to, to big corporations. absolutely, it would be incredible value to times 10, mostly incredible value to corporations. i think from a greenpeace perspective 70 a civil society perspective, we'd like to make sure that whatever is found, the benefits shed equally amongst communities. all of the globe more than half of this kind of depends on the ocean. so their primary source of food, coastal communities everywhere, are struggling with the pressures of the ocean. we think that they deserve some of the benefit of anything that's found up to the i mean it to explore that a little bit further for us if you would. how would you make this equitable? i

we've seen this kind of genetic resistance before. we know the phenomenon of genetic resistance, again, certain factors. a famous example, if sickle cell anemia which confers resistance to via my area a comes at a high prop if you could tell me, can, can cause crises and needs to be treated in its own right. another genetic variation that was discovered about 25 years ago gives protection against h i v i, the infection is such or at least progression talk towards 8. finally, thanks. so we know such examples, but they're very difficult to unravel in the, on immunity to soft kennedy to could hypothetically occur. for example, in people use genes cause them to produce an altered version of faith to a protein receptor on the outside of cells that the virus uses to break in. so if the a to in some people is different in some key way, but could prevent the virus from latching on. effectively preventing the person from being infected. studies are looking at a range of different possibilities. the main purpose of such studies is to were eluci

do you have to have a unique population, a unique genetic population to come up with these genetic discoveriesat? is the record keeping? what's so -- >> reporter: it is the combination of things that makes iceland so fantastic for this. because everybody is so closely related there, these variations in their genetics pop up more easily, but other countries including the united states which have much more diverse set of genes, they're doing that work, too. they're hoping to find things about people by using this information and pairing it with health records to be able to develop better medicines and preventive treatments, too. >> it must be easier when you and me and all of the people now taking among their -- on their own to make sure that they're finding out what their geens are. must help. >> yes, that kind of awareness and that kind of data collection. the government i think is hoping these folks, whether it is 23 and me or others, will share the data with them to help with the collection. >> meeting, thank you. >> reporter: thank you. >> that's the show for today. i'm becky quick. thank y

for genetic errors and even one day correct those genetic errors before we even develop an egg or an embryo. without mary ellen penrod to run is examining a sixty six day old humans for matters oid. has this chemist made a breakthrough in the treatment of male sterility. that will fit the desire to design we used hydrogen as materials in a tube uniform and these hydrogen tubes turned out to be excellent bioreactors for ensuring the maturation of spermatozoa it's from the south this is us throughout our let us show this don't let us leave this in the general. said the front of the team worked for twenty three years to attain this result the first spermatozoa we obtained was from rat. hunters that we moved on to humans do ha no get on the. men. now we have to show that these spermatozoa ads are fertile. we have to all stay reasonable and understand that there are still lots of work to be done it's not a transgenic mouse that we're setting out to make so little human beings in it he says until. we get lots of sterile men contacting us who want to see if we can help them in fact they wan