Wednesday, May 21, 2008

GeneTree to Join Osmond Family 50th Anniversary Worldwide Concert Tour

This is an email from GenealogiaMolecular.com

Message: GeneTree to Join Osmond Family 50th Anniversary Worldwide Concert Tour
Osmonds Seek "Lost Family Members;" Major Concert Tour Will Highlight the
Importance of Family and the Osmond Family's Collaboration with GeneTree to
Discover Previously Unknown Osmond Relatives in the U.S., Great Britain,
Ireland, Scotland and Australia; Other Tour Locations Will Include Taiwan,
Philippines and Malaysia

SALT LAKE CITY & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GeneTree, a leading
DNA-enabled family history-sharing Web site, today announced that the company
will be joining the Osmonds, one of the world's best-known entertainment
families, on its 50th Anniversary worldwide concert tour.

GeneTree is currently collaborating with the Osmonds to promote the concept of extended family, and will work with the family to find and connect with unknown relatives living throughout the world.

"Family is one of the most powerful positive influences in each of our lives," said Alan Osmond, the oldest performing member of the Osmond family. "We are delighted to collaborate with GeneTree to promote the importance of family connections and to emphasize the close genetic connection we all share as members of a single human family."

The Osmond family homepage, www.Osmond.com, features a prominent link to Osmonds.GeneTree.com, under the heading, "Hi Cousin! Are You An Osmond?" The Osmonds GeneTree link encourages people throughout the world to learn more about their genetic heritage by registering for a free GeneTree membership account, and ordering and submitting a cost-effective GeneTree DNA test kit. GeneTree members can use the site to find and contact previously unknown relatives in more than 170 countries, utilizing the world's most diverse collection of DNA samples. In addition, GeneTree is publishing the Osmond family tree and family photos on the site and sending out an exclusive 50th Anniversary keepsake photo of the Osmonds with every DNA kit order.

A GeneTree banner illustrating Osmonds.GeneTree.com will also be placed at venues throughout the Osmond 50th Anniversary tour, and a GeneTree brochure inviting
people to join GeneTree and learn whether they are related to the Osmonds will be included in each of the concert programs.

During the course of the tour, the Osmonds and GeneTree will meet with newly discovered relatives who learned of their family connection through Osmonds.GeneTree.com .

The tour kicked off May 18 with a performance in Belfast, Ireland, followed
by performances in Glasgow, Scotland (May 20); Newcastle (May 22), Sheffield
(May 23), Manchester (May 24), Birmingham (May 26), Cardiff (May 27 and May 28), London Wembley Arena (May 30) and London 02 Arena (June 1) in Great Britain; Perth, Australia (June 5); Taipei, Taiwan (June 8); Manila, Philippines (June
14); Singapore (June 17); and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (June 21).

"It is a genuine honor to work with the Osmonds in broadening and deepening family
connections for people throughout the world," said John Winger, vice president of marketing for GeneTree. "It's difficult to imagine a group of entertainers who represent the ideals and reality of family better than the Osmonds."

The Osmond family is one of the world's best-known and most popular entertainment families. The Osmonds – originally consisting of performing brothers Alan, Wayne, Merrill and Jay – entered the world music stage with a breakout performance at Disneyland, followed by regular appearances on the Andy Williams Show in the early 1960s. The group later added brothers Donny and Jimmy and the family's only sister, Marie, to the mix. Older brothers George Jr. and Thomas are both legally deaf and do not sing with the family, although they have appeared fairly frequently on stage with their siblings.

Beginning in the early 1970s, the Osmond Brothers released a series of successful albums with a long string of hit singles, including "One Bad Apple," which topped the pop charts for five consecutive weeks and top ten singles "Yo-yo" and "Down by the Lazy River." The Osmonds' notoriety and popularity was furthered by the Saturday morning cartoon series The Osmonds, which aired in 1972 and 1973; the Donny and Marie variety show (1976 to 1979); Donny's starring Broadway turns in the title role of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Coat and as Gaston in Beauty and the Beast; Marie's recent third-place run on Dancing with the Stars; and a 50th-anniversary appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show honoring the family's patriarch George Osmond shortly after his passing.

About GeneTree
GeneTree (www.genetree.com) is a DNA-enabled family history-sharing Web site designed to help people understand where their personal histories belong within the greater human genetic story. GeneTree creates opportunities for unlocking human genetic heritage, discovering ancestors, connecting and collaborating with living relatives, and sharing rich media to help discover, document and preserve family histories. GeneTree was developed by the Sorenson family of companies and draws on the expertise of the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, a nonprofit organization that developed the world's foremost collection of genetic-genealogy information; and Sorenson Media, which created of the world's leading digital video compression software.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Hebrew DNA found in South America?

This is an email from GenealogiaMolecular.com

Message: Hebrew DNA found in South America?
By Michael De Groote
MormonTimes.com writer
Published: Monday, May. 12, 2008

Was Hebrew DNA recently found in American Indian populations in South America? According to Scott R. Woodward, executive director of Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, a DNA marker, called the "Cohen modal haplotype," sometimes associated with Hebrew people, has been found in Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia.

But it probably has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon -- at least not directly.

For years several critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the Book of Mormon have claimed that the lack of Hebrew DNA markers in living American Indian populations is evidence the book can't be true. They say the book's description of ancient immigrations of Israelites is fictional.

"But," said Woodward, "as Hugh Nibley used to say, 'Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' "

Critic Thomas Murphy, for example, wrote in one article about how the Cohen modal haplotype had been found in the Lemba clan in Africa. The Lemba clan's oral tradition claims it has Jewish ancestors.

Murphy then complained, "If the (Book of Mormon) documented actual Israelite migrations to the New World, then one would expect to find similar evidence to that found in a Lemba clan in one or more Native American populations. Such evidence, however, has not been forthcoming."

Until now.

So will Murphy and other critics use this new evidence of Hebrew DNA markers to prove the Book of Mormon is correct? Probably not. But neither should anyone else.

Why?

According to Woodward, the way critics have used DNA studies to attack the Book of Mormon is "clearly wrong." And it would be equally wrong to use similar DNA evidence to try to prove it.

This is because "not all DNA (evidence) is created equal," Woodward said.

According to Woodward, while forensic DNA (popularized in TV shows like "CSI") looks for the sections of DNA that vary greatly from individual to individual, the sections of DNA used for studying large groups are much smaller and do not change from individual to individual.

Studies using this second type of DNA yield differing levels of reliability or, as Woodward calls it, "resolution."

At a lower resolution the confidence in the results goes down. At higher resolution confidence goes up in the results.

Guess which level of resolution critics of the Book of Mormon use?

The critics' problem now is what they do with the low-resolution discovery of Hebrew DNA in American Indian populations.

For people who believe that the Book of Mormon is a true account, the problem is to resist the temptation to misuse this new discovery.

Woodward says that most likely, when higher-resolution tests are used, we will learn that the Hebrew DNA in native populations can be traced to conquistadors whose ancestors intermarried with Jewish people in Spain or even more modern migrations.

Ironically, it is the misuse of evidence that gave critics fuel to make their DNA arguments in the first place. According to Woodward, the critics are attacking the straw man that all American Indians are only descendants of the migrations described in the Book of Mormon and from no other source.

Although some Latter-day Saints have assumed this was the case, this is not a claim the Book of Mormon itself actually makes. Scholars have argued for more than 50 years that the book allows for the migrations meeting an existing population.

This completely undermines the critics' conclusions. They argue with evangelic zeal that the Book of Mormon demands that no other DNA came to America but from Book of Mormon groups.

Yet, one critic admitted to Woodward that he had never read the Book of Mormon.

Woodward also sees that it is essential to read the Book of Mormon story closely to understand what type of DNA the Book of Mormon people would have had. The Book of Mormon describes different migrations -- the most prominent being Lehi's family. But determining Lehi's DNA is difficult because the book claims he is not even Jewish, but a descendant of the biblical Joseph.

According to Woodward, even if you assume we knew what DNA to look for, finding DNA evidence of Book of Mormon people may be very difficult. When a small group of people intermarry into a large population, the DNA markers that might identify their descendants could entirely disappear -- even though their genealogical descendants could number in the millions.

This means it is possible that almost every American Indian alive today could be genealogically related to Lehi's family but still retain no identifiable DNA marker to prove it. In other words, you could be related genealogically to and perhaps even feel a spiritual kinship with an ancestor but still not have any vestige of his DNA.

Such are the vagaries, ambiguities and mysteries of the study of DNA.

So will we ever find DNA from Lehi's people? Woodward hopes so.

"I don't dismiss the possibility," said Woodward, "but the probability is pretty low."

He speculated about it, imagining we were able to identify pieces of DNA that would be part of Lehi's gene pool. Then, imagine if we found it in the Native American population.

But even then, Woodward says we should be cautious because he doesn't believe even that situation would prove it.

"It could have been other people who share the same (DNA) markers," said Woodward about the imaginary scenario.

"It's an amazingly complex picture. To think that you can prove (group relationships) like you can use DNA to identify a (criminal) is not on the same scale of scientific inquiry."

Like the Book of Mormon itself, buried for centuries in the Hill Cumorah, genetic "proof" may remain hid up unto the Lord.


Spource: http://mormontimes.com/DB_index.php?id=1064


MormonTimes.com is produced by the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah.
It is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Copyright © 2008 Deseret News Publishing Company

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Un cromosoma faltante mejora la respuesta al tratamiento del tumor cerebral

This is an email from GenealogiaMolecular.com

Message: Un cromosoma faltante mejora la respuesta al tratamiento del tumor cerebral
Los hallazgos muestran que los pacientes viven en promedio cuatro años más que los que no tienen dicha anormalidad genética
Dirección de esta página: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/spanish/news/fullstory_61341.html (*Estas noticias no estarán disponibles después del 19/05/2008)


Kevin McKeever

Traducido del inglés: martes, 19 de febrero, 2008

MARTES 19 de febrero (HealthDay News/Dr. Tango) -- Hallazgos recientes señalan que la falta de un cromosoma en realidad ayuda a quienes tienen un tumor cerebral poco común y agresivo a responder mejor a un tratamiento nuevo.

La gliomatosis cerebri es un tipo de tumor cerebral inoperable difícil de diagnosticar que tiene un pronóstico extremadamente variable. Un estudio con 25 personas que tenían la afección mostró que a quienes les faltaban los cromosomas 1p y 19q obtuvieron resultados mucho mejores con temozolomida, un medicamento para quimioterapia, y vivieron en promedio cuatro años más que los que no tenían esa anormalidad genética.

El estudio aparece en la edición del 19 de febrero de Neurology.

"La temozolomida ahora es la primera opción de tratamiento para los pacientes de gliomatosis cerebri, sobre todo si les faltan los cromosomas 1p y 10q", aseguró en una declaración preparada el Dr. Marc Sanso del INSERM, la agencia de salud francesa.

Los que participaron en el estudio se sometieron a pruebas genéticas y recibieron tratamientos mensuales de temozolomida hasta por dos años. El medicamento sólo había sido propuesto recientemente como tratamiento nuevo para la gliomatosis cerebri, aseguró Sanson.

El 88 por ciento de aquéllos a quienes les faltaban los cromosomas respondieron bien al medicamento, en comparación con apenas el 25 por ciento de los que tenían los cromosomas, aseguró Sanson. Los que no los tenían también sobrevivieron en promedio 5.5 años en comparación con apenas quince meses para los del grupo que tenía los cromosomas intactos. Quienes no tenían los 1p y 19q también tuvieron más meses sin que el tumor avanzara, agregó.

"Hasta ahora, no estábamos seguros de qué factores influían sobre lo bien que una persona que tenía un tumor cerebral respondería al tratamiento", aseguró Sanson.


Artículo por HealthDay, traducido por Hispanicare


HealthDay


(c) Derechos de autor 2008, ScoutNews, LLC

Historias de exito usando Genealogia Molecular!!

This is an email from GenealogiaMolecular.com

Message: Genetic Genealogy Success Stories


Y-chromosome DNA Successes

From the Fuller DNA Project
"Two men share the same surname and family lore that they are descended from Pilgrims that arrived on the Mayflower. However, both men's genealogical paper trails end in the 1700-1800's. They both take the Y-DNA test and match a "paper-trailed" descendant of Mayflower passenger, Edward Fuller." - - Posted 25 Mar 2005

From the Kerchner DNA Project
"Two early German immigrants to colonial Pennsylvania arrived within several years of each other and have the same surname. They settled in the same township and named their children similar given names. But no paper trails in church or legal records have been found to link the two early immigrant families. Were they brothers or related in some way? Genetic Genealogy can provide some clues. See the Kerchner Surname Y-DNA Project Success Stories webpage for more details on this case."
- - Posted 28 Mar 2005

From the Crews DNA Project
"DNA did it !!!! We finally found the guardianship papers of the children of my great-great grandfather! (Under a derivative name). Little did we know that my great grandfather had 2 sisters. A descendant of one of the sisters gave me the clue what our name might have been, and gave me the names of my great-great grandfather and his children. With the DNA match I was off and running and found the line on the LDS site. Talk about happy campers - that's us!. AND, I owe a HUGE debt of gratitude to you both!! (