News from space: DNA was there first

Amazing news from NASA today - the building blocks of DNA have been found in asteroids from space.  Maybe Earth's primordial soup was seeded with DNA building blocks, an idea I think is very likely.  Of course it just means that DNA and its building blocks evolved somewhere else in the universe.  I wonder if living cells evolved anywhere else?  Why wouldn't it have?  Fascinating! 

In honor of the father of genetics

Today's Google logo is so smart, and scientific, and funny, showing the parents, and F1 (=children) and F2 (=grandchildren) generations and their different colors in a genetic context.  A recessive gene will show up in 25% of grandchildren, so one 1 of 4 (yellow beans). Statistically speaking that is.  This was all figured out by the father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, and it is his birthday today.  This monk spent his life breeding peas and trying to understand genes and their variations, except of course he never knew there is such a thing as DNA and genes.

Verbal snapshot: DNA

Yesterday, after a long day's workshop on genomics and DNA, a repairman talked to me in the elevator.  When he heard that I worked with DNA, he asked me:
- How much DNA is active in humans?
- I don't really know, I said, it depends on how many genes that are turned on that very moment in your body.
- Oh, no, he said, it is 3 percent.
- 3 percent?, I said.
- Yes, he said, but you can raise it if you meditate very hard.

I didn't know if I should laugh or sigh.  I just said 'oh really' and left the elevator on my floor.  Where do these people get these facts? I mean, someone must be feeding them this fake science.