Christie's

Francis Crick sketched this diagram of the DNA double-helix molecule in a 1953 letter to his son, Michael. "The model looks much nicer than this," the elder Crick wrote.

The descendants of Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA's double helix, are likely to receive a seven-figure sum from this week's sales of the late researcher's Nobel Prize and a handwritten letter describing the structure of the DNA molecule — but the geneticists who are carrying on Crick's legacy will win a dividend as well.

"We'll probably be giving more money to the Francis Crick Institute than the prize was worth when he got it," mused Michael Crick, the Nobel-winner's eldest child and the recipient of that historic letter back in 1953.

The sales have been timed to take advantage of the 60th anniversary of the double-helix discovery, which was detailed by Crick and American biologist James Watson in a paper published by the journal Nature on April 25, 1953. Their findings opened the way to deciphering the molecular codes that control all of life's processes. The paper's publication date is now celebrated every year as "DNA Day."

Double helix, double sale
Crick's legacy is the focus of two million-dollar sales scheduled in New York this week: On Wednesday, Michael Crick's letter goes on the auction block at Christie's. His father sent it to the 12-year-old at his boarding school in March 1953 — just after the researchers worked out the structure of DNA's long, double-helix molecule, but before the Nature paper's publication. "My dear Michael," the letter began, "Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery."

The seven-page letter goes on to lay out the chemical structure of "des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid ... called D.N.A. for short." The elder Crick even sketched out the base pairs connecting the molecule's twisted spines.

"As far as we know, it's the first written description of how life comes from life," Michael Crick, now 72, told NBC News.

The letter has been valued at $1 million to $2 million. Michael Crick and his wife, Barbara, will receive half of the proceeds. The other half will go to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, where Francis Crick worked up to the time of his death in 2004 at the age of 88.

Heritage Auctions

"F.H.C. Crick" is engraved on the 23-carat gold medal that Francis Crick received for the 1962 Nobel Prize.

Then there's the week's second sale: On Thursday, Heritage Auctions will sell the 1962 Nobel Prize gold medal, as well as Francis Crick's endorsed award check, one of his lab coats and other effects. The medal and its accompanying diploma are expected to go for anywhere between $500,000 and several million dollars. The London-based Francis Crick Institute is due to get 20 percent of the proceeds. Francis Crick's descendants — including Michael as well as two other children and six grandchildren — will split the rest.

It's tricky to convert today's dollars into what the Swedish krona was worth in 1962, but the way Michael Crick figures it, his dad's share of the prize back then would be worth something in the range of $100,000 to $150,000 today.

Sorting out the puzzles
Michael Crick has made his own mark in life as a computer programmer and a game developer in the Seattle area: Among his creations are Pentode, WordZap and the first version of Microsoft Word's spell-checker. Today he keeps his hand in by offering a daily series of "Crickler" word puzzles online.

Crick said he kept his father's letter in a plain envelope for decades. "Around 2005, somebody thought it might be valuable," he recalled. "The first thing I did was make some reasonably good copies of it."

It's a different story for the medal. Michael Crick said that was locked up in a safe-deposit box, and "it was just going to sit there indefinitely." After Francis Crick and his wife Odile passed away, the family started debating what to do with it. Wouldn't it be better to have the medal on display, say, at a museum? If it's so valuable, how should that value be divided among nine heirs?

"That was a bit of a puzzle," the puzzlemaster said.

Crick family via Christie's

A young Michael Crick sits on his famous father, Francis Crick, in a circa-1943 family photo.

The family decided to put the medal up for auction, along with the other effects. And Michael Crick decided the letter should be passed on as well. "There was some concern, because the process of valuing the letter was tricky. What do you compare it with?" he said. The experts at Christie's decided to compare it to a 1939 letter that Albert Einstein addressed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning about the dangers of nuclear weapons. A copy of that letter was sold in 2002 for $2.1 million.

All the plans for the auctions came together in time for this month's 60th anniversary, which Michael saw as a nice touch. "It just seemed like a good time to put the medal on the market," he said.

He'll be in the audience for this week's sales in New York, hoping that his keepsake — and his father's — will pay dividends for his family and for generations of scientists to come.

More about the history of DNA:

• 'Lost' letters reveal twists in double-helix discovery
• DNA directly photographed for the first time
• All about DNA from NBCNews.com

For more information about Michael Crick's DNA letter, including a remembrance of his father and a catalog that shows every page of the letter, check out Christie's website. Check the Heritage Auctions website to learn more about the medal and associated sale items.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Wildlife Conservation Society

The promise and peril of synthetic biology for wildlife conservation and biodiversity will be the subject of an international conference in England this month.

Conservationists say it's high time to consider whether synthetic biology will solve some of the huge problems that beset endangered species, or bring new problems. It just might do both.

"Synthetic biology brings with it a powerful attraction, causing biology to veer towards engineering with its inherent approach of human problem solving," three experts on biodiversity and conservation say in this week's issue of PLOS Biology. "It may prove to be a cure for certain wicked problems. But we suggest that now is the time to consider whether synthetic biology may be a wicked solution, creating problems of its own, some of which may be undesirable or even unacceptable in the area of biodiversity conservation."

The PLOS Biology essay was written by Kent Redford of Archipelago Consulting, William Adams of the University of Cambridge, and Georgina Mace of University College London's Center for Biodiversity and Environment Research. The three conservationists are the organizers of a conference on synthetic biology, due to take place next week in Cambridge, England.

What is synthetic biology?
Synthetic biology takes advantage of genetic engineering to tweak existing organisms for new purposes — for example, strains of E. coli bacteria that live on coffee, or produce better biofuels.

More recently, researchers have talked about reshaping the genome of one species so that it reflects the traits of a closely related extinct or disappearing species — such as the American chestnut, the passenger pigeon, the Tasmanian thylacine or the Siberian woolly mammoth. Last month, that kind of de-extinction was discussed during a widely watched conference in Washington.

This month's conference takes a closer look at the scientific and ethical issues relating to conservation. Would de-extinction truly bring back the species that were wiped out, or will they actually be novel species, even alien species? How will revived species interact with the other species that have taken their place? Will we actually value the "natural" world less, because we assume de-extinction can bring back our favorites? What happens if synthetic life evolves in unforeseen ways? What's the implication of having patented life forms in the wild?

"A serious need exists for wider discussion of the relationship between synthetic biology and biodiversity conservation, and what choices society can and should make," the three experts say. But that poses a huge challenge, because many people haven't even heard of synthetic biology yet.

Plateau in awareness
The latest in a series of surveys conducted for the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars suggests that public awareness about the issue is plateauing. Forty-five percent of those surveyed said that they had heard nothing at all about synthetic biology, which is about the same level of non-awareness found during the center's previous survey in 2010.

Lack of public awareness makes it difficult to conduct a wide-ranging debate over a technology's pros and cons, said Eleonore Pauwels, a research associate at the Wilson Center. "It is still at the stage of hype, and promises, and new funding coming in," she told NBC News. "When you don't have a lot of information, you only have the buzz or the hype."

The survey also found that 61 percent supported continuing research in synthetic biology, while 34 percent wanted such research banned until its implications and risks were better understood. "The more information you give to people, the more questions they're going to ask, and the debate becomes more complex," Pauwels said.

The situation is likely to change once synthetic-biology applications actually start hitting the market. Among the first applications are methods to produce flavors such as vanilla and saffron using genetically modified microbes. Another high-profile example is a project that uses genetically engineered yeast to produce artemisinic acid, the key ingredient for an anti-malaria drug.

"If they get the antimalarial drug out of clinical trial soon, it's going to refuel the interest in synthetic biology as a new way of manufacturing drugs," Pauwels said.

What about manufacturing mammoths? Is synthetic biology a technology whose time has come? Or should experiments on the bleeding edge of genetic engineering be put on hold for a while, as they were in the 1970s? Feel free to cast your vote in our unscientific survey, and voice your opinion in the comment space below.

More about synthetic biology:

• How synthetic biology will change us
• What to do about synthetic life?
• Cosmic Log archive on synthetic biology

The Wilson Center's 2013 nationwide telephone survey on awareness and impressions of synthetic biology was conducted by Hart Research Associates from Jan. 10 to 14. Hart Research surveyed 804 adults, including 243 who use only a cell phone. At the 95 percent confidence level, the data's margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech researchers used a gene disruption technique to change the eye color of a mosquito, a critical step toward new strategies for disrupting the transmission of diseases such as dengue fever. The eye colors of these mosquitoes are varied because of cell-to-cell variability in the degree of gene editing.

Scientists at Virginia Tech have disrupted the genes that control eye color in mosquitoes, using a genetic-engineering technique that could also disrupt the transmission of diseases such as dengue fever.

The technique relies on two specially designed proteins that belong to a class known as transcription activator-like effector nucleases, or TALENs. The technique can target DNA at a specific site in an organism's genetic code, so precisely and efficiently that the journal Science has called the molecules "genomic cruise missiles."

Virginia Tech entomologist Zach Adelman prefers a different analogy. "They're basically a very, very fine-tuned pair of scissors," he told NBC News.

TALENs have been used to edit the genomes of animal and human cell cultures, but Adelman said the approach he and his colleagues used on the mosquito genome was different. Rather than trying to modify the function of a gene, the researchers aimed to disable a gene by snipping away at it. In the journal PLOS ONE, they describe how they targeted a gene whose protein product is essential for the production of eye pigment in Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species linked to the transmission of dengue fever.

Genetically engineered TALEN proteins were injected into the germ cells of mosquito embryos early in their development, with the intention of disrupting the coding for eye pigmentation that would be passed down to the next generation. When the targeted mosquitoes gave birth to baby bugs, a large percentage of them had light-colored eyes instead of the typical black eyes. The lack of pigment served as confirmation that the genetic code was wiped out.

The next step is to identify the genetic mechanisms in mosquitoes that play a role in virus transmission. When the right targets are found, the researchers will try to design a different set of molecular scissors to disrupt that genetic code.

Adelman said he's been working on molecular strategies to fight mosquito-borne diseases for a dozen years, and began the TALEN-based project just last May.

"To date, efforts to control dengue transmission through genetics have focused entirely on adding material to the mosquito genome. Ensuring that this added material is expressed properly and consistently has been a challenge," Adelman said in a Virginia Tech news release. "This technology allows us to pursue the same goals, namely, the generation of pathogen-resistant mosquitoes, through subtraction — for example, removing or altering a gene that is critical for pathogen replication."

More about mosquitoes:

• Gene-modified skeeters could stop dengue fever
• Key West waits on dengue mosquito experiment
• WHO: Dengue is fastest-spreading tropical disease

In addition to Adelman, the authors of the PLOS ONE paper, "TALEN-Based Gene Disruption in the Dengue Vector Aedes aegypti," include Azadeh Aryan, Michelle A.E. Anderson and Kevin M. Myles. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Fralin Life Science Institute at Virginia Tech.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Johnathan Blair / National Geographic

A museum worker inspects a replica of a woolly mammoth, a species that went extinct 3,000 to 10,000 years ago. In March 2012, scientists in Russia and South Korea announced a partnership to try to clone the mammoth and generate a living specimen.

If scientists can use genetic engineering to bring back the woolly mammoth, should they do it? How about the passenger pigeon? Or the western black rhino? Do we humans have a responsibility to restore at least some of the species that our ancestors wiped out? And if we bring them back, will they really be the same?

Such questions are the focus of TEDxDeExtinction, a public forum that's being presented on Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET at National Geographic's Washington headquarters. You can watch the whole thing online via LivestreamTEDx and National Geographic's De-Extinction website, which also has loads of articles and resources on the issue. The event has been organized by Revive & Restore, a nonprofit clearinghouse for worldwide de-extinction work that's under the aegis of the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco.

"De-extinction"? What's that?

"It's using new technologies like cloning and genome sequencing to reconstruct a species that went extinct," science writer Carl Zimmer explained. Zimmer's talk at Friday's TEDx event will help set the scene for the de-extinction debate, and he's also written a cover story on the topic for National Geographic's April issue.

National Geographic

National Geographic's cover story for the April issue focuses on the prospects of reviving ancient species.

De-extinction has been in the works for more than a decade, basically ever since Dolly the Sheep demonstrated in 1996 that mammals could be cloned from cells in a lab dish. Spanish and French scientists worked for years on an effort to bring the Pyrenean ibex back from extinction, by cloning cells that had been preserved from the last known animal of the species. They succeeded only in producing a deformed kid that died 10 minutes after birth.

That brief de-extinction (and re-extinction) took place in 2003 and was reported in 2009. Since then, significant advances have been made in cloning and in other technologies for DNA sequencing and gene splicing. That's allowed scientists to think about what previously was unthinkable. Russian and Korean researchers, for example, are looking through the tissue of a woolly mammoth that was preserved in the deep freeze of Siberia's permafrost, in hopes of finding cells that are suitable for cloning.

Harvard geneticist George Church, meanwhile, is working on a technique for inserting snippets of reconstructed DNA code from an extinct species into stem cells for a closely related living species. The coding for the traits of a passenger pigeon could be reintroduced, bit by bit, into a breed of common rock pigeon. Over the course of many generations, the rock pigeons would become more and more like passenger pigeons.

"George Church's method will open up a whole new range of possibilities," Zimmer said. "You're not actually grabbing an intact molecule that was inside an animal that was alive 1,000 years ago."

This type of reverse engineering could also open up a whole new range of questions. "Is a regular rock pigeon that's been given the traits that passenger pigeons had really a passenger pigeon, or is it a hybrid, or whatever?" Zimmer asked.

In a similar vein, plant researchers are sorting through the genome of Asian chestnut trees, with the intention of picking out the specific strings of DNA coding that can make American chestnuts more resistant to a species-killing fungus. The trick could save American chestnut trees from extinction, even though it's debatable whether they'd still be American chestnuts. "It's not the original thing, it's better," Zimmer said. "But should be we be doing that?"

It's not such a giant leap to think about looking through the Neanderthal genome as well, to find out whether it contains the coding for traits that could make humans "better." Church's reflections on that subject sparked all sorts of exaggerated reports a couple of months ago, replete with references to Neanderthal babies being spawned by human surrogate mothers-for-hire.

Zimmer said the last thing that Church and his colleagues want is a genetic free-for-all over de-extinction. "They want this to be something where there's a strong consensus," he said. "This is not an off-the-reservation project."

Friday's event could represent a significant step toward building that consensus. Watch the webcast and see for yourself. National Geographic's webcast portal includes the day's schedule.

Photographer Joel Sartore, one of the scheduled speakers at TEDxDeExtinction, has been documenting species on the brink of extinction for his Photo Ark project. Here are three of the species he has included in his portfolio. For more about Sartore, check out this Daily Nightly blog posting:

Joel Sartore / National Geographic

The golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus) is a species native to mountainous forests of western China.

Joel Sartore / National Geographic

The striking panther chameleon (Furcifer pardalis) is native to tropical forests of Madagascar. The reptile is highly prized by collectors for its bold colors and relatively large body size (up to 9 inches or 23 centimeters long).

Joel Sartore / National Geographic

The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) is the most rare subspecies of gray wolf in North America. It is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN.

More about the genetic frontier:

• How synthetic biology will change us
• Potentially endless line of mice cloned
• Extinct tiger gene resurrected in a mouse

The de-extinction issue is due to be addressed in a one-hour National Geographic Channel special, "Mammoth: Back From the Dead," premiering April 12. Also, the Wildlife Conservation Society is planning a conference April 9-11 in Cambridge, England, on the implications of synthetic biology for conservation.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

University of Arizona

A photomicrograph shows an X chromosome at left, alongside a shrunken Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is passed down exclusively from father to son and can serve as an indicator of male-line human diversity.

Scientists say an African-American male's odd genetic signature suggests that the human Y chromosome's lineage goes back further in time than they thought — perhaps due to interbreeding with other populations such as Neanderthals.

"This really upsets a lot of ideas, but at the same time, it's understandable if we accept that human populations were structured in the past so that there were little pockets of diversity," said Michael Hammer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who is one of the authors of a study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The study focuses on the analysis of a DNA sample that was obtained from an African-American living in South Carolina and submitted to the Genographic Project, a National Geographic effort aimed at mapping human origins and migration. The funny thing about this sample is that it didn't match up with any of the previously known genetic signatures for the Y chromosome, which is passed down from father to son.

"Nobody expected to find anything like this," Hammer said in a news release.

A team led by Fernando Mendez, a researcher in Hammer's lab, analyzed more than 240,000 DNA base pairs on the African-American's Y chromosome. A comparison of the differences between the mystery genetic signature and previously known signatures led the team to conclude that the most recent common ancestor for the entire group lived about 338,000 years ago.

That goes further back than the fossil record goes for anatomically modern humans, Hammer said. "The fossil record speaks to 195,000 years or 200,000 years," he said. It also goes further back than the previous date for the most recent common ancestor based on Y-chromosome analysis, which is in the range of 142,000 years.

The researchers followed up on their discovery by searching through a genetic database for African populations, and turned up 11 men from western Cameroon who had virtually the same genetic signature.

Hammer said there could be two explanations for the previously unidentified Y-chromosome type: Either the genetic heritage of anatomically correct humans really does go back much further than what's reflected in the fossil record — or other populations, such as Neanderthals or the more recently identified Denisovans, interbred with modern humans. Anthropologists refer to that pattern of divergence followed by renewed interbreeding as introgression.

The results are "more consistent with introgression of an odd lineage," Hammer told NBC News. Over the past few years, scientists have been coming around to the view that such interbreeding did take place early in the history of our species. Recent analysis of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA has indicated that a part of their genetic heritage survives in modern-day humans.

Melissa Wilson Sayres, a geneticist at the University of California at Berkeley who played no role in Hammer's study, said the new findings were "exciting" because they pointed to a Y-chromosome lineage more ancient than any others. "They just happened to come across this one Y chromosome that was hidden for so long, and it's very likely that there are more hidden Y chromosomes around the world," she told NBC News.

She said one of the biggest debates in the study of human genetics has to do with how to match mutation rates with time scales — and she expects this latest study to add to the debate. For example, some might continue to argue that the most recent common ancestor lived more recently than 338,000 years ago. "It will still be the oldest Y-chromosome heritage that we have, but I can foresee that some people might disagree with that specific age," she said.

More about our genetic origins:

• Y chromosome is an evolutionary marvel
• Humans had sex with now-extinct relatives
• So who didn't have sex with Neanderthals?

In addition to Hammer and Mendez, the authors of "An African American Paternal Lineage Adds an Extremely Ancient Root to the Human Y Chromosome Phylogenetic Tree" include Thomas Krahn, Bonnie Schrack, Astrid-Maria Krahn, Krishna R. Veeramah, August E. Woerner, Forka Leypey Mathew Fomine, Neil Bradman, Mark G. Thomas and Tatiana M. Karafet. The authors acknowledged Jacqueline Johnson and her male cousins, the descendants of Albert Perry (South Carolina) and participating Family Tree DNA customers.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

You know a story has gone viral when the gang at Taiwan's Next Media Animation makes fun of it — and such is the case with Harvard geneticist George Church's recent comments about the prospects for cloning a Neanderthal baby.

The German magazine Der Spiegel's interview with Church was misconstrued in some quarters as suggesting that the scientist himself was looking for a surrogate mother willing to carry a cloned Neanderthal embryo. In his book "Regenesis," Church says such a scenario is getting closer to the point of possibility. But he's definitely not planning to do the experiment himself. This week, he told the Boston Herald that his original point was lost in translation.

Church and his colleagues are working on a wide array of genetic-engineering technologies, including techniques that could semi-automate the process of producing stem cell lines with artificially added genetic tweaks. Someday, that procedure could give humans new traits, such as enhanced immunity to disease, or enhancements in strength or intelligence. The Neanderthal genome could point the way to such genetic novelties. But if you're looking for a Neanderthal pregnancy, don't bother looking in Church's direction. Instead, have a look at NMA's cartoon — and have yourself a laugh.

More about future evolution:

• Why a Neanderthal clone is such a bad idea
• How synthetic biology will change us
• Human evolution at the crossroads

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Lauren Solomon / Nicholas Moore / iStockphoto

Researchers say that dogs' ability to digest starch was enhanced due to genetic changes that probably occurred in parallel with domestication thousands of years ago.

Like humans, dogs underwent genetic changes thousands of years ago to adapt to a diet with more starch, researchers report. They say the change suggests that the rise of agriculture and the domestication of dogs might have gone hand in hand — but it'll take further analysis to confirm the connection.

"All dogs studied have this change, which I'd say puts it at least a couple of thousand years back in time," lead author Erik Axelsson of Sweden's Uppsala University said in an email. "But we cannot prove that it coincided with the onset of agriculture. This is something we are continuing to work on now."

The genetic shift, reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature, emerged from a detailed, genome-wide search for differences between a group of 60 dogs and  a group of 12 wolves from around the world. Axelsson and his colleagues say this is the first such search ever done for dogs.

"Only some years ago, a study like this would have been impossible due to sequencing costs," Axelsson explained. "Now it is relatively cheap. We started this study late in 2009 — that is, these projects take time."

Co-evolution with humans
Dogs are thought to have diverged from their wolvish ancestors tens of thousands of years ago, helped along by their proximity to ancient humans. Some experts would even say that humans co-evolved with domesticated animals. Past research has shown that wild breeds such as silver foxes can be turned into docile doglike creatures over the course of just a few generations.

But what genetic changes accompanied domestication? That's what the dog-vs.-wolf comparison was all about: The international research team found 36 regions of the dog genome that showed signs of selective pressure, either because they were so different from the wolf genome, or because the genetic signature became so common among different breeds of dogs.

Nineteen of the regions had to do with nervous system function — for example, the ability to create new connections in the brain. "These findings support the hypothesis that selection for altered behavior was important during dog domestication," the researchers wrote. Other regions had to do with the binding between sperm and eggs, or anatomical structure.

Then there were 10 genes that related to starch digestion and fat metabolism. "We propose that genetic variants within these genes may have been selected to aid adaptation from a mainly carnivorous diet to a more starch-rich diet during dog domestication," Axelsson and his colleagues said.

The genetic changes enhanced a dog's ability to break down starch by secreting an enzyme known as amylase in the pancreas. Wolves don't secrete nearly as much amylase, and thus they don't tend to eat starchy foods.

Why dogs went for starch
Why would starch digestion play such a significant role in dog evolution? Researchers have previously suggested that dog domestication began when wolves were attracted to waste dumps near agricultural settlements in ancient times.

"A process of natural selection started in this new niche that favored wolves that were efficient at this process," Axelsson said. "Being an efficient scavenger included being less shy, so as not to waste energy on running away when humans approached. This idea is supported by our evidence of selection in nervous system development genes, as they are likely to have effects on behavior.

"A completely new piece to the puzzle is our finding of a more efficient starch digestion in dogs," he continued. "This could mean that efficient scavenging also included having an efficient system for processing starch. That is, only wolves that could make good use of the scarce and mixed leftovers survived to become the ancestors of dogs."

Axelsson noted that other researchers have seen signs of similar genetic changes in human populations, which apparently made it easier for ancient farmers to handle a starchier diet. "The change in humans is less obvious, which makes sense, considering we were omnivores rather than carnivores prior to the agricultural revolution," he said.

Thanks to the rapid advance of gene sequencing, similar studies can now be conducted not only for dogs, but for other domesticated animals as well. Axelsson and his colleagues conducted such a study relating to chicken domestication several years ago, and now that dogs have had their genomes done, cats can't be that far behind. "I would be surprised if people aren't working on that now," Axelsson said.

Axelsson said that he used to have a dog. ("Now, we have kids instead," he joked.)

"It definitely preferred meat, but would happily feast on, for instance, potatoes," Axelsson said. "This, by the way, is probably important to note — dogs still prefer meat, but during their evolutionary history it was crucial for their survival to adapt to a diet that included a lot of starch as well."

More about dog evolution:

• Dogs (not chimps) act most like humans
• Dogs and humans share DNA, thanks to viruses
• Gallery: How science measures up cats and dogs

In addition to Axelsson, the authors of "The Genomic Signature of Dog Domestication Reveals Adaptation to a Starch-Rich Diet" include Abhirami Ratnakumar, Maja-Louise Arendt, Khurram Maqbool, Matthew T. Webster, Michele Perloski, Olof Liberg, Jon M. Arnemo, Ake Hedhammar and Kerstin Lindblad-Toh.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Getty Images

Neanderthals like the one depicted in this museum reconstruction died out tens of thousands of years ago, but geneticist George Church says it may be possible to bring their DNA back into the gene pool.

Pioneering Harvard geneticist George Church suggests that the day is coming when we'll want to reverse-engineer the Neanderthal genome and pass the now-extinct creatures' advantages to our own progeny. All that's needed would be an "extremely adventurous female human" to serve as a surrogate mother.

During an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Church was asked whether a Neanderthal baby would be born in his lifetime. "That depends on a hell of a lot of things," the 58-year-old replied, "but I think so."

Is he serious?

Well, Church is serious about the promise of synthetic biology, which involves tinkering with the chemical components of DNA to add artificial twists to the code of life. Microbes could be tweaked to produce better biofuels or harness solar power. White blood cells could be rejiggered to fight cancer or other diseases, using a tamed form of the HIV virus. And extinct species could be brought back to life through a combination of cloning and genetic engineering.

The species-resurrection scenario would involve inserting the reconstructed nuclear genetic material from the extinct creature into the living egg of a closely related present-day species, sparking the cell into dividing, and then implanting the resulting embryo into the womb of a female from the present-day species. It's been discussed in the context of using elephants to bring back mammoths, or chicken hens to bring back dinosaurs. 

Technically speaking, the progeny wouldn't be a mammoth or a dinosaur, but rather an elephant or chicken exhibiting the genetic traits of their long-departed relatives. A similar technique could be applied using Neanderthal DNA: Chunks of reconstructed genetic code could be used to reprogram human cells and produce increasingly Neanderthal-like stem cells.

"If we do that often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthal," Church told Der Spiegel. "We developed the semi-automated procedure required to do that in my lab. Finally, we assemble all the chunks in a human stem cell, which would enable you to finally create a Neanderthal clone."

In the current political, ethical and technological climate, there's no way this scenario could come to pass. Researchers are closing in on a high-quality Neanderthal genome, but they're not quite there yet. The Russian and Korean scientists behind the mammoth-cloning project say they're years away from doing their experiment. And the idea of getting humans involved in cloning experiments is still the stuff of science fiction.

However, Church's point is that the Neanderthal genetic code may be so valuable that the hurdles will be worth overcoming.

"Neanderthals might think differently than we do," he told Der Spiegel. "We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it's conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial."

Theoretically, it might be possible to create a whole population of neo-Neanderthals and see how they differ from the usual breed of Homo sapiens, Church said.

"Curiosity may be part of it, but it's not the most important driving force," Church said. "The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing. Therefore the re-creation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance."

Does the idea of Neanderthal surrogate motherhood sound sensible when he puts it that way? Or does it still sound like a science-fiction nightmare? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More about the DNA frontier:

• How sex with Neanderthals made us stronger
• Neanderthal DNA lives on in some of us
• How synthetic biology will change us

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Christine Cox / NBC News file

Researchers say genetic genealogy databases can be leveraged to unlock more sensitive genetic information.

Researchers have shown that it's possible to link your identity to supposedly secret genetic information about your predisposition to diseases, merely by analyzing family-tree databases and other publicly available information.

"It was quite surprising," said Yaniv Erlich, a genetic researcher at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. "When we got the first family, I was surprised. ... It's as if you opened a box that for a long time was locked."

Erlich led the research team whose work is being published in this week's issue of the journal Science. The team's study already has led to a tightening of security measures for federally sponsored genetic databases.

The security-cracking trick relies on the availability of genetic information linked to surnames in a variety of public family-tree databases. DNA samples from males can be tested to look at dozens of genetic markers on the Y-chromosome that change only rarely from generation to generation. If the markers from two individuals with the same surname are a close match, that's a tip-off that the two are closely related, even if they don't know each other.

Tens of thousands of people (including yours truly) make that information public in hopes that someone else will match up with their results. The genealogical markers aren't linked to disease or other specific traits. But under the right circumstances, they could provide an opening for links with other, more sensitive genetic information.

How the secrets were revealed
Erlich and his colleagues conducted a three-step process to see how easy it'd be to use that opening. First, they analyzed anonymous Y-chromosome data from a public database for the 1000 Genomes Project, to come up with the DNA coding for markers that are used for genealogical purposes. Then they compared those markers against entries in the two largest family-tree databases, Ysearch and the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation.

The researchers said their analysis projected a success rate of 12 percent for recovering the surnames of U.S. Caucasian males. Another 5 percent would theoretically be linked up with the wrong surnames. They said upper- to middle-class Caucasian males were easier to identify, presumably because they're more likely to participate in the family-tree databases.

Once the surnames were identified, the third step was to look at other publicly available sources to go from the surname to a specific individual: Some genetic databases, for example, include information about the age and the state of residence of an anonymous participant, and even the number of children and their birth order. Those clues were added to information gleaned from other sources, ranging from public-record search engines to obituaries.

The researchers linked five specific individuals in three separate families with supposedly anonymous genetic records. The process took three to seven hours for each family pedigree, the scientists said. Then they traced those three family-tree pedigrees to find other connections between relatives and sensitive genetic data. "In total, surname inference breached the privacy of nearly 50 individuals from these three pedigrees," the researchers wrote.

"We show that if, for example, your Uncle Dave submitted his DNA to a genetic genealogy database, you could be identified," Melissa Gymrek, a member of the Erlich Lab and the Science paper's principal author, explained in a news release. "In fact, even your fourth cousin Patrick, whom you've never met, could identify you if his DNA is in the database, as long as he's paternally related to you."

What is to be done with data?
Erlich and his colleagues made a point not to reveal the identities of those individuals, and said they were not advocating a clampdown on the availability of genetic information.

"Quite the opposite," Erlich said. "We found the gene for two devastating pediatric disorders by analyzing the data in public databases. Using these databases, we gave hope to these families and to other parents. We don't want to take away these databases. ... What we really want to do here is to have this really mature conversation about privacy — to tell people we cannot completely protect the privacy, but also to tell them about the benefits."

For years, experts have worried that sensitive genetic data could be used to discriminate against patients, potential employees or would-be insurance customers. Such discrimination is illegal when it comes to employment or health insurance, but the law doesn't cover life insurance, disability insurance or long-term care insurance. Theoretically, an insurer could search through genetic records and turn you down because you have a genetic predisposition to, say, Alzheimer's disease. 

In a Science policy paper, representatives of the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health said it was time to "re-examine how to balance the protection of research participants ... with the societal benefits likely to be gained through the enhanced research that broad data sharing facilitates."

They said NIH "acted swiftly to mitigate future risks" by working with the NIGMS' genetic repository to shift the data about the age of study participants out of public view and into a controlled-access area of the database.

"That reduces the risk," Erlich said. "It creates another fence."

And what about the genealogical genetic data? Max Blankfeld, vice president for operations and marketing at Family Tree DNA, said his company has been dealing with privacy issues for more than a decade — and doesn't expect the latest research to lead to policy changes. Family Tree DNA has been running the Ysearch database as a free public resource for a decade, but does not force any of its more than 400,000 participants to use it.

"People voluntarily post their information in that database, and therefore it has nothing really to do with the vast majority of the people who take the test and choose to have it protected by Family Tree DNA," Blankfeld said. "This data, we don't share with anyone."

More about genetic ancestry:

• DNA takes on a family's mysteries
• Update on Irish roots: The wearin' o' the genes
• Gene-tracing project gets an upgrade

In addition to Erlich and Gymrek, the authors of "Identifying Personal Genomes by Surname Inference" include Amy McGuire, David Golan and Eran Halperin. The work was supported by the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel Aviv University, and a gift from James and Cathleen Stone.

The authors of the Science policy paper, "The Complexities of Genomic Identifiability," include Laura Rodriguez, Lisa Brooks and Erick Green of NHGRI and Judith Greenberg of NIGMS.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor, and also the administrator of the Boyle Surname Project at Family Tree DNA.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Seven years ago, National Geographic launched a project aimed at using genetic analysis to map tens of thousands of years of human migration — and now a new phase of the Genographic Project promises to bring even more precision to that map.

"With the number of markers we've added, we've gotten much closer to the present," the project's director, population geneticist Spencer Wells, told me this week.

The key to tracing genetic connections lies in chemical markers — specific strings of DNA coding that are passed down from one generation to the next. When the Genographic Project was founded in 2005, scientists tracked 12 markers on the Y chromosome of male participants, or about 150 markers in the mitochondrial DNA of men or women. The Y-chromosome DNA could track only the paternal lineage, and the mitochondrial DNA readings could track only the maternal line. 

Genographic 2.0 has kicked it up a notch: A testing tool known as the "GenoChip" has been custom-designed for this second phase of the project. Now the project looks at 12,000 DNA markers on the Y-chromosome, 3,300 mitochondrial DNA markers, and 130,000 other markers from each participants' genome. Such a huge database could theoretically correlate your genetic heritage with your ancestors' regional ramblings, even if they're not on the direct paternal or maternal line, Wells said.

The data analysis even correlates your genetic information with that of the long-extinct Neanderthal and Denisovan species of near-humans. Researchers have found that non-Africans can trace up to 4 percent of their genetic makeup back to the Neanderthals, and that modern-day Papuans owe about 6 percent of their genetic heritage to the mysterious Denisovans. So how much of a Neanderthal are you? Genographic 2.0 could let you know.

"Your own DNA tells an incredible story of how your ancestors embarked on an epic journey that populated the earth," Wells explains in a video about Geno 2.0.

The testing routine is relatively simple, if a bit pricey: First, you purchase a mail-order sample kit for $199.95. When you receive the kit, you run a cotton swab around the inside of your cheek to pick up some of your cells, then seal up the swabs and send them back to the lab. A few weeks later, you can review your results on a password-protected Web site. 

Geno 2.0 isn't the only gene-sampling program that's out there: Several companies offer Y-chromosome or mitochondrial-DNA testing from genealogical purposes. In fact, Geno 2.0 is partnering with one of those companies, Family Tree DNA, to provide the cheek-swab testing service. Other companies such as 23andMe and Complete Genomics can sample a wider swath of your genome, or even your entire genome. (23andMe also gives you percentages for Neanderthal DNA, by the way.)

Wells' project is different in that genealogy is not Geno 2.0's primary purpose, and the genetic markers are not linked to medically relevant traits. So you can't use the results to calculate your risk of falling prey to disease. But you can get a sense of where your long-ago ancestors came from, in what percentages. For example, oceanographer Robert Ballard discovered that his mostly Dutch-British genome is also about 2 percent Oceanian, connecting him with the seafarers who plied Pacific waters tens of thousands of years ago.

National Geographic

Population geneticist Spencer Wells, director of National Geographic's Genographic Project, says the latest phase of the project should provide new opportunities for citizen scientists as well as professional researchers.

Even though Geno 2.0 is not a family-tree project per se, it's still possible to compare your genetic profile with others via the project's community forum. "We display people who have genetic profiles similar to yours as 'dots' in your circle," Wells said. You can "ping" those dots to ask other Genographic participants for more information about their heritage.

"This allows them to remain fairly anonymous, and yet share their story," Wells said.

Wells and his colleagues are also awarding grants, to fund research using Geno 2.0's anonymized genetic database as well as to support initiatives for indigenous and traditional communities around the world. The Genographic Project has already provided 62 Legacy Fund grants, worth $1.7 million, for initiatives in locales ranging from Guatemala to Nepal. There's also an education program called GenoThreads, which aims to connect classrooms around the world via email and videoconferencing. The first GenoThreads project is connecting high-school students in Switzerland and Singapore.

More than half a million people participated in the first phase of the Genographic Project, which distributed the testing kits for $99. Geno 2.0 is twice the price — which has sparked a few critical comments from Geno 1.0 participants.

"We bought this for our son and the results were vague ... like we started in Africa. Yeah, everybody did," one commenter wrote in a posting on National Geographic's YouTube page. "Then some of our line went to East Asia and some went West. Then the info stops. Oh, unless we want to buy Phase Two for $199. This was very disappointing."

I've had my DNA tested for several projects in the past, including Family Tree DNA as well as Geno 1.0, and although the tests have helped me exclude some suspects in the family search, I haven't yet hit the genealogical jackpot. Genetic testing has identified unexpected connections between other Boyle kin, however, so I know the technology works. Maybe I'll give Geno 2.0 a try and file a follow-up report. In the meantime, feel free to let me know how your own genetic quest is turning out.

More from the Genographic Project:

• Ancient Phoenicians' genetic heritage lives on
• Phew! Humans may have faced extinction
• Human migration traced through genes

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.