Scientists at the University of Michigan Health System have coaxed stem cells to grow the first three-dimensional mini lungs. The 3D structures mimic the complexity of human lungs and may serve as a discovery tool for lung diseases or new therapies.
Researchers describe the first set of genes important in learning in a zebrafish model. Using an in-depth analysis of one of these genes they found an important relevant signaling pathway. The proteins in this pathway could provide new insights into the development of novel pharmacological targets.
The outcome of a duel between mathematical models supports the reigning theory of the genetics of altruism. Called inclusive fitness, it says altruism is competitive if it benefits relatives carrying the same gene as the selfless individual. Attacked by a Nature article published in 2010, it is defended by Washington University evolutionary biologist David Queller.
Researchers have produced the first haplotype map of wheat that provides detailed description of genetic differences in a worldwide sample of wheat lines. This is an important foundation for future improvements in wheat around the world.
By genomic sequencing of leukemia cells from relapsed patients at different stages, scientists have discovered key details of how acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells mutate to survive chemotherapy.
A research team at UC San Francisco has discovered an RNA molecule called Pnky that can be manipulated to increase the production of neurons from neural stem cells.
To pack two meters of DNA into a microscopic cell, the string of genetic information must be wound extremely carefully into chromosomes. Surprisingly the DNA’s sequence causes it to be coiled and uncoiled much like a yoyo, scientists reported in Cell.
Virginia Tech researchers have modified a red-hot new technology to make it more efficient at making changes in mosquito genetics. The discovery could enable more effective approaches to mosquito and disease control.
Today AACC sent formal comments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the agency’s proposed regulation of next-generation sequencing tests. AACC appreciates FDA’s efforts to seek input from the healthcare community before developing new policy in this area, but is concerned that FDA regulation of next-generation sequencing could impede the advancement of precision medicine.
There is still no evidence of genetic difference between blacks and whites to account for the health disparities in cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a new study by McGill University researchers. Published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the researchers suggest that after a decade of genetic studies, factors such as lifestyle, education and socio-economics - not genetics - are more promising avenues to understanding racial health disparities.
Case Western Reserve scientists have discovered that speed matters when it comes to how messenger RNA (mRNA) deciphers critical information within the genetic code — the complex chain of instructions critical to sustaining life. The investigators’ findings, which appear in the March 12 journal Cell.
Light can be used to activate normal, non-genetically modified neurons through the use of targeted gold nanoparticles. The new method represents a significant technological advance with potential advantages over current optogenetic methods, including possible use in the development of therapeutics.
Until now scientists have believed that the variations in traits such as our height, skin colour, tendency to gain weight or not, intelligence, tendency to develop certain diseases, etc., all of them traits that exist along a continuum, were a result of both genetic and environmental factors. But they didn’t know how exactly these things worked together. By studying ants, McGill researchers have identified a key mechanism by which environmental (or epigenetic) factors influence the expression of all of these traits, (along with many more).
McGill researchers have discovered, for the first time, the importance of a key epigenetic regulator in the development of the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with learning, memory and neural stem cells.
Today marked the publication of the first ever genome-wide association study of rosacea, a common and incurable skin disorder. Led by Dr. Anne Lynn S. Chang of Stanford University’s School of Medicine, and co-authored by 23andMe, the study is the first to identify genetic factors for this condition.
Researchers at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System and University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in New York and the United Kingdom, have identified genetic markers, derived from blood samples that are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The markers are associated with gene networks that regulate innate immune function and interferon signaling.
A research group that includes a University of Florida genetics expert has located and narrowed down the number of genes that play a role in the disease, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Genetics. Knowing the identities and location of causative genes is a crucial development: Other researchers can use this information to better predict who might develop Type 1 diabetes and how to prevent it.
Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have developed a high-resolution method that can precisely and reliably map individual transcription factor binding sites in the genome, vastly outperforming standard techniques
In an advance that could lead to better identification of malignant pediatric adrenocortical tumors, and ultimately to better treatment, researchers have mapped the “genomic landscape” of these rare childhood tumors. Their genomic mapping has revealed unprecedented details, not only of the aberrant genetic and chromosomal changes that drive the cancer, but the sequence of those changes that trigger it.
Would you want to know if you or your children had risk of hereditary cancer, a genetic risk for cardiovascular disease or carried the gene associated with developing Alzheimer’s disease?
Next generation sequencing enables researchers to sequence DNA and RNA much more quickly and cheaply than an older technology called Sanger sequencing. The technology is revolutionizing genomics (the study of genes and their functions) and molecular biology.
The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital—Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project reports that a highly aggressive form of leukemia in infants has surprisingly few mutations beyond the chromosomal rearrangement that affects the MLL gene. The findings suggest that targeting the alteration is likely the key to improved survival. The research appeared online ahead of print this week in the scientific journal Nature Genetics.
Websites that market personalized cancer care services often overemphasize their purported benefits and downplay their limitations, and many sites offer genetic tests whose value for guiding cancer treatment has not been shown to be clinically useful, according to a new study from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital—Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project found that melanoma in some adolescent and adult patients involves many of the same genetic alterations and would likely respond to the same therapy. The research appears in the March issue of the Journal of Investigational Dermatology.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have identified a genetic variation that in women significantly increases their risk of developing multiple sclerosis. The variant occurs almost twice as often among women with MS as in women without the disease, making it "one of the strongest genetic risk factors for MS discovered to date,” said senior author Doug Feinstein, professor of anesthesiology at UIC and research biologist at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center. The report is published in the journal ASN NEURO.
The more copies of a genome a cell holds, the more adaptable those cells are. This may have implications for cancer's evolution and adaptation.
Data from only a small number of gene variants can predict which maritime pine trees are most vulnerable to climate change, scientists report in the March issue of GENETICS. The results will improve computer models designed to forecast where forests will grow as the climate changes, and promises to help forestry managers decide where to focus reforestation efforts. The results will also guide the choice of tree stocks.
Penis size nomograms may be useful in clinical and therapeutic settings to counsel men and for academic research.
Analyzing a puzzling multisystem disorder in three children, genetic experts have identified a new syndrome, dubbed CHOPS syndrome, shedding light on key biological processes during human development.
A novel research study from the UNC School of Medicine shows that although mammals inherit equal amounts of genetic mutations from their parents – the mutations that make them unique and not some other person – they actually “use” more of the DNA that they inherited from their dads.
Over 1,500 scientists from 30 countries and 46 states will attend next week's 56th Annual Drosophila Research Conference organized by the Genetics Society of America (GSA), March 4–8 in Chicago, IL. The conference will feature close to 1,000 presentations (including 170 talks) describing cutting-edge research on genetics, developmental biology, cancer, stem cells, neurology, epigenetics, genetic disease, aging, immunity, behavior, drug discovery, and technology. It is the largest meeting in the world that brings together researchers who use the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to study biology.
Writing in the February 25 online issue of the journal PLOS ONE, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, with collaborators from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), have definitively shown for the first time that the culture conditions in which stem cells are grown and mass-produced can affect their genetic stability.
Researchers have pinpointed a region in the human genome associated with peanut allergy in U.S. children, offering strong evidence that genes can play a role in the development of food allergies.
Researchers have identified the first genetic variation that is associated with increased risk and severity of peripheral neuropathy following treatment with a widely used anti-cancer drug. Investigators also found evidence of how it may be possible to protect young leukemia patients without jeopardizing cures. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists led the study, which appears today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In Nature Genetics, DOE JGI researchers and longtime collaborators at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research and Clark University conducted the first broad, comparative phylogenomic analysis of mycorrhizal fungi to understand the basis for fungal symbiotic relationships with plants.
Researchers find many new gene-regulating molecules that are tissue and human specific.
Studying zebrafish embryos, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that the epigenome plays a significant part in guiding development in the first 24 hours after fertilization. The research may deepen understanding of congenital defects and miscarriage.
Great, wonderful, wacky things can come in tiny genomic packages. That’s one lesson to be learned from the carnivorous bladderwort. According to new research, this plant houses more genes than species including grape, coffee or papaya — despite having a much smaller genome.
Mutation of one gene is all it takes to get cystic fibrosis, but disease severity depends on many other genes and proteins. For the first time, UNC researchers identified genetic pathways that play major roles in why one person with CF might have severe symptoms while another person might not.
23andMe has been granted authority by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market the first direct-to-consumer genetic test under a regulatory classification for novel devices.
Using advanced DNA sequencing methods, researchers have identified a new gene that is associated with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
A research team led by investigators from Mayo Clinic’s campus in Jacksonville, Florida, and the University of Oslo, Norway, have identified a molecule that pushes normal pancreatic cells to transform their shape, laying the groundwork for development of pancreatic cancer — one of the most difficult tumors to treat.
Researchers from Canada, the UK, Sweden and the US have discovered more than 30 genes that strongly affect an antibody involved in allergies and asthma. Some of the genes could provide targets for drugs to treat those conditions, according to the international team’s study, published online in Nature.
Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found a possible clue to why older mothers face a higher risk for having babies born with conditions such as Down syndrome that are characterized by abnormal chromosome numbers.
The genome is the instruction book for life. But reading that instruction book and carrying out its directives are controlled by the epigenome, which attaches chemical markers to DNA to activate or silence genes. For the first time, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and elsewhere have assembled a comprehensive map of the human epigenome.
Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that mutations that cause autism in children are connected to a pathway that regulates brain development.
While genomics is the study of all of the genes in a cell or organism, epigenomics is the study of all the genomic add-ons and changes that influence gene expression but aren’t encoded in the DNA sequence. A variety of new epigenomic information is now available in a collection of studies published Feb. 19 in Nature by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap Epigenomics Program.
Much like mapping the human genome laid the foundations for understanding the genetic basis of human health, new maps of the human epigenome may further unravel the complex links between DNA and disease. The epigenome is part of the machinery that helps direct how genes are turned off and on in different types of cells.
The human genome project captured the public imagination when its first draft was published 14 years ago this week in the international science journal Nature, but the epigenome may hold the real promise for conquering disease.
Two international teams of researchers led by Ludwig San Diego’s Bing Ren have published in the current issue of Nature two papers that analyze in unprecedented detail the variability and regulation of gene expression across the entire human genome, and their correspondence with the physical structure of chromosomes.
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