Genetics & Molecular Biology

59 Percent Of Parents Want To Know Their Disease Risk- And 80 Percent Want Their Kids To Know Also

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- even if they were risks that wouldn't be relevant for poss ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 11 2015 - 8:40pm

Pathogen-Sensing 'Antenna' Gene Transferred To Wheat

A team of scientists have successfully transferred a receptor that recognizes bacteria from the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, a dicot, to wheat, a monocot. The receptor can trigger a defensive response and confers increased resistance to bacterial dise ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 12 2015 - 7:00am

SUMO Can Keep Gene Expression In Check

Living beings can keep gene expression in check, which might partly explain the uncontrolled gene expression found in many cancers, according to a new paper/ "Using yeast as a model organism, we studied the Tup1 protein, a negative regulator of gene e ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 13 2015 - 3:39pm

Chromothripsis: Birth Defects May Be Caused By Chromosome Shattering

In a complex system like the human body, it's no surprise things can sometimes go wrong in development but evolution has made the system rather forgiving. When children inherit chromosomes from their parents, some minor genetic changes frequently occu ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 23 2015 - 10:24am

Herpes: Cytomegalovirus Hijacks Human Enzyme For Replication

More than 60 percent of the world's population is infected with a type of herpes virus called human cytomegalovirus, which replicates by commandeering the host cell's metabolism, but the details of this maneuver have been unclear. Researchers ha ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 29 2015 - 2:17pm

Recipe For How To Grow A Human Lung

Scientists have grown the first 3-D mini lungs from stem cells, which means research is one step closer to being able to create one of the Big 5 organs from a patient's stem cells rather than having waiting lists for donors. The University of Michiga ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 24 2015 - 10:13pm

'Meat Of The Poor': Science Could Save Beans From Global Warming

Both vegetarians and elite environmental activists have long considered meat as a vital food to cut if we are to reduce global emissions. For poor people, elites in developed nations believe beans would be a good substitute. While their 'it takes a g ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 25 2015 - 8:30am

Goldilocks Scaling- How Organisms Know Just The Right Size

Animal development has an intriguing puzzle- scaling, the proportionality of different body parts. Whether you have an elephant or a mouse, organ and tissue sizes are generally proportional to the overall size of the body. Clearly evolution determined  ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 26 2015 - 9:30am

Why Flu Can Kill- The IRF7 Genetic Mutation Explanation

Nobody likes getting the flu, and it isn't fun, but for most people drinking fluids and getting some rest and waiting it out are all it takes. But a small number of children who catch the influenza virus fall so ill they end up in the hospital, even ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 1 2015 - 11:00am

Hack Photosynthesis, Feed The World

Boosting the photosynthetic efficiency of plants offers the best hope of increasing crop yields and feed a planet expected to have 9.5 billion people on it by 2050, according to a new report.  Photosynthetic microbes offer other clues to improving photosy ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 1 2015 - 1:17pm