Genetics & Molecular Biology

The United States is the world's top corn grower, producing 44 percent of the global crop. In 2007, U.S. farmers produced a record 13.1 billion bushels of corn, an increase of nearly 25 percent over…

The pea is an important crop species but it is unsuited to the Agrobacterium-based genetic modification techniques that are commonly used to work with crops. Researchers have now discovered the first…

If you've ever had a severe asthma attack or gone into premature labor, there is a good chance you were given the drug terbutaline. Terbutaline can relax your involuntary smooth muscle when it's…

A healthy individual loses around a hundred hairs a day. Nothing to worry about as long as they are constantly replaced and the losses occur evenly around the whole scalp. But when hair loss goes…

A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims to have solved this scientific riddle by analysing the genomics of primitive living fishes such as sharks and lampreys and…

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that the gene ENPP1 is linked to preterm birth and low birth weight among Hispanic women. Errol Norwitz, M.D., associate professor in the Department…

As large, visually-oriented mammals, we have long had a tendency to consider biological diversity primarily in terms of what we can see. There is, however, an entire world of creatures rarely…

A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.…

A group of the world's leading sequencing centers have announced plans to sequence 1000 human genomes. The cost of the first human genome project was about $3 billion; by comparison, the next 1000…

A study led by McGill University researchers has demonstrated that small differences between individuals at the DNA level can lead to dramatic differences in the way genes produce proteins. These, in…