Genetics & Molecular Biology

Researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center have attempted to count the number of genes that contribute to obesity and body weight - and it isn't a pretty number. The findings suggest that…

A recent issue of Genome Research contains a report of the cat genome sequence (Pontius et al. 2007), adding Felis catus to the rapidly growing collection of animal genome sequences. One of the…

When we think of the genetic changes that had to take place during our evolutionary history, we typically think of changes that resulted in a gain of function, like genetic changes that resulted in a…

Cells keep a close watch over the transcriptome – the totality of all parts of the genome that are expressed in any given cell at any given time. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological…

Genome rearrangements, resulting in variations in the numbers of copies of genes, occur when the cellular process that copies DNA during cell division stalls and then switches to a different genetic…

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, close to one-third of the population in the United States is obese and another third is overweight. Excessive weight gain is elicited by…

Viticulture, the growing of grapes Vitis vinifera, chiefly to make wine, is an ancient form of agriculture, dating as far back as the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages. We have a detailed…

When humans began to migrate out of Africa about 100,000 years ago, their skin color gradually changed to adapt to their new environments. And when the last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago,…

Surrounding the small islands of genes within the human genome is a vast sea of non-coding DNA. While most of this DNA is junk, some of it is used to help genes turn on and off. Hopkins researchers…

Boosting an exercise-related gene in the brain works as a powerful anti-depressant in mice—a finding that could lead to a new anti-depressant drug target, according to a Yale School of Medicine…