Genetics & Molecular Biology

Mark Ptashne, Oliver Hobert, and Eric Davidson talk sense on epigenomics: We were astonished to see two sentences in your Editorial on the International Human Epigenome Consortium (Nature 463, 587; 2010) that seem to disregard principles of gene regulation ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Mar 26 2010 - 2:13pm

Genetically Modified Plants Help Treat Hemophilia

Hemophilia is caused by a genetic defect that inhibits the body's ability to control blood clotting. The two forms of the disease — hemophilia A and B — are associated with the absence of proteins called factor VIII and factor IX, respectively. The di ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 30 2010 - 7:01pm

Mice Regain Sight After Nanoparticle Gene Therapy

Scientists have developed a non-viral, synthetic nanoparticle carrier to improve and save the sight of mice with retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited disease characterized by progressive vision loss and eventual blindness, for which there is no cure. The res ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 31 2010 - 1:52pm

Dealing With Dependence

My academic adventures have exposed me to a fairly large amount of mathematics. While I seem to end up wishing I had taken even more mathematics, computer science, and statistics coursework every week or three, I've nevertheless been pretty grateful ...

Article - L.K. Tuominen - Apr 11 2010 - 10:55am

Stem Cells Could Replace Rats In The Lab

New tissue engineering research could greatly reduce the number of lab animals required for FDA mandated experimental trials on new health products with medical formulations. Scientists from Tel Aviv University writing in Tissue Engineering say that the ne ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 13 2010 - 1:29pm

Friction And Epistasis: You Can't Ignore 'em

Personalized genetics is hot in the news right now, but in fact we're generally terrible at using genotypes to predict who is going to get a disease. One villain here is the phenomenon known as epistasis, which essentially means that the physiological ...

Article - Michael White - Apr 14 2010 - 10:38pm

"a step too far in meddling with the building blocks of human life."

It is coming – so we might as well prepare for it psychologically. Researchers who manipulate DNA and RNA, and all of the incredible tools of creation that accompany them, have become so accomplished in the past 50 years that we are now facing realistic sc ...

Blog Post - Mark Berman - Apr 17 2010 - 7:47pm

Genetic Justification For The Mediterranean Diet

The reduced risk of cardiovascular disease seen in people who eat a Mediterranean diet may be attributable to the phenolic components of virgin olive oil, which repress several pro-inflammatory genes. Phenols are micronutrients of olive oil; the extra-virg ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 20 2010 - 11:15am

Researchers Discover Missing Human Genome Sequences

The authors of a new study in Nature Methods say they have discovered 2,363 new DNA sequences corresponding to 730 regions on the human genome not charted in the reference map of the human genome. "A large portion of those sequences are either missing ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 20 2010 - 11:35am

Biological Tumor Killers- Oncolytic Viruses

So much for my commitment to write.... Just as I have started my blog account, my supervisor asked me to write a 10-page review article on his research-due in two weeks?!! Well, after 2 weeks of craziness, I thought that perhaps I should share a bit about ...

Article - Jennifer Wong - Apr 20 2010 - 5:31pm