Genetics

Dr Catherine Leamey from the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Sydney has been awarded the 2008 Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund Prize for Medical Research for her work in identifying the gene that enables binocular vision.

Plant researchers from McGill University and the University of California, Berkeley, have announced a major breakthrough in a developmental process called epigenetics. They have demonstrated for the first time the reversal of what is called epigenetic silencing in plants.

In a study in the advance online edition of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, researchers from Albert Einstein College of Medicine describe a technique for looking more precisely at a fundamental step of a cell's life – a gene, DNA, being read into a message, mRNA. The technique could provide a window into the process by which genes are switched on inappropriately, causing disease.

The Human Genome Project completed its first draft in 2000 after 10 years' work. Now a Californian company has unveiled details of a technique that it says could sequence a person's entire genome in half an hour, for under $1000.

Hereditary information flows from parents to offspring not just through DNA but also through the millions of proteins and other molecules that cling to it. These modifications of DNA, known as "epigenetic marks," act both as a switch and a dial – they can determine which genes should be turned on or off, and how much message an "on" gene should produce.

New evidence may explain why it is that we lose not only our youthful looks, but also our youthful pattern of gene activity with age. A report in the November 26th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, reveals that a protein perhaps best known for its role in the life-extending benefits of a low-calorie diet also maintains the stability of the mammalian genome—the complete set of genetic instructions "written" in DNA.

Scientists at Penn State have shed light on some of the processes that regulate genes -- such as the processes that ensure that proteins are produced at the correct time, place, and amount in an organism -- and they also have shed light on the evolution of the DNA regions that regulate genes.

Bipolar disorder genes, pathways identified by Indiana University neuroscientistsNeuroscientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine have created the first comprehensive map of genes likely to be involved in bipolar disorder, according to research published online Nov. 21 in the American Journal of Medical Genetics.

Scientists at Penn State are leaders of a team that is the first to report the genome-wide sequence of an extinct animal, according to Webb Miller, professor of biology and of computer science and engineering and one of the project's two leaders. The scientists sequenced the genome of the woolly mammoth, an extinct species of elephant that was adapted to living in the cold environment of the northern hemisphere. They sequenced four billion DNA bases using next-generation DNA-sequencing instruments and a novel approach that reads ancient DNA highly efficiently.

People are different, both physically and mentally, but genetically everyone is very similar. That's been the thought of scientists for decades now. But with population research becoming more and more common, the University of Alberta's Tim Caulfield is concerned that genetic research could awaken racist attitudes.

Aucott et al. report the first in vivo experiments on the heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) family, which sidles up to silent DNA. The results, to be published in the Nov. 17 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology, add to the evidence that the different versions of the proteins help cells fix broken DNA.

Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had created a mouse from a dead cell frozen for 16 years, taking a step in the long impossible dream of bringing back extinct animals such as mammoths.

Bruce Willis, Marilyn Monroe, and Carly Simon all suffered from stuttering. Today, three million Americans do, too. Most are able to overcome the handicap, which afflicts 5% of all children ― but childhood suffering from stuttering can be traumatic, producing educational, social, and occupational disadvantages. Intriguing new research from a large-scale international project is providing new insight into the disability.

Researchers have carried out the largest study of differences between human and chimpanzee genomes, identifying regions that have been duplicated or lost during evolution of the two lineages. The study, published in Genome Research, is the first to compare many human and chimpanzee genomes in the same fashion.

In a paper published in Genome Research on Nov. 4, scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) report that what was previously believed to be "junk" DNA is one of the important ingredients distinguishing humans from other species.