Amyloid-beta and tau protein deposits in the brain are characteristic features of Alzheimer disease. The effect on the hippocampus, the area of the brain that plays a central role in learning and memory, is particularly severe. However, it app…
Ebstein’s anomaly is a rare congenital valvular heart disease. Now, in patients with this disease, researchers of the Academic Medical Center Amsterdam in the Netherlands, the University of Newcastle, UK and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Me…
CHICAGO — If a human cell and a bacterial cell met at a speed-dating event, they would never be expected to exchange phone numbers, much less genetic material. In more scientific terms, a direct transfer of DNA has never been recorded from humans …
LA JOLLA, CA — Embargoed by the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology until February 13, 2011, 1 PM Eastern time — Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have shed new light on a molecular switch that turns genes on or off in r…
The gene, GFPT1, has been identified by researchers at Newcastle University working with international colleagues, as crucial in causing a variation of Congenital Myasthenic Syndrome (CMS).
The condition came to prominence in recent times in the U…
A rose by any other name would smell
like celery?
North Carolina State University research intended to extend the “vase life” of roses inserts a gene from celery inside rose plants to help fight off botrytis, or petal blight, one of the r…
Scientists have modeled a system that may be used to control mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit, without the use of pesticides. In the proposed system, mosquitoes are engineered to carry two genes. The first gene causes males to transmit a to…
Lung injury is a common cause of death among patients with pneumonia, sepsis or trauma and in those who have had lung transplants. The damage often occurs suddenly and can cause life-threatening breathing problems and rapid lung failure.
The…
For Immediate Release — February 8, 2011 – (Toronto) — A new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has found evidence suggesting that a variation of a specific gene may play a role in late-onset Alzheimer’s, the disease wh…
Frontotemporal dementia is caused by a breakdown of nerve cells in the frontal and temporal region of the brain (fronto-temporal lobe), which leads to, among other symptoms, a change in personality and behavior. The cause of some forms of frontotemp…
A team of scientists at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere has discovered that a single alteration in the genetic code of about a fourth of African-Americans helps protect them from coronary artery disease, the leading cause of death in Americans of all ra…
New Rochelle, NY, January 25, 2011 — Give caffeine to cells engineered to produce viruses used for gene therapy and the cells can generate 3- to 8-times more virus, according to a paper published in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journ…
Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have discovered a rogue gene which — if blocked by the right drugs — could stop cancer in its tracks.
Published today by the journal Oncogene, the discovery is a breakthrough in our understandi…
COLLEGE STATION, Jan. 11, 2011 — Biologists at Texas A&M University have made an important step toward understanding human mating behavior by showing that certain genes become activated in fruit flies when they interact with the opposite sex.
Th…
Cancer researchers at The Peggy and Charles Stephenson Oklahoma Cancer Center have found a way to stop early stage pancreatic cancer in research models — a result that has far-reaching implications in chemoprevention for high-risk patients.
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Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital report a gene therapy strategy that improves the condition of a mouse model of an inherited blood disorder, Beta Thalassemia. The gene correction involves using unfertilized eggs from afflicted mice to …
DURHAM, N.C. — The recipe for making one species into two requires time and some kind of separation, like being on different islands or something else that discourages gene flow between the two budding species.
In the case of common Texas wildfl…
HOUSTON – The interplay between a major tumor-suppressing gene, a truncated chromosome and two sets of microRNAs provides a molecular basis for explaining the less aggressive form of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, an international team of researchers…
