EDITOR’S PICK: Common congenital defect a prickly problem for the kidney
One of the most common congenital defects in humans — it is detected in approximately 0.5% of fetuses analyzed by routine antenatal sonography — is a kidney abnormalit…
Dr. Joseph Glavy at Stevens Institute of Technology studies the smallest and most basic elements of life. The Assistant Professor of Chemical Biology runs the Glavy Lab, where advanced student scientists study the nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) in ce…
Investigators from the International Headache Genetics Consortium, a world-wide collaboration of researchers, have identified the first-ever genetic risk factor associated with common types of migraine. Researchers looked at genetic data of more tha…
A world-wide collaboration of researchers has identified the first-ever genetic risk factor associated with common types of migraine. The researchers, who looked at the genetic data of more than 50,000 people, have produced new insights into the tri…
A unique experiment at Rice University that forces bacteria into a head-to-head competition for evolutionary dominance has yielded new insights about the way Darwinian selection plays out at the molecular level. An exacting new analysis of the exper…
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — To their deep dismay, researchers at Mayo Clinic discovered several years ago that laboratory samples of anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) they were using to help them find new treatments for this lethal disease were probably s…
PHILADELPHIA – Male infertility is a common medical problem, affecting millions of men in the United States annually. Its causes include an inability to make productive sperm. Now, using yeast as a model organism, researchers at the University of Pe…
Until now, researchers thought that breast cancer nearly always began when cells in the epithelium went haywire. But new research suggests that genetic mutations can ? and do ? occur initially in a deeper layer of breast tissue, called the stroma. This presents a serious concern for physicians, who believed that breast tumors spread from epithelial tissue. “Genetic alterations in carcinomas, including breast cancers, have always been attributed to epithelial cells,” said Charis Eng, Klotz professor and director of the Clinical Cancer Genetics Program at Ohio State University. She co-authored a new study that looks at genetic mutations in breast tissue.
Researchers have developed the world’s first animal model for mature human B-cell lymphomas, a discovery that may lead to the uncovering of the genetic mutations that cause these types of cancer. Mature B-cell type lymphomas account for about 85 percent of all lymphomas, and include both Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas.
Twenty thousand hits per day — that’s the average dose of damage sustained by the genes within each cell of our body. How are innumerable mutations avoided? In a new study, researchers have proved the existence of a vital repair mechanism used by cells to correct this damage and showed that it’s responsible for about 85% of what are termed “last-resort” repairs. Genes can be damaged by a variety of factors, such as ultraviolet light, cigarette smoke, or certain types of viruses. Such damage, if left unrepaired, can cause mutations, which can lead to disease. The “first resort” for genetic repair is most often a mechanism that works on an “all or nothing” basis: when unable to precisely correct the damage, it stops in its tracks, leading to what can be an even more harmful effect ? the death of the cell. Fortunately, nature has provided cells with two alternative, last-resort repair systems that can take command when the first rescue mechanism fails.