Boston, Mass. — When pregnant women need medications, there is often concern about possible effects on the fetus. Although some drugs are clearly recognized to cause birth defects (thalidomide being a notorious example), and others are generally r…
Just as raging hormones are part of the process of a child’s maturation through the teen years to adulthood, juvenile hormones, a group of insect isoprenoids, play an important role as butterflies, fruit flies and mosquitoes transform their body str…
Retinitis pigmentosa is an inherited eye disorder characterized by progressive loss of vision that in many instances leads to legal blindness at the end stage.
In a ChIP-Seq based approach, the researchers identified a key regulatory role of the t…
Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified a mechanism controlling the function of a protein that binds to DNA during embryonic development and may function to prevent abnormal tumor growth. When the protein, TCF3, is modified b…
In a discovery sparked by a routine check-up of a young cancer survivor, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston have identified a gene responsible for a childhood form of the kidney tumor papillary renal cell carcinoma (PRCC).
A gene known for its ability to form blood vessels has been found to be a key player in a chromosomal abnormality that causes potentially devastating birth defects in the heart and throughout the body. In a study published in the February 2003 issue of Nature Medicine, a group of collaborators from across the globe reports that abnormalities in vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, is a cause of DiGeorge syndrome. The syndrome can cause a wide range of heart defects, many of which are vascular in nature, as well as problems with the thymus and parathyroid gland, craniofacial abnormalities and mental retardation.