Genetics & Molecular Biology
Patents involving plants are often portrayed as a seriously negative phenomenon. In fact, they play an important and beneficial role in the development of better and more productive crops. As I have watched the controversy around the role of patents, particularly as related to biotech crops, it seems that critics have little understanding of why the patent system was created in the first place, how the patent system actually works, and what patents do and don't mean in the commercial realm.
I would like to explain why, rather than being some sort of sinister tool of…
Human embryonic stem cells still get all of the attention - a company in California might be able to do a clinical trial for an applied hESC treatment and it was in the news everywhere, but researchers at the University of Minnesota's Lillehei Heart Institute have shown why the un-controversial induced pluripotent stem cell technology may deserve it more. Researchers have combined genetic repair with cellular reprogramming to generate stem cells capable of muscle regeneration in a mouse model for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD).
The proof-of-principle experiments showed the…
The nucleic and amino acids caught up in the infamous "selfish" segregation distorter (SD) saga may be just inanimate chemical compounds to most of us, but they have put on a soap opera for biologists since the phenomenon was discovered in fruit flies 50 years ago.
When male flies make their sperm, the SD gene (call it "A") manages to rig meiosis — the specialized cell division that makes sex cells — so that maturing sperm that bear chromosomes with the susceptible allele (call that one "a") end up defective and discarded. They never even leave the testes. It is murder, of a sort.…
Chronic or acute liver failure can be deadly. Toxins take over, the skin turns yellow and higher brain function slows. A line of special liver cells could change that, says Neil Talbot, a Research Animal Scientist for the USDA Agricultural Research Service, in an interview with the American Society of Animal Science.
Talbot says a line of pig liver cells called PICM-19 could perform many of the same functions as a human liver. In 1991, Talbot created PICM-19 from the cells of an 8-day-old pig embryo. The cell line is significant because it is "immortal," meaning the cells can divide an…
The base pairs that hold together two pieces of RNA, the older cousin of DNA, are some of the most important molecular interactions in living cells. Many scientists believe that these base pairs were part of life from the very beginning and that RNA was one of the first polymers of life. But there is a problem. The RNA bases don't form base pairs in water unless they are connected to a polymer backbone, a trait that has baffled origin-of-life scientists for decades. If the bases don't pair before they are part of polymers, how would the bases have been selected out from the many molecules in…
The health benefits of low-dose aspirin and omega-3 fatty acids in foods like flax seeds and salmon are touted frequently but the detailed mechanisms involved in their effects are not fully known.
A report in Chemistry&Biology says that aspirin helps trigger the production of resolvins, molecules that are naturally made by the body from omega-3 fatty acids. These resolvins shut off, "resolve," the inflammation that underlies destructive conditions such as inflammatory lung disease, heart disease, and arthritis.
The researchers also confirmed that aspirin treatment triggered the…
If a genome is the blueprint for life, then the chief architects are the molecular regulators of epigenetics, say Yale School of Medicine researchers.
In the past 20 years, scientists have discovered that some proteins, epigenetic factors, traverse the static genome and turn the genes on or off. The staggering number of potential combinations of active and inactive genes explains why a relatively small number of genes can carry out such a wide range of functions. But what guides these epigenetic factors to their target? The answer specialized RNAsb - piRNAs.
In a new paper, researchers…
amorca |
Researchers have discovered
new subgroups of stomach cancer patients with different disease characteristics,
information that could help improve the clinical management of a
disease that still kills a dismaying 3 out of 4 patients.
The study searched for somatic (acquired after birth) abnormalities in the molecule
E-cadherin (an important tumor suppressor), linking these to the patients’ disease
history. The results led to the identification of several GC groups with
different disease characteristics and even survival chances, including one with
the worst prognoses of all. This new…
An animal model of recent human evolution found that a single mutation produced several traits common in East Asian people, from thicker hair to denser sweat glands. They also modeled the spread of the gene mutation across Asia and North America, concluding that it most likely arose about 30,925 years ago in what is today central China.
Previous research identified the mutation as a strong candidate for positive selection. That is, evidence within the genetic code suggested the mutant gene conferred an evolutionary advantage, though what advantage was unclear.
The mutation was…
Genome sequences of seven well-studied ant species give researchers a detailed look at molecular mechanisms - including what may be a basis for complex behavioral differences in two worker castes in the Florida carpenter ant, Camponotus floridanus - basically, epigenetics.
Epigenetics is the study of how the expression or suppression of particular genes by chemical modifications affects an organism's physical characteristics, development, and behavior; if that sounds vague or perhaps even Lamarckian, your confusion is understandable. It is believed that epigenetic processes play a…