Genetics & Molecular Biology

Dr. Cynthia Bulik, William R. and Jeanne H. Jordan Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders at the University of North Carolina, spoke forcefully at yesterday's US Congressional Briefing organized by the Eating Disorders Coalition. Bulik gave a 20-minute talk that could, if widely available, change the way society - and patients - look at eating disorders. The research she cites is well-established, but still controversial among clinicians treating the illness. In the past, Bulik told Congressional staff, eating disorders were wrongly blamed on families, on the individual,…

The United States is the world's top corn grower, producing 44 percent of the global crop. In 2007, U.S. farmers produced a record 13.1 billion bushels of corn, an increase of nearly 25 percent over the previous year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The 2007 production value of corn was estimated at more than $3 billion. Favorable prices, a growing demand for ethanol and strong export sales have fueled an increase in farmland acreage devoted to corn production. A team of scientists have completed a working draft of the corn genome, an accomplishment that should accelerate…

The pea is an important crop species but it is unsuited to the Agrobacterium-based genetic modification techniques that are commonly used to work with crops. Researchers have now discovered the first high-throughput forward and reverse genetics tool for the pea (Pisum sativum) and it could have major benefits for crop breeders around the world. Researchers from the INRA Plant Genomics Research Unit at Evry, and the INRA Grain Legumes Research Unit at Bretenières, both in France, developed a high-quality genetic reference collection of Pisum sativum mutants within the European Grain Legumes…

If you've ever had a severe asthma attack or gone into premature labor, there is a good chance you were given the drug terbutaline. Terbutaline can relax your involuntary smooth muscle when it's causing problems: in constricted airways during an asthma attack, or in the uterus during contractions. But if you've taken terbutaline, you've probably also noticed another effect: it can induce a pounding, racing heartbeat. How can one drug produce such opposite effects - relaxing smooth muscle in some parts of your body, while making your cardiac muscle work harder? The answer is that terbutaline…

A healthy individual loses around a hundred hairs a day. Nothing to worry about as long as they are constantly replaced and the losses occur evenly around the whole scalp. But when hair loss goes well beyond this level it can become quite a problem for those affected – not only superficially in terms of looks but also psychologically. A breakthrough on the hair front has now been made by an international research team headed by scientists at the University of Bonn. After six years of research they have succeeded in identifying a gene that is responsible for a rare hereditary form of hair…

A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims to have solved this scientific riddle by analysing the genomics of primitive living fishes such as sharks and lampreys and their spineless relatives, such as the sea squirts. Vertebrates - animals such as humans that possess a backbone - are the most anatomically and genetically complex of all organisms, but explaining how they achieved this complexity has vexed scientists since the conception of evolutionary theory. Alysha Heimberg of Dartmouth College and her colleagues showed that microRNAs, a class of tiny…

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that the gene ENPP1 is linked to preterm birth and low birth weight among Hispanic women. Errol Norwitz, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale, will present preliminary results from this research at the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine Annual Meeting on February 2 in Dallas, Texas. One out of eight babies in the United States is born prematurely—delivery prior to 37 weeks gestation. These babies don’t fare as well as their full-term counterparts, especially if they are…

As large, visually-oriented mammals, we have long had a tendency to consider biological diversity primarily in terms of what we can see. There is, however, an entire world of creatures rarely encountered but no less unique and intriguing for it. Sometimes, one only needs the right tools, or the proper motivation, to recognize a group of organisms well worth our attention. It is in this spirit that I am pleased to introduce you to Hypsibius dujardini, one of about 700 known species in the Phylum Tardigrada, commonly known as a "water bears" due to their ursine appearance. Literally…

A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today. What is the genetic mutation? “Originally, we all had brown eyes”, said Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a “switch”, which literally “turned off” the ability to produce brown eyes.” The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production…

A group of the world's leading sequencing centers have announced plans to sequence 1000 human genomes. The cost of the first human genome project was about $3 billion; by comparison, the next 1000 will be a steal at possibly only $50 million dollars (and that's total cost, not per genome). But that's still a lot of money - why are we investing so much in sequencing genomes? It may be a lot up front, but the benefits, in terms of both economics and medical research, easily outweigh the cost of such a large project. By pooling sequencing resources and making large amounts of genome sequence…