Genetics & Molecular Biology

Almost 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Strategies for fighting obesity, such as pharmacological and behavioral approaches to decrease food intake, have been only marginally successful. Patients who have undergone various surgeries for the gastrointestinal system have found success, but these are extreme measures. Scientists are hopeful that increasing energy expenditure with brown or brite/beige fat cells could be an effective way to fight obesity. The body has two types of fat…

Scientists have carried out the first ever genome-wide survey of heritable molecular changes that regulate gene activity in wheat. Epigenetic marks are chemical tags which physically attach themselves to DNA, and modify its function without changing the genetic code. DNA methylation is one such mechanism of epigenetic gene expression control that can be passed down to future generations. Now, developing technology has allowed scientists to study DNA methylation across the complex and challenging wheat genome. Credit: Professor Anthony Hall Using a combination of sodium bisulphate treatment…

 Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) virus, first detected in the U.S. in 1987, has been identified as a $660 million per year problem. Pigs who contract the disease have extreme difficulty reproducing, don't gain weight and have a high mortality rate and no vaccine has been effective. A team of researchers from the University of Missouri, Kansas State University, and Genus plc have put biology on the case, by breeding genetically edited pigs that are not harmed by the disease. "Once inside the pigs, PRRS needs some help to spread; it gets that help from a protein…

The clinical potential and ethical difficulty posed by gene-editing technology, which can “find and replace” targeted genes, is seemingly endless. But while public attention is focused on whether we should use it to change the genes of embryos, application of the technology to genetically modify pig tissues and organs for transplantation into humans could potentially have a bigger and more immediate impact on human health. The transplantation of living cells, tissues, or organs from one species to another is known as xenotransplantation. It has long been championed as a solution to the…

There has long been evidence that lifestyles of parents could influence offspring - a parent who smokes or does drugs has a greater chance of having a child with a birth defect - but epigenetics is a brand new world of how choices can be passed through generations, because it says that the environment may affect how cells read genes instead of causing changes in the DNA sequence. So if you eat a high-fat diet, you may create an obese child. To some, it is 19th century Lamarckian evolution come to pass, to others it is a way to explain (blame) everything that people do on their parents or the…

People born with a rare genetic mutation are unable to feel pain, but previous attempts to recreate this effect with drugs have had surprisingly little success. Using mice modified to carry the same mutation, UCL researchers funded by the MRC and Wellcome Trust have now discovered the recipe for painlessness. 'Channels' that allow messages to pass along nerve cell membranes are vital for electrical signalling in the nervous system. In 2006, it was shown that sodium channel Nav1.7 is particularly important for signalling in pain pathways and people born with non-functioning Nav1.7 do not feel…

Biologists have induced one species of flatworm to grow heads and brains characteristic of another species of flatworm without altering the genomic sequence. The work reveals physiological circuits as a new kind of epigenetics - information existing outside of genomic sequence - that determines large-scale anatomy.   The finding that head shape is not hard-wired by the genome but can be overridden by manipulating electrical synapses in the body suggests that differences in species could be determined in part by the activity of bioelectrical networks. The discovery could help improve…

In many cases, cancer is a lifestyle disease. You are far more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke and the older you get, the more likely you are to get cancer of all kinds. Age is the biggest risk factor and we get more cancer than our ancestors because they died from a lot of other things before cancer could develop. But what about cancer in kids? A pediatric study of cancer predisposition genes in New England Journal of Medicine discusses new scientific discoveries regarding how cancer develops in children. That study, by a team from St. Jude's Research Hospital led by Dr.…

Don't believe the hype when you see claims about creams and ointments that promise to prevent or reduce pregnancy stretch marks. The line-shaped lesions also known as striae gravidarum affect 50 percent to 90 percent of women. However, some women are at higher risk than others, due to factors like family history, how much weight they gain in pregnancy, whether it's a single or multiple birth and whether they've had stretch marks before for another reason like obesity. Though not everything is known about what causes stretch marks, is it known that skin stretching is not the only risk factor…

Agriculturally rich nations are a little spoiled about food. A few years ago Europe even limited how 'ugly' fruit could be when it was being sold to the public, presumably because Europeans deserve pretty fruit. For that reason, it's little surprise that there is concern about browning in apples. After being sliced open, the color starts to fade quickly, and in a hyper-vigilant culture where 99 percent of the public has never worked on a farm, parents and consumers may think that this 'browning' means the apple is bad. It gets thrown away, which leads to food waste. The reason for this ugly…