Genetics & Molecular Biology

The common belief is that women who have twins are more fertile but what does the science say? A detailed analysis of more than 100,000 births to women born between 1700 and 1899, published on 24 May 2022 in Nature Communications, found the answer is no. Analysis of the offspring of twins shows that they are not exceptionally fertile when compared to the rest of the population. In addition, without refined statistical analysis, previous studies on the subject could not determine whether women have twins more often because they frequently release more than one egg during ovulation, or whether…

Since the Nobel prize for chemistry was awarded to biochemist Jennifer Doudna and microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2020, for developing the gene-editing technique known as Crispr-Cas9, Crispr has enjoyed a lot of attention and interest from scientists. The technique has been touted as a possible source of new treatments for diseases caused by genetic mutations, such as muscular dystrophy, and congenital blindness. According to Science Daily, scientists have been able to conduct gene editing on cockroaches using the Crispr technique.  What is Crispr? Crispr is short for clustered…

The cryptic code inside our DNA holds the key to many mysteries of human health and disease. In recent years, vast leaps have been made in our ability to read and edit this code. This new era of genomic medicine has given rise to gene therapy: a promising treatment option for a variety of disorders. What is gene therapy? Gene therapy is a relatively new medical treatment that involves the alteration of genes in order to cure or prevent disease. This innovative approach has the potential to revolutionize the way we treat many disorders. Scientists are working to develop new therapies that…

A genetic analysis found a single point mutation in the TLR7 gene and then identified other cases of severe lupus where this gene was also mutated.  Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease which causes inflammation in organs and joints, affects movement and the skin, and causes fatigue. In severe cases, symptoms can be debilitating and complications can be fatal. The work resulted from whole genome sequencing on the DNA of a Spanish child named Gabriela, who was diagnosed with severe lupus when she was 7 years old. Such a severe case with early onset of symptoms is rare and indicates…

Up to 15 percent of women are diagnosed with pregnancy complications and a new paper says that boys are more likely to be the cause than girls. The authors speculate it may be because boys grow faster in the womb, needing more energy and nutrients from the mother through the placenta but after around 100 billion childbirths in human history that doesn't add up. Maybe it is the case in mice, and that is the caveat with the study. Mice are not little people, though you wouldn't know that from claims made by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC.) It is more likely that in humans…

South-East Asia is a substantial consumer of rice but also accounts for about 40 percent of international rice exports. Before population plateaus some time after 2050, and as globalization makes the world more prosperous, there will likely be 18 percent higher demand for rice in the region. Rice yield stagnation is already occurring in countries like Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam and critics of progress blame housing and business, as if larger irrigated paddy lands are what matter, but a new analysis finds that the average gap in rice yield represents about 48 percent of the “yield potential…

When a giant chunk of the work force is told to stay home, and even paid to do it, the results can be felt for years. The US is facing supply chain issues due to conflicting stances like politicians demanding prices be kept low while workers must be paid more. Few areas have felt the pinch like agriculture. Food is simultaneously a strategic resource, a commodity, a values issue, and a commodity. Labor costs have gone up across the spectrum, including fertilizer and crop protection tools, while politicians in states like California say if farmers, processors, and stores raise prices they…

With war in Ukraine, Europeans are worried a key source of their food, Russia and Ukraine, is at risk. They are right to be concerned. Food is a strategic resource but European countries chose to embrace higher cost lower yield alternatives to modern agriculture at home because they got cheap food from the east. If an additional 290,000,000,000 loaves of bread were available, that would ease the strain worldwide. That is how much wheat is lost each year due to pests and diseases that the so-called organic process can't prevent. But science can. Researchers have assembled the highest…

The Krebs cycle is named after Hans Krebs, who discovered it in 1937, part of the race to discover the central hub of cellular metabolism. In a cell’s mitochondria, it is a core part of the process by which cells “burn” sugars to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the cell’s energy-carrying molecule.  Mitochondria and the Krebs cycle were discovered in the race to find causes and treatments for cancer and those pathways are learned by every student. New research, published in the magazine that turned down the Krebs breakthrough that won him a Nobel Prize, says there is a complete…

Few treatments exist for COVID-19 and the ones that do primarily focus solely on preventing the virus from replicating. A new potential treatment inhibits replication but also protects or repairs tissue, which is important because COVID-19 can cause symptoms that affect patients long after the viral infection has been cleared. It is a biologic substance created by reengineered human skin cells called dermal fibroblasts. The investigators engineered the cells to produce therapeutic extracellular vesicles (EVs), which are nanoparticles that serve as a communication system between cells and…