Genetics & Molecular Biology

When President Bush signed an executive order becoming the first to fund human embryonic stem cell research, he had made a compromise that navigated Federal law - his predecessor President Clinton's Dickey-Wicker Amendment - the ethical concerns about a technology that had just come into existence, and the needs of science. American Presidents compromised once upon a time. But human embryonic stem cells still became a political football. Some scientists insisted that research was being crippled by any limitations, including to those existing lines that had never been federally funded in the…

Mutations within the gene FTO have been implicated as a genetic determinant of obesity risk in humans, but the mechanism for any link remains unknown. A new paper says that the obesity-associated elements within FTO interact with IRX3, a distant gene on the genome that appears to be the functional obesity gene. The FTO gene itself appears to have only a peripheral effect on obesity.  Mutations to introns (noncoding portions) of the gene FTO have been widely investigated after genome-wide association studies revealed a strong link between FTO and obesity and diabetes. Yet overexpressing…

Soybeans are a tremendously successful crop and a new study that traced the genetic changes in varieties over the last 80 years of soybean breeding found that increases in yield gains and an increased rate of gains over the years are largely due to the continual release of greater-yielding cultivars.   Some are concerned that converging on optimal crops for each region might be a bad thing but plentiful food tells a different story. A multi-institutional team of researchers evaluated historic sets of 60 maturity group (MG) II, 59 MG III, and 49 MG IV soybean varieties, released from 1923…

The eggs produced by adolescent girls are not the same as the ones produced by adult women, according to a recent study in Human Molecular Genetics, which lists evidence that there are two completely distinct types of eggs in the mammalian ovary – "the first wave" and "the adult wave".  Professor Kui Liu from the University of Gothenburg and colleagues used two genetically modified mouse models to show that the first wave of eggs, which starts immediately after birth, contributes to the onset of puberty and provides fertilizable eggs into the transition from adolescence to adulthood. In…

A new research effort in Ethiopia seeks to improve the productivity of chickpea varieties by harnessing the genetic diversity of wild species. The federal Feed the Future Initiative is the latest rebranding of the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative. Chickpea is the third most widely grown legume crop in the world, following soybean and bean, and it has the ability to capture and use atmospheric nitrogen, thus contributing to soil fertility.  This five-year, $4 million research program could be important in the developing world, where the chickpea provides a…

Bacteria and other microbes can be genetically engineered to perform a variety of valuable jobs, from producing safer, more effective medicines and sustainable fuels to cleaning up air, water and land. Cells from eukaryotic organisms can also be modified for research or to fight disease. To achieve these and other worthy goals, the ability to precisely edit the instructions contained within a target’s genome is a must. A powerful new tool for genome editing and gene regulation has emerged in the form of a family of enzymes known as Cas9, which plays a critical role in the bacterial immune…

 Heart disease is the world's leading cause of death, but recent advances in science and medicine have improved the chances of surviving a heart attack. In the United States alone, nearly one million people have survived an attack, but are living with heart failure—a chronic condition in which the heart, having lost muscle during the attack, does not beat at full capacity. Scientists have been look at cellular reprogramming as a way to regenerate this damaged heart muscle. And it works. Scientists can transform skin cells into cells that closely resemble beating heart cells but it's…

Researchers have made a discovery regarding the behavior of a synthetic molecular oscillator, which could serve as a timekeeping device to control artificial cells. Electronic oscillators are circuits that produce a periodic electronic signal, and they are used to regulate a variety of devices from radio and television transmitters to cellphones and computers. Biological systems are also regulated by complex molecular oscillators, from the level of individual cells up to entire organisms. Elisa Franco, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UC Riverside's Bourns College of…

The people generally called Clovis were not the first humans in America but they were the first to accomplish expansion on the North American continent. Then they died out, leaving only speculation.  Starting somewhere around 13,000 years ago, they hunted mammoth, mastodons and giant bison with big spears. Today there exists only one human skeleton  - a small boy between 1 and 1.5 years of age that was found in the 12,600 Anzick Site in Wilsall, Montana. It was found in association with Clovis tools, making it among the oldest human skeletons in the Americas.  Roughly estimated…

Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are among the first components of the immune system to confront certain pathogens and they have a critical function at mucosal barriers, like the bowel or the lung, where the body comes in direct contact with the environment.   But they went undetected by researchers until just five years ago. The reason is that immune cells are found in the blood, lymph nodes, or spleen and these cells aren't there. Once they mature they directly go to tissues, such as the gut or the skin, rather than blood.And they are rare.A mouse might have 200 million lymphocytes…