Million dollar study is an international collaboration supported by government, top ALS organizations
Though it’s the more common form of the disease, sporadic ALS, which affects roughly 90 percent of those living with the fatal neurodegenerative illness, has been the one less studied, simply because, unlike familial ALS, no genes have turned up.
This week, however Bryan Traynor, M.D. and John Hardy, Ph.D., scientist-grantees with the Packard Center for ALS Resear
A tale of two species: Genome variation in humans and chimpanzees
Researchers believe that dynamic regions of the human genome — “hotspots” in terms of duplications and deletions — are potentially involved in the rapid evolution of morphological and behavioral characteristics that are genetically determined.
Now, an international team of researchers, including a graduate student and an associate professor from Arizona State University, are finding similar hotspots in
Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor Type 2 (PAI-2), a protein found in various cell types including the skin, has been discovered in the tissue covering the eye and may have future clinical implications in various pathologies of the ocular surface such as eye infection or dry eye, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University.
The researchers, led by Mina Massaro-Giordano, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania’s Scheie Eye Institute, and Marcella
Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine have taken a step toward understanding the genetics that make people more susceptible to the loss of hearing as they age.
In a study of 50 pairs of fraternal twins with hearing loss, the scientists uncovered evidence linking the hearing loss to a particular region of DNA that previously was tied to a hereditary form of progressive deafness that begins much earlier in life.
The work is believed to be the first geno
A biochemical regulator described by UCR Plant Biologist Jian Kang Zhu explains how plants protect themselves from cold temperatures.
In response to cold, plants trigger a cascade of genetic reactions that allow them to survive. University of California, Riverside Professor of Plant Cell Biology Jian-Kang Zhu has described how a little-known biochemical reaction regulates that genetic cascade.
Zhu’s findings were published in the May 15 online version of the Proceedings
Sulforaphane shown to inhibit the occurrence of hereditary colon cancer
Need another reason to eat vegetables? A new study at Rutgers shows that certain vegetables – broccoli and cauliflower, in particular – have natural ingredients that may reduce the risk of developing hereditary cancers.
A research team led by Rutgers’ Ah-Ng Tony Kong has revealed that these widely consumed cruciferous vegetables – so called because their four-petal flowers resemble crosses – ar
Manchester is hosting an international conference on genetic counselling, with 75 delegates from professional organizations, universities and clinics all over the world, including countries such as France, Italy, India, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Canada, Cuba and the US.
The International Genetic Counselling Education conference, from 15-17 May 2006, comes as the debate around medical genetics takes another turn with the UK fertility watchdog backing wider screening. The Hum
Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have demonstrated that normal development of the eye requires the right amount of a neural stem cell gene be expressed at the right time and place.
Neural stem cells are cells that can differentiate into different cell types in the nervous system. In the developing eye, retinal neural stem cells differentiate to form the neurons of the adult eye and form the optic nerve.
Led by Dr. Larysa H. Pevny, an ass
Cell biology studies may lay groundwork for a novel HIV treatment
New research on signaling pathways in immune cells bolsters evidence of connections between the central nervous system and the immune system. The findings may also advance the scientific foundation for a potential HIV treatment that may block the virus that causes AIDS.
The cell culture study by a research team from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania appears in th
The world is filled with cues that could influence the daily feeding patterns of an organism. Many plants, for example, respond to foraging damage by releasing specialized chemical signals—volatile organic compounds that evaporate in the air—that attract the forager’s natural enemies. This strategy is obviously no use against a cow, but proves effective when the offender is a caterpillar and the summoned predator is a wasp. Just how much control such biotic factors exert over a forager’s daily
Development of a new technique for detecting brain damage caused by stroke has been boosted up by a £1m grant to scientists at The University of Manchester. Professor Gareth Morris of the School of Chemistry and Professor Risto Kauppinen of the University of Birmingham are to lead the development of a new non-invasive technique which measures acidity (pH) in the brain.
A stroke is caused when part of the blood supply to the brain is cut off. This causes acidity in the brain to build up, l
We may look different on the outside, but inside we are all the same – so much has been scientifically proven. Research at the University of Bergen has shown that the pathways that lead to cancer are similar, no matter where you come from.
At any rate, there are remarkable genetic similarities among cancer tumours from Norway, Sudan, Sri Lanka, India, the UK and Sweden.
“We had actually expected to find a greater range of variation,” says post-doctoral fellow Salah Osm
Like coal-mine canaries, fish DNA can serve as a measure of the biological impact of water and sediment pollution–or pollution clean-up. That’s one of the conclusions of a new study* by researchers from the Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Research over the past several years has demonstrated the adverse effects of industrial pollutants in water
A deceptively simple approach to bonding thermoplastic microchannel plates together with solvent could be used for low-cost, high-volume production of disposable “lab-on-a-chip” devices, according to researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and George Mason University (GMU).
Microfluidics is considered a highly promising technology for performing rapid and inexpensive chemical and biochemical analyses. The defining feature of microfluidics is the u
Dr. Shirley Tilghman and colleagues (Princeton University) lend new insight into the mechanism of genomic imprinting, demonstrating a necessary role for a non-coding RNA transcript in the silencing of an imprinted gene cluster in mice.
Imprinting, or the differential expression of a gene based upon which parent it has been inherited from, is integral to normal growth and development. Two human disorders, Prader-Willi and Angelman syndromes, result from the deletion of the iden
Researchers of the University of Jaen, Almeria and Granada, who belong to the group “Nuevas Tecnologías aplicadas a la Investigación” (CTS-107, new technologies applied to research) led by Dr. Antonia Aránega, in collaboration with the University of Malaga, are working on the recovery of cartilaginous microlesions in elite sportspeople using adult and embryonic stem cells.
This one-year long project, called ‘Optimización de las condiciones y medios de cultivo de células madre con finalidad
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