As medical technology continues to advance, fertility procedures such as in-vitro fertilization and donor insemination are becoming more commonplace. However, a study in the May issue of The Journal of Pediatrics warns that, even after thorough screenings of sperm donors, genetic disorders can be transmitted to the conceived children.

Laurence Boxer, MD, and colleagues from the University of Michigan and the Severe Chronic Neutropenia International Registry investigated the cases of five

Patients will benefit from closer links between researchers, healthcare companies and doctors, thanks to £4.7m secured by a consortium of Yorkshire’s universities, health trusts and global companies. The money from the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) was confirmed today.

It’s the first time this wide range of organisations has been brought together – as the White Rose Health Innovation Partnership (WHIP) – to boost innovation within the NHS and to make sur

Researchers have known for years that damaged DNA can lead to human diseases such as cancer, but how damage occurs–and what causes it–has remained less clear.
Now, computational chemists at the University of Georgia have discovered for the first time that when a proton is knocked off one of the pairs of bases that make up DNA, a chain of damage begins that causes “lesions” in the DNA. These lesions, when replicated in the copying mechanisms of DNA, can lead to serious disorders such as c

New MBL study results may aid battle against insect-borne diseases

Scientists studying the widespread symbiotic bacteria Wolbachia have long been interested in its ability to proliferate. One way it does this is by hijacking sperm of its insect hosts and genetically tricking them to bear more infected females, the only sex that transmits the bacteria. Now, a new study from the MBL (Marine Biological Laboratory), published in the May 18 issue of PLoS Pathogens, demonstrates that

Although the act of breastfeeding is not “illegal,” women in various parts of the U.S. can be arrested for “public indecency” when breastfeeding their baby in public. As of November 2005, 12 states and Washington, DC had not enacted at least some kind of law regarding breastfeeding.

The U.S. Healthy People 2010 target is to increase the proportion of mothers who choose to breastfeed their babies for at least six months to 50%; the World Health Organization recommends that

A model for assessing urban fine particle concentrations developed in a research project led by Professor Jaakko Kukkonen has substantially improved the methods used in urban air quality measurements. Funded by the Academy of Finland in 1999–2001, the project was among the first to develop methods for modelling urban air pollution through international cooperation. The project perfected the emission, dispersion and transformation models of road traffic emissions. Kukkonen’s research is one of t

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and colleagues in the UK and USA today publish the longest and final chapter in what has been called The Book of Life — the text and study of our human genetic material. Published in Nature, the report of the sequence of human chromosome 1 is the final chromosome analysis from the Human Genome Project.

The sequence has been used to identify more than 1000 new genes and is expected to help researchers find novel diagnostics and treatments for

AIDS patients’ failure to clear HIV-1 might not be due to the inability of the human immune system to recognise the virus, as was previously thought. A study published today in the open access journal Medical Immunology shows that cultured immune system cells taken from healthy individuals recognise and respond to HIV-1 proteins. Cells taken from infected individuals, however, are much less responsive to the virus. These findings need to be reproduced in vivo, but they do offer new hope for a vacci

Proteins from a newly discovered family of genes, LRIG, function as a retardant for a protein that is important to tumor cells. It is probably this mechanism that lends the gene family its inhibiting effect on cancer tumors. This is shown in a dissertation by Jonas Nilsson at Umeå University in Sweden, to be publicly defended on May 24.

Jonas Nilsson and his associates have identified a new family of genes, the leucin-rich and immunoglobulin-like (LRIG) family. They found that the

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

Throughout our life, we are exposed daily to ionizing radiation (IR) emitted by Earth, during routine medical diagnosis exams, or in the workplace for professionals such as nuclear workers but also cabin crew members of airline companies. How aware is the public of being exposed to low doses of IR? Accounting for about 2,4 mSv/year/person, these unperceived exposures to IR are considered harmless by radiation protection standards based on biological effects the current state of science allows to