Humans normally have 46 chromosomes in each cell, divided into 23 pairs. Two copies of chromosome 6, one copy inherited from each parent, form one of the pairs. Chromosome 6 spans about 171 million base pairs (the building blocks of DNA) and represents between 5.5 percent and 6 percent of the total DNA in cells.
Identifying genes on each chromosome is an active area of genetic research. Because researchers use different approaches to predict the number of genes on each chromosome, the estimated number of genes varies. Chromosome 6 likely contains between 1,100 and 1,600 genes.
Genes on chromosome 6 are among the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 total genes in the human genome.
An international research collaboration led by Mayo Clinic has identified a new gene involved in causing the inherited kidney disorder, Meckel-Gruber syndrome (MKS). Children with MKS have central nervous system deformities as well as abnormal cysts in their kidneys, and usually die shortly after birth.
Researchers in Iceland say they have identified a single genetic change which could predispose close to 40 percent of the population to type-2 diabetes.
A quarter century after they discovered it, researchers have identified the job of one of the most common DNA-damage response proteins. The enzyme has puzzled scientists because it is present in nearly every organism, which suggests that it is crucial to life, and yet, in laboratory experiments, its function has remained a mystery.
The cure rate for the once almost universally fatal childhood cancer acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) could reach 90 percent in the near future, thanks to improvements in diagnosis and treatment over the past four decades, according to investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
An international team of researchers, led by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, are zeroing in on a gene that increases risk for Alzheimer's disease. They have identified a region of chromosome 10 that appears to be involved in risk for the disease that currently affects an estimated 4.5 million Americans.
Fortunately, our cells contain many enzymes devoted strictly to detecting and repairing any damage caused by these insults. In fact, failure of these enzymes to make needed repairs to genes can lead to the accumulation of mutations and, eventually, cell death or possibly cancer.
In the January issue of the journal Genome Research, two teams of scientists describe a widespread phenomenon in the human genome called transcription-induced chimerism (TIC), where two adjacent genes produce a single, fused RNA transcript.
Scientists working at the WiCell Research Institute, a private laboratory affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have developed a precisely defined stem cell culture system free of animal cells and used it to derived two new human embryonic stem cell.
The world's deadliest malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, sneaks past the human immune system with the help of a wardrobe of invisibility cloaks. If a person's immune cells learn to recognize one of the parasite's many camouflage proteins, the surviving invaders can swap disguises and slip away again to cause more damage. Malaria kills an estimated 2.7 million people annually worldwide, 75 percent of them children in Africa.
Scientists have found in a study of tobacco users that their drinking behavior is linked to some of the same chromosome regions associated with alcohol addiction.
Using sophisticated detection methods, researchers at the Saint Louis University Institute for Molecular Virology (IMV) have demonstrated the molecular mechanism by which the HIV virus infects, or integrates, healthy cells. The discovery could lead to new drug treatments for HIV.
A team of Dutch researchers at Maastricht University say that women who take longer to get pregnant are more likely to give birth to a boy.
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have identified an inherent feature of stem and progenitor cells that may promote initiation and progression of cancerous tumors.
The targeted agent AMN107 can produce dramatic benefits in patients with some forms of leukemia that are resistant to Gleevec, the standard therapy for these cancers, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
A critical aspect of cell division, or mitosis, is that the progeny cells must receive the full complement of chromosomes.
Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered that cells co-opted the machinery that usually repairs broken strands of DNA to protect the integrity of chromosomes.
Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London have identified a molecule that could be targeted to treat the cognitive impairment in people with Down syndrome.
Disruption of the normal interaction between the genes PRODH and COMT contributes directly to major symptoms of schizophrenia by upsetting the balance of the brain chemicals glutamate and dopamine, according to a group of investigators that includes a scientist now at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
How a person "feels" the effects of alcohol is, in part, genetically influenced and relates to their risk for developing alcoholism.
People with a specific combination of variants of two genes, encoding two different receptors for the antibody Fc gamma, are three times more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis than individuals with different variant combinations.
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