Genes News and Research

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Links between most human diseases and genetics are shaky at best

In most cases, your genes have less than five per cent to do with your risk of developing a particular disease, according to new research by University of Alberta scientists.

20 Dec 2019

Fibroblasts involved in healing wounds play a devastating role in breast cancer development

The connective tissue cells known as fibroblasts are vitally important for our recovery from injury. Sensing tissue damage, they gravitate to the site of a wound, instigating an inflammatory response that mends damaged tissue.

19 Dec 2019

Nanopores – the key to identifying amino acids in proteins

DNA and RNA sequencing has become the new watchword for the biological researchers, as this tells them exactly what is going on at cellular level in health and disease. However, it is a partial revelation unless we also know what is happening at the level of proteins as well.

19 Dec 2019

New antibody shows promise in active lupus

A new trial involving the use of an antibody called anifrolumab reports improvement in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) after 52 weeks of treatment. The research, titled 'Trial of Anifrolumab in Active Systemic Lupus Erythematosus', is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

19 Dec 2019

Utah scientists receive NIH grant to study how air pollutants aggravate asthma in children

A multidisciplinary team of University of Utah Health scientists has received a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Institutes of variations in pollutant-sensing genes in the lungs could influence air pollution's effects on children who have asthma.

19 Dec 2019

Connection between herpes virus and Alzheimer’s refuted

A new study has shown that unlike previous claims, there is no association between getting herpes infections and developing Alzheimer’s disease. The study from the researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine was titled, “Are HHV-6A and HHV-7 really more abundant in Alzheimer’s disease?” and was published in the journal Neuron.

19 Dec 2019

Caffeine may offset some negative health effects of obesogenic diet

A new study in rats suggests that caffeine may offset some of the negative effects of an obesogenic diet by reducing the storage of lipids in fat cells and limiting weight gain and the production of triglycerides.

19 Dec 2019

Experimental Zika vaccine improves fetal outcomes in rhesus macaque model

An experimental Zika vaccine lowered levels of virus in pregnant monkeys and improved fetal outcomes in a rhesus macaque model of congenital Zika virus infection, according to a new study in Science Translational Medicine.

19 Dec 2019

Edematous severe acute malnutrition linked to DNA modification

A group led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine has identified significant differences at the epigenetic level - the chemical tags in DNA that help regulate gene expression - between two clinically distinct forms of acute childhood malnutrition known as edematous severe acute malnutrition (ESAM) and non-edematous SAM (NESAM).

19 Dec 2019

New mechanism that impairs Treg differentiation and stability in type 1 diabetes discovered

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) prevent excessive immune reactions in healthy people. In the development of autoimmune type 1 diabetes, this protection is not sufficiently effective.

19 Dec 2019

Glutamine could help obese people reduce inflammation of fat tissue

Glutamine could help people with obesity reduce inflammation of fat tissue and reduce fat mass, according to a new study at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Oxford in the U.K. The researchers also show how glutamine levels can alter gene expression in several different cell types.

19 Dec 2019

Forgetful? Look at the time

An interesting new paper describes the discovery of a gene in mice that affects the degree of memory recall at various times of day. They found that this gene makes mice most forgetful at the time immediately before they wake.

18 Dec 2019

Study opens up new treatment possibilities for Wilms' tumor

As an embryo develops, its cells must learn what to do with the thousands of genes they've been equipped with. That's why each cell comes with a detailed gene-expression manual outlining exactly which genes should be switched on, to what extent, and when.

18 Dec 2019

Different mutations in a single gene can have myriad effects on a person's health

Mount Sinai researchers have found that different mutations in a single gene can have myriad effects on a person's health, suggesting that gene therapies may need to do more than just replenish the missing or dysfunctional protein the gene is supposed to encode, according to a study published in Nature Genetics in November.

18 Dec 2019

Researchers identify frequent technical bias in data generated by RNA-seq technology

Reproducibility of research data is a major challenge in experimental biology. As data generated by genomic-scale techniques increases in complexity, this concern is becoming more and more worrisome.

18 Dec 2019

Scientists develop computationally inspired method for preclinical study of anxiety

Nearly 40 million people in the U.S. have an anxiety disorder. While treatment options exist, treatment success varies, and many people do not respond to treatment until weeks or months after they begin anti-depressants

18 Dec 2019

Study provides genomic insights into life history tradeoffs in butterflies

Have you ever wandered through your garden or a meadow on a summer day and wondered why and how butterflies exhibit such beautiful and diverse colors? Scientists have, especially when thinking about butterflies in the genus Colias. In most Colias butterflies, all males and most females are an orange or yellow color, but some females are white.

18 Dec 2019

Yale researchers identify cellular chicanery that jumpstarts cancer

The progression of cancer has been studied extensively, and the key steps in this journey have been well mapped, at least in some solid tumors: Lesions to genes that confer risk of cancer accumulate and alter normal cell behaviors, giving rise, scientists believe, to early stage cancer cells that eventually swamp normal cells and become deadly.

18 Dec 2019

Researchers identify first gene in mice specific to memory retrieval

Can't remember something? Try waiting until later in the day. Researchers identified a gene in mice that seems to influence memory recall at different times of day and tracked how it causes mice to be more forgetful just before they normally wake up.

18 Dec 2019

Nature’s own gene therapy

A brand-new technique of gene therapy was reported on December 16, 2019, in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering. The scientists made use of the potential of human cells to produce biological nanoparticles chockful of edited genes, so that they could insert beneficial genes into people suffering from various disease processes.

17 Dec 2019