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DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

FEN1 enzyme might serve as anti-cancer therapy target

An enzyme essential for DNA replication and repair in humans works in a way that might be exploited as anti-cancer therapy, say researchers at The Scripps Research Institute and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

15 Apr 2011

New treatment improves immune function in 13-year-old with Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome

In a novel approach that works around the gene defect in Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, an inherited immune deficiency disorder, researchers used an alternative cell signaling pathway to significantly improve immune function in a 13-year-old boy with the disease.

15 Apr 2011

Study finds 47% of meat and poultry samples contaminated with S. aureus

Drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria linked to a wide range of human diseases, are present in meat and poultry from U.S. grocery stores at unexpectedly high rates, according to a nationwide study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute.

15 Apr 2011

Nurses use ineffective strategy for adapting circadian clocks to night-time schedule

As many as 25 percent of hospital nurses go without sleep for at least 24 hours in order to adjust to working on the night shift, which is the least effective strategy for adapting their internal, circadian clocks to a night-time schedule.

15 Apr 2011

Researchers temporarily turn off essential gene using RNAi technology

One way of discovering a gene's function is to switch it off and observe how the loss of its activity affects an organism. If a gene is essential for survival, however, then switching it off permanently will kill the organism before the gene's function can be determined. Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have overcome this problem by using RNA interference (RNAi) technology to temporarily turn off any essential gene in adult mice and then turn it back on before the change kills the animals.

15 Apr 2011

Normal breast cells provide an innate defense mechanism against cancer

It is well known that the human body has a highly developed immune system to detect and destroy invading pathogens and tumor cells. Now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that the body has a second line of defense against cancer - healthy cells.

15 Apr 2011

Researchers show how TET1 enzyme controls fetal development and fights cancer

To ensure normal fetal development and prevent disease, it is crucial that certain genes are on or off in the right time intervals. Researchers in Professor Kristian Helin's group at BRIC, University of Copenhagen, have now shown how the TET1 enzyme controls the activity of our genes. The results are just published in the journal Nature.

15 Apr 2011

NIST's new reference can aid in Huntington's disease diagnosis

A new Standard Reference Material from the National Institute of Standards and Technology will help clinical genetics labs accurately diagnose Huntington's disease, an inherited degenerative brain disorder that usually begins between ages 35 and 50 and progressively leads to physical impairment, dementia and death.

15 Apr 2011

Trial of non-invasive prenatal test to determine Down syndrome successful

At the moment, the only reliable way of diagnosing chromosomal irregularities during pregnancy is to use invasive prenatal methods. This causes miscarriage in about one per cent of these risky surgical procedures.

14 Apr 2011

NIAID finding to accelerate Chlamydia infection study

WHAT: In a new study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, scientists describe successfully mutating specific genes of Chlamydia bacteria, which cause the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States as well as a type of blindness common in developing nations.

12 Apr 2011

Study provides new insights into tuberculosis behavior

Patience may be a virtue in a person, but in an infectious disease, it is insidious. Witness tuberculosis, which can lie dormant in a human host for decades before bursting forth into infection. TB's stealthy nature has made it difficult to decipher how it spreads, seriously hampering efforts to control it. The World Health Organization estimates that a third of the people on Earth are infected.

12 Apr 2011

IncP-1 plasmids can transport antibiotic resistance genes between bacterial species

The part of bacterial DNA that often carries antibiotic resistance is a master at moving between different types of bacteria and adapting to widely differing bacterial species, shows a study made by a research team at the University of Gothenburg in cooperation with Chalmers University of Technology. The results are published in an article in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

12 Apr 2011

Scientists develop new method for enzyme immobilization

Virtually all processes in the human body rely on a unique class of proteins known as enzymes. To study them, scientists want to attach these molecules to surfaces and hold them fast, but this can often be a tricky undertaking.

12 Apr 2011

Insight into neurodegenerative diseases

For years, researchers in genome stability have observed that several neurodegenerative diseases-including Huntington's disease-are associated with cell-killing proteins that are created during expansion of a CAG/CTG trinucleotide repeat.

12 Apr 2011

GeoVax Labs expands its HIV/AIDS vaccine program with NIAID, NIH and HVTN

GeoVax Labs, Inc., announced today that it is expanding its preventative HIV/AIDS vaccine development effort in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the HIV Vaccine Trials Network.

11 Apr 2011

Study shows how specific nutritional combination may help maintain healthy breast tissue

Researchers from Canada and the United States today told attendees of the Experimental Biology 2011 Scientific Meeting that they have uncovered a possible means of enabling women to favorably influence whether the estrogens in their bodies take a "beneficial path" or a "disease-potential" path.

11 Apr 2011

Research on rare cancers

A cancer diagnosis can be a life-changing event. Many questions arise, with one of the first being, "Where should I be treated?" Patients diagnosed with rare cancers may have difficulty finding a physician knowledgeable in treating their type of cancer.

11 Apr 2011

New nonviral method to create cardiac cells

Johns Hopkins scientists have developed a simplified, cheaper, all-purpose method they say can be used by scientists around the globe to more safely turn blood cells into heart cells. The method is virus-free and produces heart cells that beat with nearly 100 percent efficiency, they claim.

11 Apr 2011

Air pollution on freeways may lead to brain damage: Study

Earlier research has shown that air pollution from cars and trucks on Southern California freeways – that contains soot, pavement dust and other toxic substances - can cause respiratory disease, heart attacks, cancer and premature death. Now a new study has shown that exposure to pollution particles roughly one-thousandth the width of a human hair may lead to brain damage in mice, including signs associated with memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease. The study comes from University of Southern California and is published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

10 Apr 2011

Sangamo prices public offering of 6.7M shares of common stock

Sangamo BioSciences, Inc. today announced the pricing of its previously announced public offering of 6,700,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $7.70 per share. The public offering is expected to close on or around Wednesday, April 13, 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.

8 Apr 2011