Gene News and Research

Latest Gene News and Research

FDA approves gene test to detect spread of breast cancer into lymph nodes

Veridex, LLC, a Johnson & Johnson company, has announced U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the first intra-operative and gene-based test to detect the spread of breast cancer into the lymph nodes.

17 Jul 2007

New hope for insulin dependent diabetes cure

A diagnosis of type I diabetes means a life sentence of medical follow-up.

17 Jul 2007

Gene detectives discover culprit for type 1 diabetes

Researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and McGill University in Montreal have discovered a gene they believe is the culprit in a person developing type 1 diabetes.

16 Jul 2007

Key mechanism to emergence of deadly strep bacteria discovered

The incidence of serious strep infections has risen dramatically in the last three decades, and this increase is largely attributed to the spread around the globe of a single strain of strep known as the invasive M1T1 clone.

16 Jul 2007

New genomics-based technology

Bruce S. Gillis, M.D., M.P.H., a medical toxicologist and CEO of the research group, The Cytokine Institute, will present a tutorial on a new genomics-based technology, msds1(TM).

16 Jul 2007

New gene found for type 1 diabetes in children

Pediatrics researchers at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and McGill University in Montreal have identified a gene variant that raises a child's risk for type 1 diabetes, formerly called juvenile diabetes.

16 Jul 2007

Hope for cure for insulin-dependent diabetes

A diagnosis of type I diabetes means a life sentence of medical follow-up. While treatments have become simpler and less restrictive in recent years, they are still a burden, especially for young patients.

16 Jul 2007

Discovery of one important function of junk DNA

Scientists have only recently begun to speculate that what's referred to as junk DNA , the 96 percent of the human genome that doesn't encode for proteins and previously seemed to have no useful purpose , is present in the genome for an important reason.

13 Jul 2007

New target for muscular dystrophy drug therapy

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine report how the gene for utrophin, which codes for a protein very similar to dystrophin, the defective protein in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), puts the brakes on its own expression in muscle cells, thereby suggesting a new target for treatment.

13 Jul 2007

Scientists discover human genes hover between "on"and "off" in any given cell

Biologists have long thought that a simple on/off switch controls most genes in human cells.

13 Jul 2007

Rochester now offers gene test to detect Batten disease

Rochester has become one of only a handful of communities around the world to offer a genetic test to detect Batten disease, a deadly inherited disorder.

12 Jul 2007

New data about the laws governing embryo development in organisms

Research aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying embryo development has taken a step forward thanks to collaborative work between biologists specialized in the study of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) and scientists specialized in the design of mathematical models that simulate the functioning of biological systems.

12 Jul 2007

St. Jude study holds promise for improving neuroblastoma treatment

A treatment for neuroblastoma that lands a one-two punch works best when the second punch is timed to take maximum advantage of the first one, according to results of studies at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

12 Jul 2007

Some smokers have genetic predisposition to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Some people have a genetic variation that makes them more susceptible to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) if they smoke tobacco, according to new research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.

12 Jul 2007

Genes play a large role in sour taste perception

Scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center report that genes play a large role in determining individual differences in sour taste perception.

12 Jul 2007

microRNA may play an important role in psoriasis and eczema

A research team at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet has shown for the time that microRNA, small RNA molecules, may play an important role in the development of inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic eczema.

12 Jul 2007

Startling discovery on the development of human embryonic stem cells

In this week's Nature, researchers of the McMaster Cancer and Stem Cell Research Institute show that human embryonic stem (ES) cells can actually produce distinctive niche cells, which then release stem-cell nourishing proteins to help keep their parents ticking over.

12 Jul 2007

New method to estimate sickle cell disease severity

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) have developed a method to estimate sickle cell disease severity and predict the risk of death in people with this disease.

12 Jul 2007

New evidence of very recent human adaptation

A Cornell study of genome sequences in African-Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the last 15,000 to 100,000 years, when people began migrating from Africa.

12 Jul 2007

Chemotherapy may benefit all women with a BRCA1 mutation

Breast cancer patients who possess one of the so-called "breast cancer" or BRCA genetic mutations do not have a higher risk of dying than patients with no BRCA mutations, according to a detailed study by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto.

12 Jul 2007