For decades, most autism experts blamed the brain disorder on faulty genes. Now, groundbreaking new research is offering further evidence that factors during pregnancy and birth may play a larger role in the disorder than previously thought. Dr. Peter Szatmari, an autism researcher who is the head of child psychiatry […]
ScienceDaily (June 23, 2011) — The brilliant colors of birds have inspired poets and nature lovers, but researchers at Yale University and the University of Cambridge say these existing hues represent only a fraction of what birds are capable of seeing. The findings based on study of the avian visual […]
…….. Having “bad genes,” does not at all mean you’re doomed to suffer some inevitable fate. Genes are merely blueprints, and these blueprints are activated and controlled by something else entirely, namely their environment. This environmental information—which includes diet, toxic exposures, as well as thoughts and emotions, and more—can create […]
DELHI – The impoverished family of Indian conjoined twins won worldwide sympathy when they rejected the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi’s offer to pay for surgery to separate them. They feared that one or both might die in the operation and could not bear to lose either. Five years later, […]
A strain of E. coli bacteria which killed dozens of people in Germany is a genetic mix whose ability to stick to intestinal walls may have made it so lethal, a study in The Lancet said on Wednesday. More Here…
Beijing, Jun 18 (PTI) China has established a national gene bank in southern Guangdong province”s Shenzhen city to safeguard the country”s genetic information, a media report said today. Qi Chengyuan, the chief of National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC), said the establishment of the national gene bank will help China […]
The largest international biological research initiative since the Human Genome Project is nearing completion… Soon, every mouse gene will be disabled (or disable-able). Scientists will engineer all sorts of mice missing all sorts of genes. And we’ll be able to use those mutant mice to study the genetics of human […]
Humans might be evolving slower than scientists had thought, according to a new analysis of the genomes of two families, but there is a huge variance between people. The researchers, reporting their findings June 12 in the journal Nature Genetics, based their measurement of evolution speed on the number of […]
Can we make ourselves smarter? In recent decades, scientists have accumulated increasing evidence that our intelligence, at least as measured by the IQ test, is sharply constrained by genetics. Although estimates vary, most studies place the heritability of intelligence at somewhere between 50% and 80%. It’s an uncomfortable fact, but […]
The findings of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Toronto suggest that knowledge of the science behind the human body might be able to help defeat racism. The study authors assert that educating individuals about our genetic similarities — specifically, the fact that humans are 99.9 percent […]
A new poll shows parents are split over whether their newborns should be screened for fragile X syndrome, the most common type of inherited mental disability. The findings fuel an ongoing debate over which conditions should be part of mandatory newborn screening programs in the US. Fragile X syndrome, or […]
The part of the brain used by people who can “see like a bat” has been identified by researchers in Canada. Some blind people have learned to echolocate by making clicking noises and listening to the returning echoes. A study of two such people, published in PLoS ONE, showed a […]
A Californian team say they have managed to convert human skin cells directly into functioning brain cells. The scientists manipulated the process by which DNA is transcribed within foetal skin cells to create cells which behaved like neurons. The technique had previously been demonstrated in mice, says the report in […]
IT COULD be a grief-saving app of the future, the day we carry our gene sequence in our phones. When two people want to have children, they’ll bump genomes and a database might reply: ”Think again, you both have faulty disease-causing copies of the same gene.” That’s the hope […]
IN AN era of helicopter parents eager to exploit every competitive edge for their children, at least two companies have begun selling tests that claim to help match youngsters with the sports they are genetically programmed to play best. The DNA scans, the first of an expected wave of […]
Scientists believe they’ve discovered stem cells in the lung that can make a wide variety of the organ’s tissues, a finding that might open new doors for treating emphysema and other diseases. When these human cells were injected into mice, they showed their versatility by rebuilding airways, air sacs and […]
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, recently asked 2,500 Americans how satisfied they were with life. Then he analyzed their genetic makeup. What he found was that the respondents most satisfied with life were more likely to have two long versions of the gene […]
An experimental test to detect minute differences in the brain caused by Alzheimer’s disease works in the lab, Canadian researchers say. Prof. Vassilios Papadopoulos, director of the McGill University Health Centre’s Research Institute, and his co-authors published their findings about the test in Wednesday’s issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s […]
Developing therapies from human embryonic stem cells is under threat in Europe, say scientists. In a letter to Nature, they express “profound concern” about moves at the European Court of Justice to ban patent protection for embryonic stem cell lines. A law officer argues it should be unlawful to allow […]
……. Billions of dollars were spent to map the human genome because scientists hoped to find the genes responsible for diseases like cancer, heart disease, and stroke. This knowledge, they thought, would allow them to design specific drugs and maybe even find a way to replace defective genes. For decades, […]