Retinoblastoma tumor suppressor proteins is, shall we say, untraditional.  But it could mean new ways to treat cancer.

As an organism grows, proteins essential for fueling its prosperity typically toe a tight line, performing their jobs at the right place and time. If these proteins go rogue, disasters such as cancer can result.

Tibetan and Ethiopian highlanders share a biological adaptation that enables them to thrive in the low oxygen levels of high altitudes, but the ability to pass on the trait appears to be linked to different genes in the two groups.

The adaptation is the share is the ability to maintain a low (for high altitudes) level of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells. Members of populations who historically live at low altitudes respond to the thin air by increasing hemoglobin levels. The response can help draw oxygen into the body to try and avoid hypoxia, but that increases blood viscosity and the risks for thrombosis, stroke and difficulties with pregnancies.

Fatty liver disease, diabetes and obesity are health issues that are not going to be solved during the holiday season.  The solution to much of it, healthier eating, is not realistic and so researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, examining the molecular mechanisms of how our body converts dietary carbohydrates into fat have found that disabling a gene with the catchy name BAF60c prevented carbohydrates from converting to fat, despite eating a high-carb diet. In mice, anyway  

If we will need climate-resistant corn and other food production plants sooner rather than later, applying a genetic-analysis method used to study and prioritize the genes in humans could improved the likelihood of finding critical genes in food production plants.

These genes control quantitate traits in plants, such as how the plants grow and when they flower. This method can be used to study how food production plants respond to drought, heat and other factors, giving scientists a greater chance at improving crops' resistances to harsh weather and environments.

In 1972, a term related to the parts of a genome sequence that don't have a known function was introduced. Like physicists with the 'God particle', a lot of biologists wish they could take back the term 'junk DNA' because it has been colloquialized to mean something different to the public than what it means biologically. Sometimes it just takes time to know what things do, if they do anything.  A 2004 Nature paper removed 'gene deserts' - 0.1% of the mouse genome - with no effect they could find.

Evolutionarily speaking, most of the harmful mutations that still exist in people are recent, which makes the case that nature is still out to get us, even in modern times.

A study dated the age of more than 1 million single-letter variations in the human DNA code and revealed that 86 percent of the harmful protein-coding mutations of this type arose in humans just during the past 5,000 to 10,000 years. These kinds of mutations change one nucleotide – an A, C, T or G – in the DNA sequence. 

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) accounts for 20% of the calories consumed by the entire world and is one of the Big Three globally important crops, along with rice and corn. 

Millions of years ago, tiny animal thieves going by the alias protozoa held algae captive and then exploited and stole their genes for energy production, thereby evolving into a new and more powerful species.

But the little protozoan outlaws couldn't completely hide all evidence of the captive algae and have been effectively frozen in time - and then caught in the act by genetic sequencing. 

The protozoa captured genes for photosynthesis, the process of harnessing light to produce energy which is used by all plants and algae on earth. Scientists assume that quantum leaps of evolution occurred by one organism cannibalizing another, but hard evidence is rare.

It used to be a stereotype that being fat meant you had a happy personality.  Then culture went out of its way to vilify fat people and make them miserable - when they weren't vilifying culture or food companies for making people fat.

Now researchers claim new genetic evidence about why some people are happier than others - and it involves a gene implicated in obesity. The gene FTO, which is correlated to obesity by the 'being fat is exculpatory' segment of science, has now been similarly associated with an eight percent reduction in the risk of depression. In other words, it's not just an obesity gene but a "happy gene" as well, if your correlation and causation errors roll that way.