Genetics & Molecular Biology

Mosses: Simple Body Plan, A Lot Of Genetic Complexity

 Mosses are tiny plants with a simple body plan- they have no roots, no flowers and do not produce seeds. It was reasonable to assume they were also simple organisms also at the genetic level. Not so, a new study describes 32,275 protein-encoding genes fro ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 5 2013 - 10:30am

A Week On An Island Of Angst

I've just returned from a week on Kauai.  It is known as "The Garden Isle" of the Hawaiian chain, but recently that garden has been heavily sown with seeds of fear, suspicion, and conspiratorial narratives. On Wednesday, the 31 st of July, t ...

Article - Steve Savage - Aug 6 2013 - 10:41am

Rines Brain Molecule Implicated In Regulating Human Emotion And Mood

A RIKEN research team says that an enzyme called Rines regulates Monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A), a major brain protein controlling emotion and mood, making it a potential drug target for treating depression. Monoamine oxidase A is an enzyme that breaks down ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 9 2013 - 10:22pm

New GMO Rice Protects Against Rotavirus Infection

For children and immune-compromised adults in developing countries, diarrheal disease induced by rotavirus can be life threatening. Rotavirus is the leading cause of diarrhea in infants and young children worldwide, causing more than 114 million episodes ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 8 2013 - 8:36pm

Congenital Muscular Dystrophies Linked To Glycans

Inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington disease involve disease-causing genetic mutations that damage or remove a protein that has an essential role in the body. This protein defect is the root cause of the disease symptoms. But for conge ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 9 2013 - 9:00am

Paper Finds Genetic Overlap For 5 Major Psychiatric Disorders

An international team has found evidence of substantial overlap for genetic risk factors shared between bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia and less overlap between those conditions and autism and attention deficit-hyperactivity ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 11 2013 - 7:07pm

TERC Gene Linked To Blood Cancer

TERC, a gene which regulates the length of the telomere 'caps' on the ends of DNA and helps control the aging process by acting as a cell's internal clock, has been linked to cancer by a new study. Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Rese ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 18 2013 - 10:20pm

Chromosome Inversions Can Provide Advantages To Cells

A study shows for the first time that chromosomes rearrangements (such as inversions or translocations) can provide advantages to the cells that harbor them, depending on the environment they are exposed. ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 24 2013 - 1:39pm

Synthetic Biology: Engineered Plants Create Their Own Fertilizer

Since man discovered agriculture, farmers have used ingenious ways to pump more nitrogen into crop fields; farmers have planted legumes and plowed the entire crop under, strewn night soil or manure on the fields, shipped in bat dung from islands in the Pac ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 23 2013 - 11:38am

Natalisin Change Shuts Down Reproductive Desire

A neuropeptide named natalisin regulates the sexual activity and reproductive ability of insects, according to a new study in which the neuropeptide is observed and named Natalisin is composed of short chains of amino acids in the brain of insects and art ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 26 2013 - 3:49pm