Insulin-dependent, or Type 1, diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks and destroys insulin and insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Insulin is a hormone that is needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy.

Insulin typically is given through shots and not pills so the hormone can go straight into the bloodstream but a new method by Professor Henry Daniell’s research team may change that.

Their work involved genetically engineering tobacco plants with the insulin gene. They administered the freeze-dried plant cells to five-week-old diabetic mice in powder form for eight weeks. By the end of the study, the diabetic mice had normal blood and urine sugar levels, and their cells were producing normal levels of insulin.

Decades ago a gene was discovered that was linked to the susceptibility of multiple scleroris (MS). Since then, the search has been on to uncover the puzzling mix of genes, environment and immunity that could aid in the treatment of the 350,000 people just in America who have the disease.

A pair of large-scale genetic studies supported by the National Institutes of Health has revealed two genes that influence the risk of getting MS.

"These studies describe the first genes conclusively linked to MS in more than 20 years," said Ursula Utz, Ph.D., a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of NIH.

Autopsies usually point to a cause of death but now a study of brain tissue collected from people who committed suicide may explain an underlying cause of major depression and suicide.

The international research group, led by Dr. Michael O. Poulter of Robarts Research Institute at The University of Western Ontario and Dr. Hymie Anisman of the Neuroscience Research Institute at Carleton University, says that proteins that modify DNA directly are more highly expressed in the brains of people who commit suicide, they write in Biological Psychiatry.

These proteins are involved in chemically modifying DNA in a process called epigenomic regulation.

Twenty-one years after they first described a fatal genetic disorder in Missouri and Arkansas families, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have linked the condition to mutations in a gene known as TREX1.

The identification will accelerate efforts to understand and treat retinal vasculopathy with cerebral leukodystrophy (RVCL), a rare condition that usually goes unrecognized or is misdiagnosed. In Asian and Caucasian patients with the disease, a complex and ultimately fatal barrage of primarily central nervous system symptoms begins around age 45 that includes vision loss, mini-strokes and dementia. The symptoms can also mimic a brain tumor or multiple sclerosis. After onset, RVCL is fatal in 10 years or less.

A new report from researchers at the University of Colorado and Stanford University speculates how unique, lineage-specific gene copy number expansions and contractions in humans may underlie traits such as endurance running, higher cognitive function, and susceptibility genetic disease.

The study provides an overview of genes and gene families that have undergone major copy number expansions and contractions in different primate lineages spanning approximately 60 million years of evolutionary time.

Plant scientists have known for some time that genes from the maternal plant control seed development, but they have not known quite how.

Scientists at the University of Oxford have paved the way for bigger and better quality maize crops by identifying the genetic processes that determine seed development.

Working in collaboration with researchers in Germany and France, Professor Hugh Dickinson's team found that only the maternal copy of a key gene responsible for delivering nutrients is active. The copy derived from the paternal plant is switched off.

Drinking malt liquor may put young adults at increased risk for alcohol problems and use of illicit drugs, particularly marijuana, according to a new study of malt liquor drinkers and marijuana use by scientists at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions (RIA).

“In our study of young adults who regularly drink malt liquor,” reports lead researcher R. Lorraine Collins, senior research scientist at RIA, “we found that malt liquor use is significantly related to reports of alcohol problems, problems specific to the use of malt liquor and to marijuana use above and beyond typical alcohol use.”

The capacity to resist peer pressure in early adolescence may depend on the strength of connections between certain areas of the brain, according to a study carried out by University of Nottingham researchers.

New findings suggest that enhanced connections across brain regions involved in decision-making may underlie an individual’s ability to resist the influence of peers.

The study suggests that brain regions which regulate different aspects of behaviour are more interconnected in children with high resistance to peer influence.

The University of Bradford has unveiled a new ‘Ethical Tissue’ bank to provide UK biomedical researchers access to a wider range of human tissue and tissue products. The bank will operate on a not-for-profit basis and will provide access to human tissue and tissue products such as viable cells, cell fractions and arrays.

Leeds and Bradford Hospital Trusts, who currently provide tissue to the bank, work with patients and their families to provide information about the supply of tissue for research purposes and manage the consent procedures which underpin the bank’s high ethical standards. It is planned that this relationship will be extended to hospital trusts around the UK.

The project is possible through links with NHS Trusts, the NHS Blood and Transplant Tissue Services, transplant co-ordinators and other collaborators, who understand the importance of human tissue in biomedical research and are committed to supporting the activities of the University’s research tissue bank.