Genetics & Molecular Biology

What Happens To Your Skin When Pregnancy Gives You A Stretch Mark

Don't believe the hype when you see claims about creams and ointments that promise to prevent or reduce pregnancy stretch marks. The line-shaped lesions also known as striae gravidarum affect 50 percent to 90 percent of women. However, some women are ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 17 2015 - 5:22pm

Why Do Kids Get Cancer? Genetics

In many cases, cancer is a lifestyle disease. You are far more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke and the older you get, the more likely you are to get cancer of all kinds. Age is the biggest risk factor and we get more cancer than our ancestors becau ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 18 2015 - 7:45pm

Frankenworm: Heads And Brains Of One Species Grown On Body Of Another

Biologists have induced one species of flatworm to grow heads and brains characteristic of another species of flatworm without altering the genomic sequence. The work reveals physiological circuits as a new kind of epigenetics- information existing outsid ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 24 2015 - 12:03pm

Animal Organ Transplants Into Humans Using Gene Editing

The clinical potential and ethical difficulty posed by gene-editing technology, which can “find and replace” targeted genes, is seemingly endless. But while public attention is focused on whether we should use it to change the genes of embryos, applicatio ...

Article - The Conversation - Dec 6 2015 - 8:30am

GM Mice Reveal The Secret To A Painless Life

People born with a rare genetic mutation are unable to feel pain, but previous attempts to recreate this effect with drugs have had surprisingly little success. Using mice modified to carry the same mutation, UCL researchers funded by the MRC and Wellcome ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 28 2019 - 12:17pm

Epigenetics: What Your Father Ate Before You Were Born Influenced Your Health

There has long been evidence that lifestyles of parents could influence offspring- a parent who smokes or does drugs has a greater chance of having a child with a birth defect- but epigenetics is a brand new world of how choices can be passed through gene ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2015 - 1:34pm

GMO Pigs Resistant To Incurable PRRS Virus Disease

 Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) virus, first detected in the U.S. in 1987, has been identified as a $660 million per year problem. Pigs who contract the disease have extreme difficulty reproducing, don't gain weight and have a h ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 9 2015 - 3:44pm

First Map Of The Wheat Epigenome Created

Scientists have carried out the first ever genome-wide survey of heritable molecular changes that regulate gene activity in wheat. Epigenetic marks are chemical tags which physically attach themselves to DNA, and modify its function without changing the g ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 11 2015 - 7:30am

Beige Fat Activation Could Combat Obesity

Almost 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Strategies for fighting obesity, such as pharmacological and behavioral approaches to decrease food int ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 16 2015 - 2:02pm

Stem Cells Likely To Be Safe For Use In Regenerative Medicine

Researchers say they have found the strongest evidence to date that human pluripotent stem cells-- cells that can give rise to all tissues of the body-- will develop normally once transplanted into an embryo. Pluripotent stem cells for use in regenerative ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 18 2015 - 7:28am