The study of epigenetics has undoubtedly emerged as one of the hottest fields of research over the past decade. Interest in epigenetics has arisen as researchers endeavor to reveal the underlying causes of phenotypic variation and common diseases despite technological advances allowing for the characterisation of genetic variants and their heritability…
An international research consortium has identified four common gene variants that are associated with blood levels of vitamin D and with an increased risk of vitamin D deficiency. The report from the SUNLIGHT consortium - involving investigators from six countries - will appear in The Lancet and is receiving early online release…
Scientists have been working for more than a decade to understand how tiny molecules called microRNA regulate genes within cells. Now researchers have discovered that microRNA actually moves between cells to help them communicate with each other and ultimately determine the types of cells that grow and develop…
Pea aphids, expert survivors of the insect world, appear to lack major biological defenses, according to the first genetic analysis of their immune system. “It’s surprising,” says Emory biologist Nicole Gerardo, who led the study, published this week in Genome Biology…
Scientists have created a new computational model that can be used to predict gene function of uncharacterized plant genes with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The network, dubbed AraNet, has over 19,600 genes associated to each other by over 1 million links and can increase the discovery rate of new genes affiliated with a given trait tenfold…
University of Florida researchers are collecting marine invertebrates on the French Polynesian island of Moorea as part of a massive effort to inventory the DNA sequence of every living species there…
The first genetic historical map of the Han Chinese, the largest ethnic population in the world, as they migrated from south to north over evolutionary time was published online by the American Journal of Human Genetics by scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS).
The first genetic historical map of the Han Chinese, the largest ethnic population in the world, as they migrated from south to north over evolutionary time was published online by the American Journal of Human Genetics by scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS)…
The Kaiser Permanente Research Program on Genes, Environment, and Health (RPGEH) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have been awarded $24.8 million over two years by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create a new resource for studying disease, health, and aging.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota and Massachusetts General Hospital have used a genome engineering tool they developed to make a model crop plant herbicide-resistant without significant changes to its DNA. “It’s still a GMO [Genetically Modified Organism] but the modification was subtle,” said Daniel Voytas, lead author and director of the U of M Center for Genome Engineering. “We made a slight change in the sequence of the plant’s own DNA rather than adding foreign DNA.