A team of researchers from US biotech company Verve Therapeutics have injected a gene-editing serum into a live patient’s liver with the goal of lowering their cholesterol, a watershed moment in the history of gene editing that could potentially save millions from cardiovascular disease and heart attacks, MIT Technology Review reports. The clinical trial kicked off with a patient...
Category: <span>Genetics</span>
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Hallmark cancer gene regulates RNA ‘dark matter’
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SANTA CRUZ IMAGE: GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT SHOWS THE EFFECTS OF MUTANT KRAS ON A LUNG CELL’S RNA LANDSCAPE. CREDIT: DANIEL H. KIM A key genetic mutation that occurs early on in cancer alters RNA “dark matter” and causes the release of previously unknown RNA biomarkers for cancer early detection, a new study...
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How elephants avoid cancer – and we could too
By Rich Haridy July 17, 2022 Elephants were found to have 20 copies of a cancer-suppressing gene, while humans only have one copy Depositphotos An exciting new study from an international team of scientists has shed some light on exactly why elephants, one of the biggest animals on the planet, paradoxically experience unusually low rates...
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Scientists zero in on genetic causes of Parkinson’s
Variants of at least 20 different genes have been closely linked to the development of Parkinson’s disease. However, scientists are still investigating how exactly they cause the severe and incurable motor disorder afflicts about 1 million people in the U.S. alone. Image credit: Claudia Love on Unsplash, free license New research by Yale researchers offers essential...
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Synthetic tools conduct messages from station to station in DNA
RICE UNIVERSITY IMAGE: RICE UNIVERSITY BIOENGINEERS ARE USING DEACTIVATED CAS9 PROTEINS TO TARGET KEY SEGMENTS OF THE HUMAN GENOME AND SYNTHETICALLY TRIGGER THE TRANSCRIPTION OF HUMAN GENES. CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION BY SOFIA ESCOBAR/RICE UNIVERSITY HOUSTON – (July 18, 2022) – Rice University researchers have demonstrated that CRISPR-Cas9, increasingly famous as a gene-editing tool, can be employed in...
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Researchers uncover unanticipated aspects of the genetic regulation of different brain tumors
by Graciela Gutierrez, Baylor College of Medicine Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine has shed new light on the genetic regulation of brain tumor behavior. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study reveals that, contrary to what is expected, gene expression regulator Sox9,...
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Alzheimer’s breakthrough: Genetic link to gut disorders confirmed
by Edith Cowan University Clusters of significantly enriched biological pathways for AD and GERD. a KEGG: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways: intestinal immune network (allograft rejection, intestinal immune network for IGA production, type 1 diabetes mellitus, systemic lupus erythematous, antigen processing and presentation, graft-versus-host disease, asthma), and cholesterol metabolism (cholesterol metabolism). b Gene Ontology: Cellular Components: side membrane vesicle (lumenal side of membrane,...
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Scientists discover genes that affect risk of developing pre-leukemia
by University of Bristol Credit: Wikimedia Commons The discovery of 14 inherited genetic changes which significantly increase the risk of a person developing a symptomless blood disorder associated with the onset of some types of cancer and heart disease is published today in Nature Genetics. The finding, made in one of the largest studies of its...
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CRISPR technology highlights genes that contribute to the development of emphysema and COPD
by Boston Medical Center Overview of CRISPRi platform to interrogate COPD GWAS genes. (A) Gene editing strategy to generate inducible CRISPRi iPSC/ESC lines with an NKX2-1–GFP and/or SFTPC-tdTomato reporter. (B) Schematic representation of dox-inducible dCas9-KRAB expression and lentiviral-delivered gRNA targeted to the transcriptional start site (TSS) of genes of interest (GOI) to mediate knockdown. (C)...
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Tumors with specific genetic mutations show response to immune checkpoint blockade therapy
by Cleveland Clinic Immune microenvironment of the post-treatment Pole mutant tumors. a, Differentially expressed genes up-regulated or down-regulated in the post-ICB PoleP286R tumors versus the parental tumors. There are 82 DEGs that are consistently upregulated in all ICB treatment arms, while there are 59 genes are consistently downregulated in mutant tumors of all immune checkpoint...