Medication can play a huge role in reducing high blood pressure, a leading cause of stroke, heart attack and other serious health problems. Yet given the wide selection of drugs for doctors to choose from, figuring out which drug works best for someone is difficult. But researchers may have found a better way to predict the effectiveness and side...
Tag: <span>Genetics</span>
Post
New method to detect off-target effects of CRISPR
by Julie Langelier, Gladstone Institutes Since the CRISPR genome editing technology was invented in 2012, it has shown great promise to treat a number of intractable diseases. However, scientists have struggled to identify potential off-target effects in therapeutically relevant cell types, which remains the main barrier to moving therapies to the clinic. Now, a group of scientists at the Gladstone Institutes...
Post
The Prospects of Behavioral Genetics: Bad Genes Behind Crimes, Precision Education And Loosing Free Will?
Can the “warrior gene” explain aggressive and violent acts so that lawyers base their defenses on that in courts? Can genetics determine whether your marriage will be a long-lasting companionship? What about alcoholism, depression or autism? To what extent are we the product of our environment or the expression of our genes? While the nature versus nurture debate has been...
Post
Blocking protein’s activity restores cognition in old mice, study shows
by Stanford University Medical Center By blocking a protein’s activity with antibodies, Stanford University School of Medicine investigators were able to improve cognitive behavior in aging mice. A paper describing the finding will be published online April 3 in Nature. Tony Wyss-Coray, Ph.D., professor of neurology and neurological sciences, is the senior author. The lead author...
Post
Western bias in human genetic studies is ‘both scientifically damaging and unfair’
IMAGE: THIS IMAGE SHOWS THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE ANCESTRY OF INDIVIDUALS IN THE GWAS CATALOG AS OF JANUARY 2019. view more CREDIT: SIRUGO ET AL./CELL Despite efforts to include more diversity in research, people of European ancestry continue to be vastly overrepresented and ethnically diverse populations largely excluded from human genomics research, according to the authors of a commentary published...
Post
Data sharing uncovers five new risk genes for Alzheimer’s disease
Analysis of genetic data from more than 94,000 individuals has revealed five new risk genes for Alzheimer’s disease, and confirmed 20 known others. An international team of researchers also reports for the first time that mutations in genes specific to tau, a hallmark protein of Alzheimer’s disease, may play an earlier role in the development...
Post
New DNA coding basis
DNA Gets a New — and Bigger — Genetic Alphabet DNA is spelled out with four letters, or bases. Researchers have now built a system with eight. It may hold clues to the potential for life elsewhere in the universe and could also expand our capacity to store digital data on Earth In 1985, the...
Post
New Tourette disorder genes come to light
In the largest DNA sequencing study of Tourette Disorder (TD) to date, UC San Francisco researchers and their collaborators have unearthed new data suggesting a potential role for disruptions in cell polarity in the development of this condition. Credit: CC0 Public Domain The researchers focused on “de novo” mutations, or rare mutations that arise anew...
Post
Genes drive aging, making normal processes damaging
Ageing in worms mainly results from the direct action of genes and not from random wear and tear or loss of function, and the same is likely to be true in humans, according to research by UCL, Lancaster University and Queen Mary University of London scientists. IMAGE: THE DETERIORATIVE PART OF AGEING, CALLED ‘SENESCENCE’, IS THE...
Post
How diet modifies the correlation between genetics and obesity
A correlation between obesity and genetics has been found to be modified by diet, according to a scientific paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. A research group led by a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist found that a specific gene—APOA2—can result in a higher body mass index (BMI). The APOA2 gene encodes...