Three-quarters of biobank volunteers who were carrying genetic risks for cancer and heart disease had never been tested. Array-based testing produced false results in 45 percent of samples and missed 72 percent of those carrying dangerous risk variants for treatable conditions when compared to sequencing. Image credit: Piqsels, free public domain licence More than 120,000...
by University of Oxford Structural study of antibiotic opens the way for new TB treatments Credit: Shutterstock Using cutting-edge genomic sequencing techniques, researchers at the University of Oxford have identified almost all the genomic variation that gives people resistance to 13 of the most common tuberculosis (TB) drug treatments. The Comprehensive Resistance Prediction for Tuberculosis International...
by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center A new Cedars-Sinai study suggests that genes are more likely to cause high blood pressure in women than in men. Credit: Cedars-Sinai. Researchers from the Smidt Heart Institute suggest that, contrary to common belief, the risk of developing high blood pressure has more to do with genetics in women than in men....
PLOS IMAGE: THE BEAUTY OF OLD AGE CREDIT: VINOTH CHANDAR, FLICKR People often get sicker as they grow older, but new research from Gil McVean of the University of Oxford and colleagues finds that the impact of a person’s genes on their risk of getting sick actually wanes with age. The researchers published their new...
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy have had some treatment success with deep brain stimulation, but those require surgical device implantation. A multidisciplinary team at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a new brain stimulation technique using focused ultrasound that is able to turn specific types of...
By Reginald Davey Reviewed by Sophia Coveney, B.Sc. Hereditary conditions cause those who suffer from them to live shorter lives with traumatic health issues. Because of this, researchers in the field of genetics are constantly exploring and developing gene therapies to cure them or alleviate the worst of their effects. This article will explore one...
by Natasha Meredith, University of Surrey Credit: University of Surrey The diverse impact of the genetic makeup in men and women on levels of fasting blood insulin has been identified for the first time in the largest international study of its kind. Publishing their findings in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Surrey, VIB-KU Leuven, University...
Studies identify bulk of genetic variation that influences blood cell traits Two large-scale genetic studies have identified the bulk of genetic variation that influences medically-important characteristics of our blood cells. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and colleagues from 101 research institutions world-wide, have studied hundreds of thousands...
BY ALISA ZAPP MACHALEK You’ve probably heard news stories and other talk about CRISPR. If you’re not a scientist—well, even if you are—it can seem a bit complex. Here’s a brief recap of what it’s all about. In 1987, scientists noticed weird, repeating sequences of DNA in bacteria. In 2002, the abbreviation CRISPR was coined...
by Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum Animals and humans have the ability to follow their own position in space through self-motion cues, even in the absence of any other sensory information. “If you get up at night and want to find your way to the bathroom in the dark, you need—in addition to knowing the arrangement of your own...
