An international team co-led by scientists from the University of Michigan have discovered 12 more regions on the genome with DNA variants that are associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, bringing the number to 38.
A team of Columbia-led investigators has uncovered eight genes that underpin alopecia areata, one of the most common causes of hair loss, as reported in a paper in the July 1 issue of Nature. This discovery may soon lead to new treatments for the 5.3 million Americans suffering from hair loss caused by alopecia areata.
Today, the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) presented comments at the US Food & Drug Administration’s public meeting on array-based cytogenetic tests. The FDA convened the meeting to seek answers to more than a dozen questions they had on how to evaluate the performance, interpret results and report findings of array-based cytogenetic tests for copy number variation (CNV).
Whitehead Institute Founding Member Gerald Fink has been awarded the 2010 Genetics Prize of The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation for his groundbreaking research in yeast genetics.
Yesterday, the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) submitted comments on the Draft Report of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society on Genetics Education and Training of Health Care Professionals, Public Health Providers, and Consumers.
A gene that encodes a protein responsible for determining whether certain immune cells live or die shows subtle differences in some people with asthma, a team led by Johns Hopkins researchers reports in the June European Journal of Human Genetics.
AMP commends the Federal departments and agencies that compose the Council on Medical Device Innovation for making efforts to identify and remove barriers to innovation and progress in transitioning basic and transitional research findings into routine clinical practice. In its remarks, AMP identified three barriers that impede the path to FDA clearance or approval for diagnostic tests and reduce the motivation to submit some medically useful tests for review.
In what is believed to be the largest review of the human genetic code to determine why some people’s blood platelets are more likely to clump faster than others, scientists at Johns Hopkins and in Boston have found a septet of overactive genes, which they say likely control that bodily function.
In the journal Chaos, which is published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), scientists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham report powerful new techniques for studying the phenotypes related to genetic differences in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Using a newly applied scientific technique, researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) have reached surprising findings about the role of nature versus nurture in the development of the neural circuits in the auditory cortex, the area of the brain that is responsible for processing information about sound.
Today, the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) presented public comments to the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society (SACHGS) meeting focused on whole genome sequencing.
In anticipation of advances in sequencing and its incorporation into clinical practice, AMP raised ethical and laboratory practice concerns for the Committee’s consideration.
By unlocking the genetic secrets of sorghum, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have found a way to make one of the world’s most important cereal crops a better option for growers.
The p53 gene has been a well-documented player in the prevention of tumors and is considered the most frequently mutated gene in human tumors. These mutations often can be caused by disruption in normal p53 function. A team of investigators, including those from New Jersey’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, has identified a mechanism that interrupts normal p53 function, thus causing negative impact which can lead to tumor development.
Nuclear pores are the primary gatekeepers mediating communication between a cell's nucleus and its cytoplasm. Recently these large multiprotein transport channels have also been shown to play an essential role in developmental gene regulation. Despite the critical role in nuclear function, however, nuclear pore complexes remain somewhat shadowy figures, with many details about their formation shrouded in mystery.
An international consortium of researchers from more than 70 universities, including the University of Utah, has reported that a study of nearly 2,300 people supports the growing consensus that autism is caused in part by rare genetic changes called copy number variants (CNVs).
University of Illinois at Chicago researchers are part of an international consortium reporting new autism genetic discoveries from the second phase of the Autism Genome Project.
One in 25 people from India and other south Asian countries carries a mutated gene that causes heart failure. Studying this gene, and the protein it encodes, could lead to new treatments for heart failure.
Prostate cancer has become more common in younger men, and it’s often more aggressive in these men. A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center has found that a series of genetic mutations could help detect this early onset prostate cancer.
A Johns Hopkins and Japanese research team has generated the first comprehensive genetic “parts” list of a mouse hypothalamus, an enigmatic region of the brain — roughly cherry-sized, in humans — that controls hunger, thirst, fatigue, body temperature, wake-sleep cycles and links the central nervous system to control of hormone levels.
Using sophisticated genetic analysis, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and New York University School of Medicine have published a study indicating that Jews are a widely dispersed people with a common ancestry. Jews from different regions of the world were found to share many genetic traits that are distinct from other groups and that date back to ancient times.
Through the use of sophisticated genomic analysis, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have found that the genetic influences of the Jewish people have retained their genetic coherence, as well as their cultural and religious traditions, even as Jewish communities migrated from the Middle East into Europe, North Africa and across the world according to a new study in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Using high-throughput sequencing to map the locations of a common type of jumping gene within a person’s entire genome, researchers found extensive variation in these locations among the individuals they studied, further underscoring the role of these errant genes in maintaining genetic diversity.
Scientists have learned how a gene controls cell division, a finding that could be useful for understanding why increasing numbers of children are being born with genital malformations.
Genetic abnormalities are most often discussed in terms of differences so miniscule they are actually called “snips” — changes in a single unit along the 3 billion that make up the entire string of human DNA.
The work, co-led by geneticists at the University of California, San Diego Institute for Genomic Medicine, together with colleagues from institutes and universities in Paris, Rome and England, should allow couples at risk of conceiving babies with the profoundly disabling Meckel-Gruber and Joubert syndromes to be identified beforehand through genetic screening.
Consumer Genetics Conference to convene experts in Boston June 2-4 to discuss best practices, challenges and advancements in the field of DTC genetic testing and personalized medicine.
Although congenital heart disease represents the most common major birth defect, scientists have not previously identified the common variation in the genes that give rise to it. Now genetics and cardiology researchers, two of them brothers, have discovered a genetic variant on chromosome 5 that strongly raises the risk of congenital heart disease.
In a major cancer-research breakthrough, researchers at the McGill University, Department of Biochemistry have discovered that a small segment of a protein that interacts with RNA can control the normal expression of genes – including those that are active in cancer.
Writing the latest pages of an anthropological mystery, scientists propose in this month’s Archives of Neurology that it is highly possible that Auguste Deter, the first identified Alzheimer disease patient, carried the N141I presenilin-2 mutation—the same one as in present-day U.S. families descended from German emigrants who settled near the river Volga in Russia.
To help tomorrow’s cut flowers and potted plants stay fresh longer, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant physiologist Cai-Zhong Jiang is investigating the gene-controlled mechanisms of plants' aging.
They might not be known for their big brains, but fruit flies are helping to make scientists and doctors smarter about what causes Huntington’s disease and how to treat it. New research, published in the journal GENETICS describes a laboratory test that allows scientists to evaluate large numbers of fruit fly genes for a possible role in the formation of plaque-like protein aggregates within cells. Those genes often have counterparts in humans, which might then be manipulated to stop or slow the formation of plaque-like protein aggregates, the hallmark of Huntington’s and several other neurodegenerative diseases.
WSU researchers working on developing wheat varieties that grow under severe drought conditions (“desert wheat”) earned a $1.6 million grant from the NSF and the Gates Foundation to help fund WSU scientist Kulvinder Gill’s research on identifying genes that will increase wheat yields under drought stress.
Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are improving strains of microorganisms used to convert cellulosic biomass into ethanol, including a recent modification that could improve the efficiency of the conversion process.
Unbiased forum convened in Boston June 2-4 to provide open dialogue of challenges and potential for DTC genetic testing and personalized medicine from varying perspectives.
Gene therapy has been shown to have positive effects in rat models of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), according to researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
The Genetics Society of America (GSA) will host its biennial GENETICS 2010: Model Organisms to Human Biology Meeting, on June 12‐15, 2010, in Boston, Mass., at the Sheraton Boston. The 2010 MOHB meeting will bring together investigators who study genetic disease models in organisms such as flies, yeast, fungi, and mice, with human genetics researchers. This meeting will feature discussions on how basic genetics research impacts the study of human diseases, including sessions on stem cells, cancer, disease models, personal genomics, and more.
The most comprehensive analysis yet of the genetic imbalances at the heart of childhood brain tumors known as high-grade gliomas (HGGs) identified a cancer gene that is unusually active in some tumors and is now the focus of a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital clinical trial.
Patients who encounter serious lung diseases in middle age, despite an absence of family history or other predisposing factors, may still have their genes to blame, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.
Being Latino in the Americas can mean very different things – depending upon where your ancestors called home. A new study led by a Cornell researcher shows populations geographically close to former slave trade routes have more African ancestry. More inland Latin Americans show more Native American heritage.
In response to recent announcements about consumer genetic tests being made available in retail drugstores, the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) today
reiterated its position that these tests should be provided to the public only through the services of appropriate health care professionals that order tests from laboratories that are certified by CLIA for highcomplexity
testing.
Journalists covering the recent announcement by Pathway Genomics that it will sell health-related genetic marker tests to consumers—and the subsequent decision by Walgreens to postpone sales of the kits pending clarification of their legal status—are invited to interview Berman Institute experts Joan Scott or Gail Javitt.
Patrick Sullivan, MD has received a 2010 Distinguished Investigator Award from NARSAD for a comparison of genetics in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. His project is one of 15 selected out of 170 proposals submitted by researchers worldwide. Each project will each receive $100,000 annually in support of one year of research.
Tufts University has received a $9.5 million grant to create research space for a Collaborative Cluster in Genome Structure & Developmental Patterning in Health & Disease. Research will focus on genome structure and stability, developmental & regenerative biology & tissue engineering.
By analyzing the genomes of patients with schizophrenia, genetics researchers have discovered numerous copy number variations—deletions or duplications of DNA sequences—that increase the risk of developing schizophrenia. Significantly, many of these variations occur in genes that affect signaling among brain cells.