Feature Channels: Genetics

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Van Andel Institute’s Hui Shen, Ph.D., and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis’s Ting Wang, Ph.D., will co-lead a collaborative project supported by the Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues (SMaHT) Network, a new $140 million National Institutes of Health-led effort to better understand the genetic differences between individual cells and tissues in the body.

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The goal of every dividing cell is to accurately segregate its genome into two genetically identical daughter cells. However, this process often goes awry and may be responsible for a new class of chromosomal abnormalities found in cancers and congenital disorders, UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists report in a new study. The discovery, published in Nature, sheds light on how cancer cells rapidly evolve genomic changes that fuel their proliferation.

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May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Get your mental health news here.

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UCLA researchers have developed an “all-in-one,” next-generation statistical simulator capable of assimilating a wide range of information to generate realistic synthetic data and provide a benchmarking tool for medical and biological researchers who use advanced technologies to study diseases and potential therapies.

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El Departamento de Biomedicina Computacional de Cedars-Sinai recientemente refinó su enfoque en el avance de la inteligencia artificial y el aprendizaje automatizado al establecer el Centro de Investigación y Educación de Inteligencia Artificial.

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Ludwig Cancer Research congratulates Douglas Hanahan, Ludwig Distinguished Scholar at the Lausanne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, on his election as Foreign Member of the Royal Society.

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Eimear Kenny, PhD, had just completed undergrad and was working in her first computational genomics job more than 20 years ago when scientists announced the first (nearly) complete sequencing of the human genome—what was considered at the time to be the fundamental blueprint for all humans. The Human Genome Project aimed to map the entire genome in an effort to accelerate the diagnosis and eventual treatment of common and rare diseases.

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The Director of the Center of Excellence for Data-Driven Discovery at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital was named a Fellow of the leading, 360-year-old British scientific organization. The Royal Society is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.

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An exhaustive cost-benefit analysis of population genetic testing published in Annals of Internal Medicine concludes with a recommendation to U.S. health policymakers to adopt routine testing of adults ages 40 and under for three genetic conditions posing high risk of life-threatening illness.

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Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have developed a DNA enzyme – or DNAzyme – that can distinguish between two RNA strands inside a cell and cut the disease-associated strand while leaving the healthy strand intact. This breakthrough “gene silencing” technology could revolutionize the development of DNAzymes for treating cancer, infectious diseases and neurological disorders.

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In a University of California, Irvine-led study, researchers have discovered small-molecule drugs with potential clinical utility in the treatment of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR), and retinitis pigmentosa (RP).

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A limited menu of prey may weave a tangled food web by emboldening wolf spiders of multiple species to dine on each other and even cannibalize their own, says a study from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

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Asian Americans have significant differences in genetics, socioeconomic factors, culture, diet, lifestyle, health interventions and acculturation levels based on the Asian region of their ancestry that likely have unique effects on their risk for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

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Humans inherited genetic material from Neanderthals that affects the shape of our noses, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

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Thyrotoxic periodic paralysis (TPP), a rare neurological condition causing limbs to go limp, may be an underrecognized cause of paralysis in young Hispanic men, a review of data by UT Southwestern Medical Center endocrinologists shows.

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Researchers have proposed a new model for the evolution of higher brain functions and behaviors in the Hymenoptera order of insects.

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The Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) 2023 Annual Meeting will be held May 7-10 at the Sheraton Boston Hotel.

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The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has announced that Claire M. Fraser, PhD, the Dean E. Albert Reece Endowed Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), and the Founding Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS), has been elected as a new member of the prestigious academy.

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Dana Carroll, distinguished professor in the Department of Biochemistry in the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah, is the 2023 recipient of the Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence in recognition of his pioneering work in genome editing. The Rosenblatt Prize is the University of Utah’s highest faculty accolade and is presented annually to a faculty member who transcends ordinary teaching, research and administrative contributions.

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The instructions for gene regulation are written in a complicated code, and scientists have turned to artificial intelligence to crack it. To learn the rules of DNA regulation, they’re using deep neural networks (DNNs), which excel at finding patterns in large datasets. DNNs are at the core of popular AI tools like ChatGPT.

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Storing data in DNA sounds like science fiction, yet it lies in the near future. Professor Tom de Greef expects the first DNA data center to be up and running within five to ten years.

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UT Southwestern Medical Center stem cell and developmental biologists and colleagues have developed a method to produce bovine blastoids, a crucial step in replicating embryo formation in the lab that could lead to the development of new reproductive technologies for cattle breeding.

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Mutations of a gene called Foxp2 have been linked to a type of speech disorder called apraxia that makes it difficult to produce sequences of sound.

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Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is the first in Illinois to receive designation as a NORD Rare Disease Center of Excellence, becoming one of 40 U.S. academic medical centers selected to be a part of the first-of-it-kind national network of U.S. medical institutions dedicated to diagnosing, treating, and researching all rare diseases. The network is led by the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) and is designed to foster knowledge sharing between rare disease experts across the country to help meet the unmet needs of more than 25 million Americans living with a rare disease.

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An upgraded computational tool from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital can find potentially druggable hidden drivers of cancer and other biological processes using multi-omics data.

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Cleveland Clinic has been designated a Rare Disease Center of Excellence by the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD). The new Cleveland Clinic Center for Rare Diseases is one of 40 U.S. academic medical centers selected to join the first-of-it-kind national network dedicated to diagnosing, treating and researching all rare diseases.

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The California Center for Rare Diseases at UCLA has been designated as a NORD Rare Disease Center of Excellence, becoming one of 40 U.S. academic medical centers selected to be a part of the first-of-it-kind national network of U.S. medical institutions dedicated to diagnosing, treating, and researching all rare diseases.

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Wistar Institute researchers have uncovered a key mechanism as to how p53 suppresses tumors.

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In a study of 17 people from five families, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they found that ultra-lengthy DNA endcaps called telomeres fail to provide the longevity presumed for such people. Instead, people with long telomeres tend to develop a range of benign and cancerous tumors, as well as the age-related blood condition clonal hematopoiesis.

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Genome editing is used to modify the genes of living organisms to elicit certain traits, such as climate-resilient crops or treating human disease at the genetic level. It has become increasingly popular in agriculture, medicine and basic science research over the past decade, and will continue to be relevant and utilized well into the future.

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Two MD Anderson researchers, Helen Piwnica-Worms, Ph.D., and Richard Wood, Ph.D., have been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences for their respective contributions to advancing our understanding of cancer genetics, biochemistry and cell biology.

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New ACR breast cancer screening guidelines urge all women, particularly Black and Ashkenazi Jewish women, to have a risk assessment by age 25 to determine if screening before age 40 is needed. The ACR urges average-risk women to start yearly screening at 40, but earlier screening for high-risk women.