News

A team of scientists has developed a new approach that enables researchers to more efficiently identify the genes that control plant traits. This method will enable plant breeders and scientists to develop more affordable, desirable, and sustainable plant varieties.

In a new study, researchers have found that changes in the function of mitochondrial DNA can accelerate the aging process in ways that are different than previously thought.

In the largest and most diverse genetic study of PTSD to date, scientists from University of California San Diego School of Medicine and more than 130 additional institutions participating in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium have found that PTSD has a strong genetic component similar to other psychiatric disorders.

For the first time, scientists publish study findings on cattle produced from a genome-edited bull. All calves born were hornless and genotypic and phenotypic analysis demonstrate that the calves were healthy.

Immunotherapy is a promising cancer treatment that uses genetically modified immune cells to fight cancer. However, the process known as transfection to generate genetically engineered immune cells in the laboratory has poor efficiency and may have serious side effects. Now, a research team has successfully invented a novel transfection method to deliver DNA into immune cells with minimal stress on these cells.

A research group has discovered the extent of DNA that V. cholerae can steal in a single attack: more than 150,000 nucleic acid base pairs, or roughly 150 genes in one go (the cholera bacterium carries around 4,000 genes in total). The researchers calculated this number by sequencing the entire genome of almost 400 V. cholerae strains before and after stealing DNA from their neighboring bacteria.

Researchers have successfully halted the effects of Duchenne muscular dystrophy in animal models, using a developing gene therapy.

A study investigating why some drugs fail some patients with Crohn’s disease has identified a genetic marker that could individualize drug treatment.

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been jointly awarded to William G. Kaelin, Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of “how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”

Researchers at Western University have developed a new way to deliver the DNA-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 into microorganisms in the lab, providing a way to efficiently launch a targeted attack on specific bacteria.