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It's not all genetic: Common epigenetic problem doubles cancer risk in mice

... "epigenetic" problem that improperly turns on the copy of the IGF2 gene that should remain off. Unlike most genes, the copy of IGF2 that should be silent depends only on which parent it came from, a situation called genomic ...

Scientists Replicate Hepatitis C Virus in Laboratory

...apies. They constructed an HCV replica using a DNA copy of the original HCV single-strand RNA genome. They placed the DNA copy between two ribozymes, RNA molecules that have enzymatic function and can cleave RNA sequence at spe...

Scientists detect probable genetic cause of some Parkinson's disease cases

...he disease. The researchers found a mutationin one copy of the gene can lead to the disease. The findings ...ople who hadinherited the disease had at least one copy of the mutated gene.Similarly, the team detected one copy of the mutation in 8 of 482people with Par...

Combination therapy boosts effectiveness of telomere-directed cancer cell death

...entually they become so short thatthe enzymes that copy DNA for cell division no longer work properly andthe cell stops dividing. In a sense, telomeres function as a kind ofcounting mechanism that regulates how many times a cell can divide.In contrast to normal cells, cancer cells divide continuously andu...

GATA: a graphic alignment tool for comparative sequence analysis

...entually they become so short thatthe enzymes that copy DNA for cell division no longer work properly andthe cell stops dividing. In a sense, telomeres function as a kind ofcounting mechanism that regulates how many times a cell can divide.In contrast to normal cells, cancer cells divide continuously andu...

Breakthrough Microarray-based Technology for the Study of Cancer

...th the possibility itprovides to correlate genomic copy alterations with mRNA abundance andprotein abundan...ing CGHresearchers to reliably identify the single copy deletions inchromosomes that have been the most difficult to detect.Additionally, the technology all...

Novel Enzyme Shows Potential As An Anti-HIV Target

... RNA polymerases, which carry out transcription—to copy its RNA genome into DNA and infiltrate human chromosomal DNA. Once the virus is integrated (now called a provirus), its genes can be transcribed. Adept as HIV is in exploiting its host’s molecular resources, the virus can’t establish a foothold with...

Mouse brain tumors mimic those in human genetic disorder

...ls, like humans with the disease, have oneabnormal copy of the gene for NF1 in every cell in their body, whilespecific support cells in the brain called astrocytes have two abnormalcopies of this same gene.Their latest paper shows that brain tumor formation in these mice hasseveral of the same distinguish...

Same mutation aided evolution in many fish species, Stanford study finds

...armor plates. A small number of these fish had one copy of the Eda gene that contained the mutation in que...st a few of those fish already carried the mutated copy of the Eda gene. When those fish bred, some gave rise to offspring with two copies of the mutation a...

Scientists document complex genomic events leading to the birth of new genes

...r single-copy genes that had evolved more than one copy in humans. "Gene duplication is known to play a le... identified a total of 22 genes with more than one copy in humans but only a single copy in all other species tested. They then turned their attention to th...

Plants defy Mendel's inheritance laws, may prompt textbook changes

...hat these hothead-containing plants keep a cryptic copy of everything that was in the previous generation, even though it doesn't show up in the DNA, it's not in the chromosome," Pruitt said. "Some other type of gene sequence information that we don't really understand yet is modifying the inherited trait...

Research Using Mouse Models Reveals A Novel Key Player In The Initiation Of Colon Cancer

...partially deficient for APC (containing one normal copy of the APC gene and one mutant inactive copy) in t... ninety per cent of the tumors had lost the normal copy of the APC gene and now were completely deficient. What is the significance of these results on und...

Variation in women's X chromosomes may explain differences among individuals, between sexes

...trast, the X chromosome -- present in at least one copy in both sexes -- encodes more than 1,000. More th...ears ago, researchers discovered that genes on one copy of the female's X chromosome are switched off, a modification known as X inactivation. Originally, ...

Key mechanism in genetic inheritance during cell division identified

...ural integrity so that they can segregate a single copy of each chromosome to each daughter cell. After which, the microtubules again disassemble and reform back into skeletal systems for the two new daughter cells. It has been determined, through the genetic research of Barnes and Drubin, among others, t...

Biomarkers isolated from saliva successfully predict oral and breast cancer

...ncer. In the cell, messenger RNA or mRNA carries a copy of the genetic code or DNA, housed in the cell's nucleus, to other parts of the cell for protein manufacture. The process by which genes are copied to mRNA, via an enzyme called RNA polymerase, is called transcription and the products are called tran...

Maine Researchers Find Exceptions to Old Rules of Genetic Inheritance

...use mice, 20 percent of the population carries one copy of the t haplotype whereas the remaining 80 percent carries the wild haplotype. According to the distribution predictions set out by Gregor Mendel, the 19th century Austrian monk who studied inheritance in flowering pea plants, males and females shou...

Biochemists report discovery of structure of major piece of telomerase; implications for cancer

...in," Feigon said. "Reverse transcriptases normally copy RNA to DNA, but do not contain RNA; in this enzyme... has its own internal piece of RNA that is used to copy the DNA, but this 'template' is only approximately 10 of the 451 nucleotides. Nobody knows what the ...

Agilent Technologies new genome analysis technology set to accelerate Australia fight against mesothelioma

...ect small changes in chromosomes, including single copy deletions, which have previously been the most difficult to find," said Agilent Integrated Biology Solutions product manager David Tunks. "We hope the outcome of this work will have a major effect on mesothelioma research," said Holloway. "The Austr...

15-year hunt finds cause of pseudothalidomide syndrome

...olecular "motors" attach to the centromere of each copy and pull the original and the new copy away from each another as division proceeds. However, in cells from people with Roberts syndrome, t...

U. Iowa researchers improve Huntington's disease symptoms in mice

...artial reduction may slow down the disease-causing copy of the gene to such an extent that either disease ...a pair, one from either parent. In HD, one mutated copy of the gene is sufficient to cause the disease. However, the normal Huntington gene produces a prote...

Researchers pioneer new gene therapy technique using natural repair process

...-2R gene along with the enzyme. Given the correct copy as a template, the recombination event occurred at... and 11 percent of the cells tested had traded one copy of the mutant gene for the correct version. In addition, 6 percent to 7 percent of cells had traded ...

Leprosy genome tells story of human migrations, French researchers report in Science

...c sequences known to be dynamic -- to move around, copy themselves or disappear -- and thus most likely to reflect evolutionary change, but found strikingly little variation. Next, the researchers looked for mutations known as "single nucleotide polymorphisms" or "SNPs," which are substitutions of single...

Mosaic mouse technique offers a powerful new tool to study diseases and genetics

...osomes. If one of those chromosomes contains a bad copy (mutation) of a gene, the recombination event could cause an offspring to inherit two bad copies of the gene, which would result in a mutant cell. This process simultaneously activates the green fluorescent protein, which turns the mutant cell green....

Depression gene may weaken mood-regulating circuit

...c resonance imaging (MRI). Those with at least one copy of the short variant had less gray matter, neurons and their connections, in the amygdala-cingulate circuit than those with two copies of the long variant. Next, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers monitored the brain...

Diabetic nerve therapy shows 'striking' results

... we do not inject a gene that produces a 'foreign' copy of a therapeutic protein. This is the normal approach and has problems from immunological side-effects. "Instead, we turn on the patient's own gene to produce a natural version of this therapeutically beneficial protein. The most significant advanta...

Big differences in duplicated DNA distinguish chimp and human genomes

...n our species. They likely started out as a single copy of a segment in an ancestral species of both chimp... species - the segment is deleted from the genome, copy by copy, over time. The researchers found that many of the species-specific duplications have also...

Bumblebees copy one another when contending with unfamiliar flowers

...s do not choose flowers entirely alone but instead copy the choices of other bees. The new findings suggest that bees adjust their behavior when dealing with flowers of unfamiliar plant species. The observations are reported in the June 21 issue of Current Biology in a new paper by Elli Leadbeater and La...

Sandia completes depleted uranium study

...th a number of targeted vehicles. ### For a full copy of the report, download the following pdf file from http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2005/def-nonprolif-sec/snl-dusand.pdf : "An Analysis of Uranium Dispersal and Health Effects Using a Gulf War Case Study" ...

Researchers track down cause of a disfiguring bone disorder

... Loots and her colleagues genetically engineered a copy of the DNA segment containing the gene and used it to generate mice with and without the 52,000-base-pair region missing in Van Buchem patients. The deleted region is located about 35,000 base pairs "downstream" from SOST on human chromosome 17. Whil...

Analysis of flower genes reveals the fate of an ancient gene duplication

...ion--a relatively uncommon event in which a single copy of a gene is transformed into two separate copies--is thought to play a key role in the evolution of new gene functions. Duplications are important because they effectively allow at least one of the gene copies to evolve while the (likely important) ...

Cultural norms not unique to human societies

...s, discovered they possess a natural motivation to copy their peers well into adulthood and say that altho...m the Pan-pipes. "This study demonstrates apes do copy members of their own species and they develop different traditions by doing so," said Dr. Horner. "I...

Study identifies gene in mice that may control risk-taking behavior in humans

...26.Olson and colleagues studied mice with a single copy of the neuroD2 gene and found they had an impaired...n mice with no neuroD2 gene. In mice with just one copy of neuroD2, researchers also found fewer nerve cells in the amygdala. Researchers conducted exper...

Gene loss accelerates aging

...ensive studies of mice that are born with only one copy of the gene. Still, these animals die at a young age. So to study p63 function in adults, Mills and her colleagues devised a sophisticated molecular genetic technique that enabled them to eliminate both copies of the gene from particular tissues--inc...

Sugar helps control cell division

...emoving the sugar from proteins causes the cell to copy its genetic material and make new nuclei, but to fail to divide in two. The end result is cells with more than one nucleus -- a situation fairly common in cancer cells. "Cells with more than one nucleus can survive, but they are dysregulated -- thin...

Weight control protein may yield antiobesity drugs

...y in animals, Rui said. Mice lacking a functional copy of the SH2-B gene were smaller at birth than normal mice. After 5 weeks of age, however, the mice began gaining weight rapidly and were about twice as heavy as normal littermates after several months, with at least a 2.8-fold increase in body fat con...

No small feat: First ever gene therapy success for muscular dystrophy achieved

...proaches, muscle cells were able to assimilate and copy the genetic instructions for making mini-agrin. Once produced, the mini-agrin protein functionally took the place of the laminin alpha-2 protein by binding to the key proteins on either end, thus restoring the cell's outside scaffolding and reestabli...

Gene for immune deficiency syndromes found

... TACI mutations are dominant, people with even one copy of the mutation will be unable to mount a strong antibody response. "A test for TACI would allow for diagnosis of more children and their relatives," says Geha, senior author of the study and a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Man...

Protein amplification in melanoma is possible drug target

... TACI mutations are dominant, people with even one copy of the mutation will be unable to mount a strong antibody response. "A test for TACI would allow for diagnosis of more children and their relatives," says Geha, senior author of the study and a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Man...

Study findings offer potential new targets for antibiotics

...iotics ?the researchers first introduced a mutated copy of the ribosomal genes into E. coli cells and looked for those rare mutations that could interfere with cell growth. It was known from previous studies that such deleterious mutations occurred within critical regions of the ribosome. After identifyi...

DNA size a crucial factor in genetic mutations, study finds

...osine (C). A always pairs with T, and G with C. To copy itself, the DNA molecule unwinds and splits. Either strand is now a template to build a new DNA molecule. An enzyme-a protein that speeds the reaction, in this case the bacteria E. coli's DNA polymerase I-moves along the template and selects the corr...

Gene therapy reverses genetic mutation responsible for heart failure in muscular dystrophy

...ecting a very high dose of AAV-8 carrying a normal copy of the delta-sarcoglycan gene intravenously into 10-day-old and adult LGMD hamsters, Dr. Xiao and his colleagues found that it had been systemically incorporated into skeletal, diaphragm and cardiac muscle cells in both groups. More importantly, card...

Study provides insight into cellular defenses against genetic mutation

...leic acids (RNA). Messenger RNA (mRNA), a modified copy of DNA, is transported to cellular factories called ribosomes that receive instructions for building proteins by "reading" mRNA templates. Over time, genes evolve to show changes in their makeup. Some changes, or mutations, have no impact, some prov...

Gene therapy works in mice to prevent blindness that strikes boys

...sful in curing a disease in mice that has a direct copy in humans," said Hauswirth, who, in conjunction with UF, has interest in a biotechnology company that may seek to market some of the research technology. "It may take two to five years before we try this in human patients because of the need for safe...

Customized gene chip provides rapid detection of genetic changes in children's cancer

... loss of heterozygosity (LOH), the deletion of one copy of a pair of genes. When the gene involved is a tumor suppressor gene, LOH removes a brake on uncontrolled cell growth, the growth that is the hallmark of cancer. Researchers in Dr. Maris' laboratory previously established that LOH in a region of ch...

HIV inserts into human genome using a DNA-associated protein

... reverse transcriptase and then integrate that DNA copy into the DNA of the host, using the integrase enzyme. The new viral particles are made by transcription of the viral genome, as with any cellular genes. If the cell divides, the viral DNA is copied and inherited, along with cellular human genes. Bu...

Regenerating worms help elucidate stem cell biology

... divide, they produce at least two cell types ?one copy of the original, and one cell that can develop into a specialized cell to replace a lost cell elsewhere in the body. The researchers found that without piwi, the daughter cells from this division failed to differentiate into a specialized cell on...

Mammalian Transcriptome Mapped

...tides, is made by enzymes as an exact base-to-base copy of DNA. Since DNA is double-stranded, only one of these strands, the so-called sense strand, encodes for proteins. In normal DNA transcription, the two strands are split apart, and only the sense strand is copied. The other DNA strand, the "antisense...

Building a better mouse model of lung cancer: FHIT counts

...ty bred two strains of mice, one that had only one copy of the FHIT gene, and another that lacked both cop...n tumors, 17 percent of the mice that had lost one copy of the gene developed malignant tumors and all of the tumors in the mice that lost both copies of th...

Normal chromosome ends elicit a limited DNA damage response

...ravel when enzymes need to gain access in order to copy the chromosome's DNA in preparation for cell division. And if so, they wondered, why didn't the presumably exposed chromosome ends trigger a DNA damage response? Turns out they do, at least to a limited extend. "During a small window right after ...

Embryonic stem cells accrue genetic changes

...in the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences and copy numbers, the researchers examined whether the cells' genetic material had shifts in marks that sit on genes and are passed from cell to cell during cell division. These so-called epigenetic marks -- in this case methyl groups on a gene region known a...

A little telomerase isn't enough

...Yang Hao, then a graduate student, knocked out one copy of the telomerase gene in non-laboratory mice, who...lso carried just one telomerase copy. (Because one copy of each gene is inherited from each parent, only 50 percent of the offspring would be expected to en...

Gene therapy for muscular dystrophy fixes frail muscle cells in animal model, Stanford study finds

...searchers used gene therapy to introduce a healthy copy of the gene dystrophin into mice with a condition that mimics muscular dystrophy. The dystrophin gene is mutated and as a result produces a defective protein in the roughly 20,000 people in the United States with the most common form of the disease. ...

New technique multiplies life span in simple organisms

...entists have known for several years that an extra copy of the SIR2 gene can promote longevity in yeast, worms and fruit flies. That finding was covered widely and incorporated into anti-aging drug development programs at several biotechnology companies. Now, molecular geneticists at the University of S...

New view of cancer: 'Epigenetic' changes come before mutations

...n epigenetic problem that improperly turned on the copy of the IGF2 gene that should have remained off. Feinberg and his colleagues propose that cancers develop via a three-step process. First, there is an epigenetic disruption of progenitor cells within an organ or tissue, altered by abnormal regulation...

Researchers quantify more noise in gene expression

...ng in unison." Intrinsic noise resulting from low copy numbers of molecules has been the focus of earlier... because they are expressed in yeast cells in high copy numbers, a feature that makes intrinsic noise in their expression statistically insignificant. By ma...

Fitting in: Newly evolved genes adopt a variety of strategies to remain in the gene pool

...evolution When Mother Nature creates an identical copy of a gene in an organism's genome, the duplicated copy is usually deleted, inactivated, or otherwise rendered nonfunctional in order to prevent genetic red...

Scientists sequence DNA of woolly mammoth

...s it is more tractable due to its 1000-fold higher copy number per cell. However, the mitochondrial genome codes for only a tiny fraction of an organism's genetic information -- 0.0006 percent in the case of a mammal. In contrast, most hereditary information is organized on chromosomes located in the c...

From one cell, many possible cures

...s the ability to divide so as to produce a perfect copy of itself; the copy then can become a "workhorse" cell, such as a bone or nerve cell. Because the stem cell produced by ...

NIH launches comprehensive effort to explore cancer genomics

...her types of larger-scale genomic changes, such as copy number changes and/or chromosomal translocations, that contribute to cancer development and/or progression. These data from TCGA Centers will be deposited in public databases supported by NCI's cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG TM ) and the ...

Birth defects: 8 million annually worldwide

...a greater proportion of the population carries one copy of a gene for an inherited disease that confers some protection against malaria -- specifically, sickle cell, thalassemia, and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency (G6PD). When two carriers of these diseases have offspring, there is a 25 per...