Pig

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

In experiments with mice, a team of scientists from the United States, Sweden and Japan has discovered that having a double dose of one protein is sufficient to change the normal balance of cells within the lining of the colon, thereby doubling the risk that a cancer-causing genetic mutation will trigger a tumor there. Roughly 10 percent of people have this double protein dose as well. In...

Emory Eye Center Implants Its First Retinal Chips In Patients With Retinitis Pigmentosa

An expanded clinical trial conducted by Optobionics Corporation involving the implantation of a retina mircrochip has allowed Emory Eye Center and the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Research & Development Center to implant the device in several patients. The patients all have retinitis pigmentosa with moderate-to-severe vision loss. Three centers in the United States have been chosen...

Precise Timing Enabled Pig-to-rat Transplants To Cure Diabetes

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have learned that a temporal "window of opportunity" was critical to their earlier successes in treating diabetic rats with embryonic pig tissues. In those experiments, published in 2004, researchers were surprised to find that they didn't have to give anti-rejection drugs to diabetic rats treated with embryonic pig cell...

Public release of pig genomic sequences

Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Danish Committee of Pig Breeding and Production (DCPBP) jointly announce the public release of pig genomic sequences. The released sequence data include 3.84 million pieces of the genomes of five different domestic pig breeds from Europe and China. The data are generated from the first large scale pig genome sequenc...

Brazilians sequence genes of pig and poultry killers

Brazilian researchers have sequenced the genomes of two bacteria that cause significant damage to pig and poultry farming in Brazil and elsewhere. Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae causes pneumonia in pigs and costs the B...

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

A Johns Hopkins researcher, with colleagues in Sweden and at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, suggests that the traditional view of cancer as a group of diseases with markedly different biological properties arising from a series of alterations within a cell's nuclear DNA may have to give way to a more complicated view. In the January issue of Nature Reviews Genetics, available online...

Researchers create pigs that produce heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids

In diverse ecosystems, packed with wildly different species, evolution whizzes along. As different species accumulate mutations, some adapt particularly well to their environment and prosper. It happens in marine sediments, mountain forests ?and, as a new study illustrates, in precancerous tumors, too. In a study published online today in Nature Genetics, Carlo Maley, Ph.D., a researcher a...

Illinois pig to make history as source of first complete swine genome

A pig used for research at the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign has a home in history. Its DNA will provide the first sequence of the swine genome to be completed with the help of a two-year $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced today (Jan. 13) by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. Lawrence B. Schook, a professor of animal sciences at Illinois and co...

Pigeons provide clue to solving common problem in heart patients

Through studying pigeons with genetic heart disease, researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have discovered a clue about why some patients' heart vessels are prone to close back up after angioplasty. "We identified a regulator of genes that controls the growth of artery smooth muscle cells," said William Wagner, Ph.D., senior researcher. "Learning to modulate the uncont...

In a technical tour de force, Salk scientists take a global view of the epigenome

A collaboration between researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California at Los Angeles captured the genome-wide DNA methylation pattern of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana - the "laboratory rat" of the plant world - in one big sweep. "In a single experiment we recapitulated 20 years worth of anecdotal findings and then some," says senior author Jos...

Successful transplantation from pig embryos to mice

Millions of diabetics face a lifetime of daily injections to replace the insulin their bodies fail to produce, as well as a host of risks that includes blindness, amputation, kidney failure, and heart disease. For many, particularly those afflicted with juvenile diabetes, transplants of the pancreatic tissue in which insulin is produced might alleviate these problems. Unfortunately, there are not...

Researchers report technique for freezing and preserving genetically enhanced pig embryos

Researchers led by a University of Missouri-Columbia professor of reproductive biotechnology have reported success in freezing and preserving swine embryos that were created by in vitro techniques and that carried modified genetic material. After thawing and transfer to a surrogate mother, some of the embryos went on to produce live piglets with new genetic traits. In a paper posted today...

A healthier start to a pig's life

Weaning is a problematic time for pigs, especially in intensive production. Piglets commonly become susceptible to bacterial infections, restricting their growth rate; and often leading to losses of 10% or more. The antibiotics used routinely for many years to control these rapidly-spreading infections have now fallen out of use, mainly due to the increase in resistant strains of bacteria. <...

Homing pigeons get their bearings from their beaks

It has long been recognized that birds possess the ability to use the Earth’s magnetic field for their navigation, although just how this is done has not yet been clarified. However, the discovery of iron-containing structures in the beaks of homing pigeons in a new study (1) by Gerta Fleissner and her colleagues at the University of Frankfurt offers a promising insight into this complex topic....

Hepatitis E takes a piggyback

Pigs carry hepatitis E virus (HEV), which they can pass on to humans. But now research from Japan published in Online Open Access journal BMC Veterinary Research says that pigs get HEV early enough to minimise the risk of human infection. The scenario humans need to worry about would occur if the infection rate in pigs drops. At low infection rates, there is actually a higher chance pigs will pas...