Hearing loss can be caused by advancing years, or by head injuries or loud noises, all of which lead to loss of the sensory hair cells. A new gene therapy could have potential to replace the damaged hair cells, but isn’t likely to be the answer by itself. The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
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The ‘body clock’ or circadian rhythms controls things like alertness, sleep patterns, appetite and hormones, and travelling across time zones or working nights can disturb it. Researchers from the University of Sydney and from the Salk Institute have worked on how the genes behind this are controlled and their research was published in Nature.
Naturally blond hair is found almost entirely in Northern Europe and Oceania – but is it from the same gene? In the Solomon Islands, 5-10% of the population is blond and research led by Stanford University School of Medicine has shown that the mutation leading to blond hair arose separately here. The research was published in Science.
DNA gets broken, and this could give rise to cancer. However, the broken end of the DNA is able to use a similar sequence for repair, and researchers at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology have found out how this works, in a paper published in Molecular Cell.
Genome Engineering features in this month’s Carnival of Evolution, hosted by the Melbourne-based Evolving Thoughts blog. Have a read – there’s some good stuff there.
New mothers have long been told that ‘breast is best’ for their babies, and new research published in Genome Biology adds to the evidence. The researchers looked at the gut microbiome and found that breastfeeding changed the way that the babies expressed immune system genes.
A recent study, described as “landmark” by sponsor Cancer Research UK, has used genetic biomarkers to split cancer up into 10 types, based on clusters of genetic markers, and these could help predict which treatments would be more effective, and what the outcomes for patients are likely to be. Read more in FierceBiomarkers…
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have brought the $1000 genome a step closer by developing a high-speed genomic sequencing device, as part of a nearly decade-long drive by the National Human Genome Research Institute to bring the cost of sequencing a human genome down to $1,000.
According to an analysis of the nuclear DNA of polar bears, brown bears and black bears published in Science, polar bears evolved around 600,000 years ago, making them five times older than previously thought. This extra time explains how they have managed to adapt so well to the conditions of the arctic.
Following on from the creation of a cell based on a synthetic genome and the synthetic mouse mitochondrial genome in 2010, and proteins based on ‘unnatural’ DNA sequences and the poem inserted as a synthetic gene into a bacterium in 2011, the next step towards synthetic life is the creation of a synthetic genetic polymer, XNA, that is capable of heredity and evolution.
