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.
RNA archive.
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.
Under the Baltimore classification, viruses can be classified into DNA viruses and RNA viruses – but this may be overturned by the discovery of a virus with a DNA-RNA hybrid genome, according to a paper published in Biology Direct.
Personalised medicine doesn’t get much more personal than this. For more than two years, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have been focusing on one person’s genetic profile – that of their colleague and fellow geneticist, Dr Michael Snyder.
Hints and tips from Nature Protocols
On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… ten lords-a-leaping. Transposons, also known as transposable elements or jumping genes, are small stretches of DNA that can move around the genome.
Welcome to the Genome Engineering game for December – EteRNA. The aim is to design RNA and create the first large-scale library of synthetic RNA designs – and have fun.
Researchers have made a step forward in the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy, a serious genetic disorder, by using a stretch of RNA to trigger mice into producing a back-up version of a missing protein.
Because bacteria don’t reproduce sexually, and so do not have the opportunity to produce offspring with new genetic material, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) – bacteria acquiring DNA from other organisms – is an important part of bacterial evolution. In a letter in Nature, researchers have shown that this genetic juggling happens in the human microbiome.
Genetic analysis in leukaemia has a number of different roles – diagnosis, monitoring the progress of therapy, and predicting relapse, which allows the initiation of pre-emptive therapy. The type of test used depends on the stage and type of disease and the level of sensitivity required. Joanne Mason, of the West Midlands Regional Genetics Laboratory, presented data at Planet xMAP on an in vitro test to identify chromosomal aberrations.
