New Evidence For Corn's Ancestry Could Lead To Insect And Drought Resistant Crops
... were present in the offspring. She workedwith key heritable DNA markers that other scientists -- including her principaldetractor -- had previously identified as being crucial in the evolutionof domestic corn. Her new report in Theoretical and Applied Genetics shows someof those markers have now been "stab...University Of Washington Scientists Discover A Gene That Causes Deafness And Dizziness In Mice
...extend their studies ondeafwaddler mice to examine heritable forms of deafness and vertigo in humans. "We study the genes that cause deafness in mice because we can controlthe genetic background of mice, thereby allowing us to make the jump to humansfrom a well-examined model organism," said Tempel. St...Wistar Scientists Locate Genes Involved In Mammalian Tissue Regeneration
...arsthat, in inbred mice, this type of healing is a heritable trait. By screening the entire mouse genome, Dr. Heber-Katz's laboratory, working incollaboration with immunogeneticist, Elizabeth Blankenhorn, Ph.D., of theAllegheny University of the Health Sciences, has identified multiple regions onfive different...Deadly to cattle and humans, prions may help other organisms survive, researchers find
...his new trait will be passed on as well. Normally, heritable changes in protein function result from mutations in an organism's DNA. Such mutations might be beneficial under certain environmental conditions, say high temperatures, but once the DNA has mutated, the organism cannot readily revert to its original...Researchers show that proteins can transmit heritable traits
...much a genetic element as DNA. After all, they are heritable entities that span generations and influence a cell's phenotype in a predictable way." In both studies, Lindquist's research team worked with yeast proteins known as "prions," which they and others had previously discovered could transmit different...Warman named to Hughes Institute
...tain human joints and their potential for treating heritable and acquired forms of the disease. This is the second year in a row that a CWRU researcher has received this award. Last year, Dennis Templeton, associate professor of pathology, was one of nine researchers in the United States to receive it for his...Prions may play crucial role in evolution.
... well in altered environments. "We found that a heritable genetic element based on protein folding, not encoded in DNA or RNA, allows yeast to acquire many silent changes in their genome and suddenly reveal them," said Susan Lindquist, Ph.D., professor of molecular genetics and cell biology at the Universit...The silence of the clones: new link between DNA replication and 'silent' chromosome architecture
... several mutations in the PCNA gene, POL30, on the heritable transcriptional silencing that occours at the telomeres and the mating-type loci in yeast. They found that six different pol30 mutant alleles reduced silencing at these chromosomal locations. Thus, Stillman and his colleagues have established that in......tions found off Earth. That will mean writing new, heritable traits into the plants' genetic code. In the proce... Eventually they envisage engineering some sort of heritable sensing apparatus. Looking further ahead, some of the discussions even delved into the concept of de...New research confirms that natural selection is acting on the current human population
...fect of the baby boom, the researchers still found heritable genetic differences in three key life history trai...ocial factors, there was still lots of genetically heritable genetic variation in the three life history traits. This is a really unexpected finding. However, he...New statistical method links multiple genes to common complex diseases
...enetic" diseases are recognizable because they are heritable and so cluster in certain families. An example is hereditary breast cancer, which accounts for less than 10 percent of all breast cancer cases. It is highly associated with the action of mutations in one of two genes. On the other hand, most common ...New finding may identify unknown agents of mad-cow disease
...s the process again. Prions are thus infective and heritable without containing DNA or RNA as viruses do. According to Liebman, the finding that one prion can help start the chain reaction in another, totally different protein is important, because much more is known about how prions propagate than about how t...... identical. However, when one of the copies has a heritable defect, hybrid tetramers form that are composed of mutant and normal subunits. The inclusion of mutated subunits makes the tetramer less stable and causes the four subunits to dissociate under conditions where they are not supposed to. Once the subun...Researchers describe atomic-size 'sorter' that performs vital cellular function
...stic fibrosis, for example, one of the most common heritable diseases in Caucasian populations, is caused by an abnormality of a chloride ion channel.......cal explanations. Family studies suggest a major heritable contribution to ADHD, but the mode of inheritance remains obscure. To date, the search for actual genes involved focused mainly on the dopamine system, with some findings suggesting a possible involvement of dopaminergic genes in risk for ADHD. ...Another transmembrane protein structure solved by Rockefeller scientists
...nisms from bacteria to humans, is linked with some heritable diseases of the muscles and kidney. Mutations in another kind of chloride channel, called the CFTR, are responsible for cystic fibrosis, the most common genetic disease in Caucasian populations. There are many varieties of ion channels. A cousin to t...Researchers link gene to hereditary form of prostate cancer
...Human Genome Research Institute. "The discovery of heritable inactivating mutations in a specific gene is an exciting step towards understanding the causes of this common and devastating form of cancer. Ultimately, this should bring us closer to better diagnosis, prevention, and cure." This discovery will...Making sense of Marfan syndrome
...inally characterized in 1896, Marfan syndrome is a heritable disorder of the connective tissue, which usually affects the skeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, and ocular systems, and is commonly associated with tall stature and markedly long limbs. In 1991 scientists discovered that Marfan syndrome is caused...Breeding programs should incorporate mate choice
...ural breeding system, mate choice, and variance in heritable viability," says Wedekind....... forms of breast and other cancers, in contrast to heritable forms of cancer, which account for a relatively small percentage of the disease. Importantly, the researchers showed that production of the Dbc2 protein in breast cancer cells kills the cancer cells or stops them from growing. The study--to be publis...