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Enlarged hearts are found often, but not exclusively, in those who are obese, have diabetes or high blood pressure. People with none of these underlying problems can be affected, as can elite athletes. For example, a post-mortem diagnosed the problem in Cameroon football midfielder Marc-Vivien Foe, who died in 2003 after collapsing during an international match […]
A nationwide team of researchers, funded in part by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has produced the first sequence-based map of large-scale structural variation across the human genome.
Recently created maps such as the HapMap have catalogued the patterns of small-scale variations in the genome that […]
KQED Public Broadcasting in San Francisco recently did a radio story about the UC San Francisco Canine Behavioral Genetics Project run in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania. The aims of the project are:
1. To explore the relationship between genes and behavior, both normal and abnormal, in domestic dogs.
2. To assess the amount and nature […]
Charles Darwin
Following my recent article about Darwin’s 150th Anniversary, the first draft of his book, “The Origin of Species” which changed the world’s attitude to evolution is available for the first time online. Papers which led to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution were previously only available to scholars at Cambridge University’s library.
This release makes his private papers, mountains […]
In January, The New England Journal of Medicine published an article criticizing the popularization of genetic testing by companies such as 23andme, deCode, Navigenics and Knome who doctors believe are introducing genetic testing prematurely into a commercial setting and confusing public and medics alike. The authors of this article coined the phrase ‘recreational genomics’ for this type of testing.
While […]
‘Clover structure’ of Transfer RNA
Transfer RNA (tRNA) is ancient. It is the most direct intermediary between genes and proteins. Like many other RNAs (ribonucleic acids), tRNA aids in translating genes into the chains of amino acids that make up proteins. The fact that tRNA is so central to the task of building proteins probably means […]
(Image courtesy of www.ustc.edu.cn)
Latest news from the GenomeWeb:
“The Beijing Genomics Institute at Shenzhen announced that it is launching an International Giant Panda Genome Project.
Scientists at BGI-Shenzhen plan to sequence a panda to be selected from the Chengdu and Wolong breeding centers using high-throughput sequencing technology. They hope to have a draft genome sequence assembled within six […]
Galileo’s tomb
Over 360 years ago Galileo died living as a recluse in Italy, a convicted heretic. His crime - he fell foul of the religious authorities of the day by arguing that the Earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. His theory was subsequently found to be perfectly true.
Italian researchers, led by Prof Paulo Galluzzi, want to […]
(The Smiling Faces of Boddhastavas, Cambodia)
Ever the eternal optimist, here’s a piece of research which I can really relate to … Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh working with researchers at Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Australia found that happiness is partly determined by personality traits and that both personality and happiness are largely hereditary.
Rating personalities with […]
Further to my various articles on our ancestry, differences in gene expression levels between people of European versus African ancestry appear to affect how each group responds to certain drugs or fights off specific infections, report researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center and the Expression Research Laboratory at Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, CA.
The researchers […]
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