Category: Genetics

Identifying biomarkers for the key environmental risk factors responsible for two diseases that significantly contribute to death and disease of hundreds of thousands annually will be the initial focus of a new center being established at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. PNNL will house the Center for Novel Biomarkers of Response, made possible by a $5.9 million grant recently awarded by the National Institutes of Health’s Gene and Environment Initiative.

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have figured out how human and all animal cells tune in to a key signal, one that literally transmits the instructions that shape their final bodies. It turns out the cells assemble their own little radio antenna on their surfaces to help them relay the proper signal to the developmental proteins “listening” on the inside of the cell.

An international team has opened a virtual bazaar, called PAZAR, which allows biologists to share information about gene regulation through individually managed ’boutiques’ (data collections). According to research published in the online open access journal, Genome Biology, customers can access data without any charge from any boutique or extract information from the ’superstores’ that aggregate data of similar types.

A team of UAB geneticists, doctors and biostatisticians has received $5.7 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to study and test new treatments for neurofibromatosis, or NF.UAB is the lead research center in a nine-institution group called the NF Consortium. The coalition formed more than two years ago to design and manage multiple clinical trials held across the nation looking at new and more effective therapeutic options for adults and children diagnosed with NF.

Neuroscientists at Vanderbilt University are stepping into the national limelight with the establishment of a Silvio O. Conte Center for Neuroscience Research.The new center, funded by a $10 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), will support interdisciplinary studies aimed at understanding the gene networks that control serotonin systems in the brain.

The ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI) announced that it has completed the first phase of a comprehensive gene expression database for ALS with the profiling of the SOD1 mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The second phase, profiling of human samples, is scheduled for completion by February of 2008.

A popular prostate cancer treatment called androgen deprivation therapy may encourage prostate cancer cells to produce a protein that makes them more likely to spread throughout the body, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests.

UC Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering has been awarded $2.18 million to blend traditional DNA sequencing techniques with cutting-edge nanotechnology to develop a faster and less costly method of analysis. The goal is to make DNA sequencing feasible as a routine part of health care.

Microscopic worms used for scientific research are living longer despite cellular defects, a discovery that is shedding light on how the human body ages and how doctors could one day limit or reverse genetic mutations that cause inherited diseases, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.In the first formal study of its kind, researchers manipulated the metabolic state of genetically engineered lab worms called C.

New research is giving scientists fresh insights into how genetics are a prime factor in how we learn.Michael Frank, an assistant professor of psychology and director of the Laboratory for Neural Computation and Cognition at The University of Arizona, headed a team whose results are reported in the Oct. 1 issue of Early Edition, an online site hosted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.