Genome Engineering

Science Parody of the Year 2012

Suzanne Elvidge — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:00:19 +0000

It's Friday again – have a look at BioTechniques' Lab Grammys 2012: Science Parody of the Year (with thanks to American Biotechnologist).

Gene therapy for hearing loss

Suzanne Elvidge — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:24:33 +0000

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.

Hints & tips: FusionAnalyser – a graphical tool for fusion rearrangements discovery

Suzanne Elvidge — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:29:12 +0000

Hints & tips from Nucleic Acids Research: FusionAnalyser - a new graphical, event-driven tool for fusion rearrangements discovery.

Hints & tips: Top 8 reasons for high background noise on your western blot

Suzanne Elvidge — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:02:22 +0000

Hints & tips from American Biotechnologist: Top 8 reasons for high background noise on your western blot.

The Genome Engineering Game for May – Cut It Out

Suzanne Elvidge — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:00:02 +0000

It's Friday, so have a break and play the Genome Engineering game for May – Cut It Out.

Genes and body clocks

Suzanne Elvidge — Mon, 07 May 2012 04:00:08 +0000

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.

The beard-ome

Suzanne Elvidge — Sat, 05 May 2012 04:00:31 +0000

After the genome, the proteome and the lipidome, now the beard-ome…

Blond gene in Melanesia: Fair hair is not just from Europe

Suzanne Elvidge — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:24:41 +0000

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.

A blood test that writes down its own results

Suzanne Elvidge — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:30:51 +0000

Not really a story about genetics or genomics, but a nice piece of science. In JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry writes a question and gets the answer in writing on the pages of a diary. A team of Australian researchers have developed a blood test, published in Angewandte Chemie, where the blood type results appear in plain text.

Repairing broken DNA

Suzanne Elvidge — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:34:50 +0000

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.