Free Republic

A single test can identify the multitude of known sources of genetic variation underlying mismatch repair deficiency syndrome in inherited colon, endometrial, and other cancers, researchers report in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. ============================================================ Researchers have developed a new integrated genetic/epigenetic DNA-sequencing protocol known as MultiMMR that can identify the presence and cause of mismatch repair (MMR) deficiency in a single test from a small sample of DNA in colon, endometrial and other cancers. This alternative to complex, multi-step testing workflows can also determine causes of MMR deficiency often missed by current clinical tests. Their results are presented in The...

Sales for some at-home DNA testing kits are on the decline amid consumer privacy concerns. 23andMe, the home DNA-testing company, is laying off about 100 people, nearly 14 percent of its staff, the company confirmed to FOX Business Friday. The company cut staffers in its operations department in charge of growing and scaling the company as fewer people pay for genetic test results which can reveal things about their heritage or how prone they are to health conditions like type 2 diabetes or celiac disease, according to a CNBC report. The declining sales came as a surprise for CEO Anne...

Scientists believe the gene that causes red hair could die out if temperatures continue to rise Polar bears and Emperor penguins aren't the only species under threat due to climate change. Gingers could become extinct as a result of increasingly sunny skies, experts have warned. Scientists believe the gene that causes red hair is an evolutionary response to cloudy skies and allows inhabitants to get as much Vitamin D as possible. But if predictions of rising temperatures and blazing sunshine across the British Isles turn out to be correct, flaming red heads could cease to exist within centuries. While only...

I want to reflect on this new research that has been in all of the newspapers the last couple of days and has dominated the air waves on talk shows all over this fair city. I responded a little bit to the issue yesterday when Craig and I were together at Anchor Bible Bookstore. I want to be sensitive not to be redundant and not to pound this whole issue to death, but I want to make a couple of remarks on this issue, not so much to give you a concerted opinion on the research because part of my...

A new study may stimulate the old adage of respecting your elders; it says the general level of intelligence in the Western Hemisphere has declined since the Victorian Era. The study claims the IQ numbers are 14 points lower than from the 19th century. One of the authors of the study, Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis, professor of work and organizational psychology at the University of Amsterdam, says the cause of the movement toward stupidity is that smarter women have fewer children while those of lower intelligence have more children. But Dr. Gerald Crabtree, professor of pathology and developmental biology at...

In 1928, as America lurched towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin revealed his master plan - nature was to be conquered by science, Russia to be made brutally, glitteringly modern and the world transformed by communist endeavour. Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden. Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his outlandish ideas about genetic inheritance and evolution became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life...

IT really is a case of blonde ambition. Women with fair hair are more aggressive and determined to get their own way than brunettes or redheads, according to a study by the University of California. Researchers claim that blondes are more likely to display a “warlike” streak because they attract more attention than other women and are used to getting their own way — the so-called “princess effect”. Even those who dye their hair blonde quickly take on these attributes, experts found. The study could cast fresh light on the ability of Joanna Lumley, the actress and former model, to...

Children differ, as any parent of two or more knows. Some babies sleep through the night, others are always awake; some are calm, others are fussy; some walk at an early age, others after a long wait. Scientists have proved that genes are responsible for these early differences. But people assume that as children get older and spend more time under their parents’ influence, the effect of genes declines. They are wrong. For a century or more, we have understood that intelligence is largely inherited, though even today some mistakenly rail against the idea and say that nurture, not nature,...

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2008) — A group of scientists in Princeton's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology has uncovered a new biological mechanism that could provide a clearer window into a cell's inner workings. What's more, this mechanism could represent an "epigenetic" pathway -- a route that bypasses an organism's normal DNA genetic program -- for so-called Lamarckian evolution, enabling an organism to pass on to its offspring characteristics acquired during its lifetime to improve their chances for survival. Lamarckian evolution is the notion, for example, that the giraffe's long neck evolved by its continually stretching higher and higher in...

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first drug to treat a rare genetic disorder that can lead to mental retardation, possibly allowing some people to relax a regimented diet now used to control the disease. All babies born in the United States are screened for the disease, called phenylketonuria, or PKU. To avoid damage to the brain, people with the disease must adhere to a strict low-protein diet, particularly in childhood but also later in life. The new drug, called Kuvan, “will be life-changing for some patients,” said Dr. Stephen D. Cederbaum, a professor at the University...

JAMES WATSON, the 1962 Nobel laureate, recently asserted that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” and its citizens because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.” Dr. Watson’s remarks created a huge stir because they implied that blacks were genetically inferior to whites, and the controversy resulted in his resignation as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. But was he right? Is there a genetic difference between blacks and whites that condemns blacks in perpetuity to be less intelligent?...

Two teams of scientists are reporting today that they turned human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without having to make or destroy an embryo — a feat that could quell the ethical debate troubling the field. All they had to do, the scientists said, was add four genes. The genes reprogrammed the chromosomes of the skin cells, making the cells into blank slates that should be able to turn into any of the 220 cell types of the human body, be it heart, brain, blood or bone. Until now, the only way to get such...

AT a conference in Cambridge, Mass., in 1988 called “How the Brain Works,” Francis Crick suggested that neuroscientific understanding would move further along if only he and his colleagues were allowed to experiment on prisoners. You couldn’t tell if he was kidding, and Crick being Crick, he probably didn’t care. Emboldened by a Nobel Prize in 1962 for helping uncoil the secret of life, Dr. Crick, who died in 2004, wasn’t shy about offering bold opinions — including speculations that life might have been seeded on Earth as part of an experiment by aliens. The notion, called directed panspermia, had...

The gap between the health of New Yorkers living in poverty and those with higher incomes has widened since the early 1990s, according to a survey released yesterday. It found that residents of poor neighborhoods in the city are experiencing alarming rates of diabetes and steady increases in other chronic illnesses like heart disease, while other residents have seen slower increases or even declines. Health disparities are not new, but experts say the report by the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., sharply underscores a greater gulf. It also shows a costly and dangerous trend in health care today: preventable...

One of the longest-running controversies in history has been that between those who believe intelligence to be inherited and those who see it as determined by environment. If time has not resolved that question, it has at least led to sharper definitions of the question and a muting of some of the dogmatism among those on both sides of this issue. The eugenics movement of the early 20th century was based on the fear that, since people of lower mental ability tended to have more children than people of higher mental ability, the average level of the nation's intelligence would...

Variations in two genes may increase the likelihood that a person will report suicidal thoughts after taking an antidepressant, researchers reported yesterday. The finding could help doctors develop tests to predict which patients will do well on such medications and which will react badly. The authors of the study, which was released to reporters yesterday and will appear in The American Journal of Psychiatry on Monday, said that the findings were preliminary and would need to be verified by further testing. The study focused on reactions to only one drug, Celexa from Forest Laboratories, and found no link between the...

Seven of the largest pharmaceutical companies have formed a group to develop genetic tests to determine which patients would be at risk from dangerous drug side effects. The new group, the International Serious Adverse Events Consortium, is one of a wave of cooperative research efforts sweeping the drug industry, as companies come under pressure to cut costs and increase their success rates in developing medications. The Food and Drug Administration has encouraged the formation of such groups. If drugs could be withheld from patients who have a genetic risk for serious side effects, it could not only protect the patients...

Could people one day evolve to eat rich food while remaining perfectly slim and svelte? This may not be so wild a fantasy. It is becoming clear that the human genome does respond to changes in diet, even though it takes many generations to do so. Researchers studying the enzyme that converts starch to simple sugars like glucose have found that people living in countries with a high-starch diet produce considerably more of the enzyme than people who eat a low-starch diet. The reason is an evolutionary one. People in high-starch countries have many extra copies of the amylase gene...

Researchers have discovered the genetic flaws that underlie a major type of glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness. By pinpointing what goes wrong, their finding may provide a basis for devising new treatments. The finding is part of a continuing wave of discoveries about the genes underlying common diseases. The wave began this spring as researchers reported the first results using a new device, DNA-scanning chips containing information on up to 500,000 genetically variable sites across the human genome. By comparing the genomes of patients with those of people in good health, researchers can identify which of the variable sites...

A patient has died in a study of an experimental gene therapy, the Food and Drug Administration reported yesterday. The agency said it was investigating the death to determine whether the treatment was to blame. The case could be another setback for gene therapy, a field with a troubled history and numerous treatment failures, including the death of a teenager in 1999 in an experiment. The new therapy being tested, made by Targeted Genetics of Seattle, is a virus-based product injected directly in the joints in hope of relieving active inflammatory arthritis. That chronic condition can affect multiple joints and...