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Scientists in Canada and Scotland have developed a virus-free method for generating embryonic-like stem cells that does not involve destroying embryos. Scientists say the new approach to growing so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells is an important step toward creating safe and reliable populations of cells for research and therapy. To create iPS cells, researchers turn back the clock in mature cells. They do this by reactivating dormant genes associated with pluripotency--a primitive state in which a cell has the potential to become any cell type in the body. Scientists first introduced iPS cells in 2006 and since then have...

DNA left overs, new mechanism for evolution Friday, 16-Jul-2004, by News-Medical   A team of researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has discovered that transposons, small DNA sequences that travel through the genomes, can silence the genes adjacent to them by inducing a molecule called antisense RNA. This is a new mechanism for evolution that has been unknown until now. Transposons are repeated DNA sequences that move through the genomes. For a long time they have been considered as a useless part of genetic material, DNA left overs. However, it is more and more clear that transposons...