Archive for the ‘Genetics’ Category
When should I start reading to my baby?
It is never too early to start. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends reading aloud to your baby every day, from 6 months of age. At this stage your baby will really enjoy looking at books with you. But there is experts that consider that you can begin since your boy is a newborn. Whatever your child’s age, reading offers you the chance to cuddle with you and strengthen emotional ties.
How does it benefit my baby to read?
Reading to your child helps you expand vocabulary, stimulate their imagination and improve their communication skills. In fact, talk to your baby from day one is good for him. Research has shown that a baby’s language skills, and even intelligence are related to the amount of words he hear every day. No matter what you talk: you can tell what they are called parts of the body when he bathe or tell who live in homes in your neighborhood when he stroll. Reading is another fun way to add variety to your conversation. Read the rest of this entry »
The ant red, an invasive species that plague several countries including the U.S., hidden in their DNA path expansion. An international group of researchers has put an end to secrecy, and has published the details in an article in the journal Science.
The route is as follows, according to scientists, led by Marina Ascunce, the Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology in Gainesville (USA): left Argentina and came to America, settling in the south of the country for more than 90 years. From this home base they traveled to California, the Caribbean, China, Taiwan and Australia in at least nine separate invasions.
Details of the fire ant is essential to control the pest. It is estimated that the economic impact caused by this species amounts to more than six billion dollars in the U.S. only. Read the rest of this entry »
The idea that everybody has on yeast is used to make beer and bread or if it is a bit more complex (fungi) or eat or annoys you on your feet … Well, there’s more behind a simple yeast. This has been an organization that has been in use in biomedical research from a few decades ago. The reason is an overwhelming logic: it is a very simple organism with which it is relatively easy and inexpensive work.
Yeasts are simple eukaryotic organisms. Unicellular (they are as is, a cell, and are not more complex organs) and these are many proteins that can be found in human cells. These proteins are those responsible for carrying out the functions necessary for a cell function (such as workers in a factory). In this sense it can be studied with different processes that occur in human cells studying these proteins in common but in a more accessible form. For example, are used for research on cancer.
A common feature of tumor cells is that divide without control whatsoever. In them the mechanisms to ensure that everything goes well when a cell multiplies by dividing into two is damaged. The proteins that are responsible for this are very important for the survival of the cell and also can be found in yeast. Studying these proteins in yeast are obtained responses on their operation to be used by researchers working with the tumor cells themselves to understand the tumor cell itself. Read the rest of this entry »
Give the bacteria that make us sick a taste of their own medicine, or in this case, its own toxin, and kill them. A study published in the journal opens the way for the development of new antibiotics more effective.
Many types of bacteria they attack us with toxins designed to kidnap or kill host cells. The bacteria could be damaged by these toxins, but it does not happen because they have self-protective mechanisms. The investigators, headed by Craig L. Smith, a post doc researcher at the University School of Medicine in St. Louis (Washington) have described one of these mechanisms and believe it could be used to find a way to disable it. Read the rest of this entry »
Frequent consumption of cocaine causes long-lasting changes in genes expressed in a region of the brain associated with rewards. The authors of the study, researchers from Rockefeller University and Mount Sinai School of Medicine, both in New York (USA) suggest that these genetic changes may affect permanent changes in behavior have been detected in the addicts to cocaine.
The researchers, led by Ian Maze, Rockefeller University, examined genetic markers known as H3K9me3, which are responsible for silencing the expression of the DNA regions between genes.
Maze’s team found that mice exposed to cocaine repeatedly expressed markers H3K9me3 less so in unexposed mice. In addition, the effect persisted even a week after he had left to administer cocaine to mice.
After drug use, however, the number of markers in mice was decreased. The scientists also found that some brain regions associated with rewards that were not expressed genes, the nucleus accumbens, were activated. Read the rest of this entry »
Each implant (A) is produced in laboratories in a network of polymers until they are replaced by proteins and tissues are formed (B). It then removes the cellular material is a tube of extracellular matrix (C) there is implanted to the patient (D and E).
Engineered blood vessels grown in record time for patients undergoing heart surgery. It is the result of work done by a team of U.S. researchers published the details in an article in the journal Science.
Blood vessels or vascular grafts can be prepared well in advance so they can be ready when surgeons needed. More than half a million people could benefit from this development each year, according to its leaders, represented by Shannon Dahl, Humacyte, a company specializing in tissue culture. Until now, there was the possibility of growing blood vessels from patient’s own cells. Read the rest of this entry »
A new molecule that finds and invades cells infected with HIV and avoids healthy immune cells, like a guided missile. So it has got a team of several U.S. research centers, who publish their work in an article in Science magazine Translational Medicine. The finding opens the hope of an alternative treatment for AIDS patients unresponsive to standard therapies.
Those responsible article, led by John J. Rossi and Ramesh Akkina, used small inhibitory RNA (siRNA). These molecules of double strand RNA, short, are capable of interfering with the expression of a specific gene. Despite its ability to attack with precision cells and molecules, the siRNA have shown limited success as therapeutic agents. When injected into an organism, the siRNA tend to be destroyed in the blood, sometimes causing the body’s own immune defenses in the process. Read the rest of this entry »
Our friends are more like us than we think. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) ensures that friends have genetic similarities and some differences, which may explain the phenomenon of “opposites attract”.
Those responsible for the work, a team led by James Fowler, a social scientist at the University of California at San Diego (USA), analyzed the data available in six genes of about 5,000 people enrolled in independent studies. Also showed variation in a specific point, or single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in each gene and compared it with friends and not friends.
After analyzing the genetic similarity due to issues of gender, age, race or common descent, the researchers found that friends tend to have the same SNP in a position of a gene, DRD2, which codes for the dopamine D2 receptor, a neurotransmitter in the nervous system. Friends also showed greater variation in a position in a gene, CYP2A6, that non-friends. Read the rest of this entry »
If your father went on a diet high in fat have more chances of developing diabetes type 2. So says a study published in Nature, demonstrates for the first time a non-genetic factor, the food, the male can pass on to the next generation.
In reaching this conclusion, the investigators, led by Margaret Morris of the University of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia), performed an experiment with rats. Male animals fed a diet high in fat, they produced a great obesity and impaired glucose tolerance, diabetes basis of the problem. After crossing with normal females, female offspring were also diabetic.
In principle, the study only shows that this transmission is the male parent to his daughters, but Morris believes that this risk would be the same with the male. Read the rest of this entry »
If you enjoy strawberry ice cream and chocolate, or based on food and stock both, this is your news. Two separate research teams have deciphered the genome sequence of the cacao tree and wild strawberry. This work may allow further improve its quality, performance or resistance.
On the one hand, a team backed by the multinational Mars released a draft sequence of the tree of cacao, Theobroma cacao. Soon after, a team supported in part by rival chocolatier Hershey Company, has been the first to sequence the genome of the plant, a work published in an article in the journal Nature Genetics. Read the rest of this entry »