ScienceDaily: Genetics

Scientists map changes in genetic networks caused by DNA damage

December 8, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2010) — Using a new technology called “differential epistasis maps,” an international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has documented for the first time how a cellular genetic network completely rewires itself in response to stress by DNA-damaging agents.
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Plants ‘remember’ winter to bloom in spring with help of special molecule

December 8, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2010) — The role a key molecule plays in a plant’s ability to remember winter, and therefore bloom in the spring, has been identified by University of Texas at Austin scientists.
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Gene mapping to help with poultry egg quality problems

December 7, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2010) — Quantitative trait loci affecting egg quality — albumen thickness, blood and meat spots, fishy taint and shell durability — were identified through the mapping of the chicken genome. The results of a recent doctoral study enhance the efficiency of chicken breeding.
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Plants engineered to produce new drugs

December 7, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2010) — Humans have long taken advantage of the huge variety of medicinal compounds produced by plants. Now MIT chemists have found a new way to expand plants’ pharmaceutical repertoire by genetically engineering them to produce unnatural variants of their usual products.
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‘Clueless’ housekeeping genes are activated randomly, study finds

December 6, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2010) — Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have made an unexpected finding about the method by which certain genes are activated. Contrary to what researchers have traditionally assumed, genes that work with other genes to build protein structures do not act in a coordinated way but...
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Protein essential for cell division in blood-forming stem cells discovered

December 6, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2010) — University of Michigan researchers have discovered that a protein known to regulate cellular metabolism is also necessary for normal cell division in blood-forming stem cells. Loss of the protein results in an abnormal number of chromosomes and a high rate of cell death.
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New approach to blocking malaria transmission developed

December 6, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2010) — University of Illinois at Chicago researcher Dr. John Quigley will describe a promising new approach to blocking malaria transmission during the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
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Commonly used antibodies tested: Resulting database to yield big gains for genetic scientists

December 6, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2010) — If a strand of your DNA was stretched out completely, it would be more than six feet long. It’s hard to imagine that it can fit inside the nucleus of one of your cells, but that’s exactly how it works.
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Tooth decay to be a thing of the past? Enzyme responsible for dental plaque sticking to teeth deciphered

December 4, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2010) — The Groningen professors Bauke Dijkstra and Lubbert Dijkhuizen have deciphered the structure and functional mechanism of the glucansucrase enzyme that is responsible for dental plaque sticking to teeth. This knowledge will stimulate the identification of substances that inhibit the enzyme. Just add that substance to toothpaste, or even sweets,...
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New prion discovery reveals drug target for mad cow disease and related illnesses

December 4, 2010
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 1, 2010) — In a new research report in the December 2010 print issue of The FASEB Journal, scientists found that a protein our body uses to break up blood clots speeds up the progress of prion diseases. This substance, called plasminogen, is a new drug target for prion diseases in both...
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