40 new species of fish have been found in Lake Mweru in East Africa. Breeding of related lineages may have allowed the cichlids to rapidly evolve to fill different ecological niches. Continue reading New Fish Species and Rapid Evolution Found in African Lake
Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital engineered a unique medicine to treat a young girl’s disease: they reverse engineered a blocker from her DNA to inhibit the gene causing the disease. Continue reading Individual Genetic Medicine Helps Treat Genetic Disease
CRISPR genome editing has been used to study the biology of a number of species, but its use in reptiles has been difficult to achieve. Scientists have now figured this out, and albino lizards are the product! Read Ben Andreone’s article to learn more! Continue reading Albino Lizards are the First Ever Genome Edited Reptiles
by Layla Siraj figures by Rebecca Senft Imagine if you could tell, through some combination of your environment and your genetics, what illnesses you might develop. This could give you the ability to either prevent these illnesses before they even happen or catch and treat the illnesses early enough to prevent long-lasting effects. This reality is one step closer with the release of the UK … Continue reading From Genes to Disease: the release of the UK Biobank
by Marina Watanabe figures by Elayne Fivenson Hours after giving birth, my sister sent a picture of her newborn baby to our family group text. In what I can only assume was a painkiller-induced haze, she wrote, “The baby looks exactly like me!!!” The baby did not look exactly like her. The baby, like all newborn babies, looked exactly like a potato. This idea of … Continue reading I Didn’t Get It from My Mama: Children with DNA almost exclusively from their dads
Proteins are made up of linear sequences of amino acids but understanding how these amino acids fold to form a three-dimensional structure is notoriously difficult. Knowing what a protein looks like in 3D is often necessary for understanding how it functions and how it can be manipulated. For instance, understanding how proteins such as antibodies bind to viruses like the flu would enable scientists to … Continue reading Genetic tools create new opportunities for decoding protein structures
by Valentina Lagomarsino figures by Sean Wilson Nearly four months ago, Chinese researcher He Jiankui announced that he had edited the genes of twin babies with CRISPR. CRISPR, also known as CRISPR/Cas9, can be thought of as “genetic scissors” that can be programmed to edit DNA in any cell. Last year, scientists used CRISPR to cure dogs of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. This was a huge step forward for … Continue reading Arrival of Gene-Edited Babies: What lies ahead?
In December 2018, a Chinese researcher, He Jiankui, shocked the world when he revealed the birth of the world’s first genetically edited babies. While it is clear that Jiankui egregiously violated university regulations and ethical standards, his announcement has since ignited a heated international dialogue about the permissibility of human embryonic gene editing. Currently, there are scientists in the United States working in university laboratories, … Continue reading Genetic editing of human embryos in the United States ignites debate
Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center have found evidence in three families for inheritance of mitochondrial DNA from both mothers and fathers, in contrast to the conventional belief that this genetic transmission is exclusively maternal. This discovery opens new doorways in molecular biology and genetics to understand this inheritance pattern, and properly harnessing the process could dramatically reduce chances of inheriting mitochondrial disorders. Continue reading A Joint Effort: Inheritance of Mitochondrial DNA from Both Parents
Influenza A is the virus responsible for the Spanish Flu pandemic, which wiped out 3-5% of the human population in the early 20th century. The annual influenza outbreak occurs in the autumn and winter, although it is not normally deadly for healthy adults. There is currently no vaccine providing permanent protection against influenza A because the virus mutates and changes so often, requiring a yearly … Continue reading The Actual Master of Disguise: The Flu