An international research collaboration including research teams from the Children's Hospital in Boston (USA), King's College London and the Peninsula Medical School, has identified a gene that, when mutated, causes Duane syndrome. The research is published in the latest edition of Science. Duane syndrome is a congenital eye movement disorder that causes eye muscles to contract and relax when they should not.

Steroids bulk up plants just as they do human athletes, but the playbook of molecular signals that tell the genes to boost growth and development in plant cells is far more complicated than in human and animal cells. A new study by plant biologists at the Carnegie Institution used an emerging molecular approach called proteomics to identify key links in the steroid signaling chain.

Age may not be rust after all. Specific genetic instructions drive aging in worms, report researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Their discovery contradicts the prevailing theory that aging is a buildup of tissue damage akin to rust, and implies science might eventually halt or even reverse the ravages of age. "We were really surprised," said Stuart Kim, PhD, professor of developmental biology and of genetics, who is the senior author of the research.