Reporting this week in the Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have uncovered for the first time molecular circuitry associated with schizophrenia that links three previously known, yet unrelated proteins. "This is very exciting because until now the many known genetic factors implicated in this condition were not connected in any way," says Akira Sawa, M.D., Ph.D.
The many recent reports documenting the therapeutic efficacy of short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) in animal models of human disease may actually be describing non-specific therapeutic effects related to the ability of siRNA to activate an immune response, according to a paper in the September 2008 issue (Volume 19, Number 9) of Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
Humans live in societies consisting of a number of levels, from core social groups of 3-5 close relatives termed support cliques to larger, looser aggregations such as tribes that contain over 1000 individuals. Recent research has shown that these networks have a consistent structure; each subsequent level of the networks is 3-4 times the size of the preceding smaller grouping level.
UCSF scientists have discovered that a gene controlling whether blood vessels differentiate into arteries or veins during embryonic development is linked to a vascular disorder in the brain that causes stroke.
September 3, 2008
Virus Weaves Itself Into The DNA Transferred From Parents To Babies
Parents expect to pass on their eye or hair color, their knobby knees or their big feet to their children through their genes. But they don't expect to pass on viruses through those same genes. New research from the University of Rochester Medical Center shows that some parents pass on the human herpes virus 6 (HHV-6) to their children because it is integrated into their chromosomes.
Amounts of DNA per genome vary more than 7,000-fold among animal species. Some groups such as amphibians exhibit a large range in genome size, whereas others like birds are limited to relatively small genomes. Genome size correlates positively with cell size, which is associated with an inverse relationship between DNA amount and metabolic rate in mammals and birds.
