Personal Health

Crime scene schizophrenia—30 genes under suspicion

The research group led by Prof. Alex Schier, director of the University of Basel’s Biozentrum, has identified 30 genes associated with schizophrenia. The team was able to show which pathological changes in the brain and behavioral abnormalities are triggered by these genes. The results of the study have now been published in Cell. The research […]

Health News

Effects on offspring of epigenetic inheritance via sperm

As an organism grows and responds to its environment, genes in its cells are constantly turning on and off, with different patterns of gene expression in different cells. But can changes in gene expression be passed on from parents to their children and subsequent generations? Although indirect evidence for this phenomenon, called “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance,” […]

Health News

Tiny DNA reader to advance development of anticancer drugs: Researchers use tiny probes and an electrical current to locate anticancer drug molecules incorporated into single strands of DNA

DNA is small. Really, really, small. So, when researchers want to study the structure of a single-stranded DNA, they can’t just pull out their microscopes: they have to get creative. In a study published this week in Scientific Reports, researchers from Japan’s Osaka University explain how they came up with a really small solution to […]

Health News

First genetic clue for elusive pediatric liver disease: Biliary atresia with splenic malformation — connection to ciliopathy gene

A nationwide consortium of researchers has identified the first genetic defect linked to biliary atresia, a mysterious liver disease that is the leading cause for liver transplantation in children. The results were published in the journal Hepatology. The causes of biliary atresia were unknown, so this is a major advance that will move the field […]

Personal Health

First common risk genes discovered for autism

A study headed by researchers from the Danish project iPSYCH and the Broad Institute in the U.S., has found the first common genetic risk variants for autism and uncovered genetic differences in clinical subgroups of autism. The discovery means that we will in future be able to determine the genes that separate the diagnostic groups, […]

Health News

Lipoproteins behave ‘almost like a tiny Velcro ball’: Genetics determines some proteins in HDL, but others are picked up by chance

Cholesterol carried in high-density lipoprotein particles, or HDL cholesterol, has been dubbed the good cholesterol, because people whose HDL levels are high have a lower risk of developing heart disease. That link was first established in 1977 and has been confirmed over and over in epidemiological studies. But in the past 15 years, a string […]

Health News

When organs start to scar: Connective tissue on the wrong road: Physicians discover a protein that reprograms connective tissue cells

Scientists from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Department of Medicine 3 — Rheumatology and Immunology, headed by Prof. Dr. Georg Schett, have now decrypted a molecular network that controls these processes and could in future provide a new way to treat organ scarring. The results show that the protein PU.1 causes pathological deposition of connective tissue. The […]

Health Problems

Insecticide resistance genes affect vector competence for West Nile virus

Overuse of insecticides, which leads to the selection of resistant mosquitoes, affects interactions between mosquitoes and the pathogens they transmit. Researchers from the Institut Pasteur (Paris) and its partners have now shown that mechanisms of insecticide resistance, observed in Culex quinquefasciatus vector, impact the transmission of West Nile virus. In recent decades, arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) […]