Tag Archives: genetic information

Facebook memes can evolve like genes

ANN ARBOR — What started as a politically liberal Facebook meme in support of health care reform morphed as it spread across the social network into hundreds of thousands of variations—some just a few words from the original, but others centered on taxes, beer, or Star Wars’ villain Jabba the Hutt.

The twists on the original text over time in many ways mirrored the evolution of biological genes, researchers from the University of Michigan and Facebook have found. (more…)

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New Look Inside Cell Nucleus Could Improve Cancer Diagnostics

Researchers have sequenced the entire messenger RNA – the “genetic photocopies” – contained in the nucleus of a single cell, a long-anticipated step toward better cancer diagnostics and other medical applications.

Researchers have successfully isolated and sequenced the entire messenger RNA – the “genetic photocopies” – contained in the nucleus of a single brain cell. This research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will help researchers better understand how organs function in health and disease and provide another stepping stone toward personalized medicine.   (more…)

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Reading the Human Genome

Berkeley Lab Researchers Produce First Step-by-Step Look at Transcription Initiation

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have achieved a major advance in understanding how genetic information is transcribed from DNA to RNA by providing the first step-by-step look at the biomolecular machinery that reads the human genome.

“We’ve provided a series of snapshots that shows how the genome is read one gene at a time,” says biophysicist Eva Nogales who led this research. “For the genetic code to be transcribed into messenger RNA, the DNA double helix has to be opened and the strand of gene sequences has to be properly positioned so that RNA polymerase, the enzyme that catalyzes transcription, knows where the gene starts. The electron microscopy images we produced show how this is done.” (more…)

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Microbes in the Mississippi

Professor and students study how microbial life changes along the river

The mercury is pushing 100, but professor Michael Sadowsky and two assistants leave the indoor coolness for the bank of the Mississippi River as it flows by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus.

The three men send a bucket splashing into the current and haul back a water sample. That doesn’t affect the river much, but information locked away in bacteria from the sample may tell them a great deal about how the river’s microbial communities change along its course through Minnesota and how human activity affects them. (more…)

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New Mouse Reference Library Should Speed Gene Discoveries

Genetic information provided by a large group of specially designed mice could pave the way to faster human health discoveries and transform the ways people battle and prevent disease.

In 15 papers published Feb. 16 in the Genetics Society of America journals Genetics and G3:Genes/Genomes/Genetics, researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Jackson Laboratory and other universities and labs across the globe highlight a new genetic resource that could aid development of more effective treatments for any number of human diseases. (more…)

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When Plants Go Polyploid

*Plant lineages with multiple copies of their genetic information face higher extinction rates than their relatives, researchers report in Science magazine.*

While duplication of hereditary information is a relatively rare event in animal evolution, it is common in plants. Potatoes, coffee, bananas, peanuts, tobacco, wheat, oats and strawberries, to name but a few, all carry multiple copies of their genetic material, in a condition called polyploidy.

In contrast, most animals including humans are diploid, meaning an individual carries only two copies of each chromosome, the carriers of genetic information, one from each parent. (more…)

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Berkeley Lab Researchers Illuminate Laminin’s Role in Cancer Formation

Laminin, long thought to be only a structural support protein in the microenvironment of breast and other epithelial tissue, is “famous” for its cross-like shape. However, laminin is far more than just a support player with a “pretty face.” Two studies led by one of the world’s foremost breast cancer scientists have shown how laminin plays a central role in the development of breast cancer, the second most leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States. In one study it was shown how laminin influences the genetic  information inside a cell’s nucleus. In the other study it was shown how destruction of laminin can play a detrimental role in the early stages of tumor development. (more…)

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Getting a Tighter Grip on Cell Division

*Molecular “machine” responsible for pulling chromosome copies apart is isolated and seen in action outside the cell* 

The dance of cell division is carefully choreographed and has little room for error. Paired genetic information is lined up in the middle of the cell in the form of chromosomes. The chromosomes must then be carefully pulled apart so that the resulting daughter cells each have an identical copy of the mother cell’s DNA.  (more…)

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