Life Sciences and Chemistry

Findings with lab mice may lead to novel cholesterol-lowering drugs against heart disease

Two people eat the same egg, cheese and ham muffin for breakfast, yet one absorbs significantly more cholesterol into his or her blood than the other. Why?
The answer, and all of its implications for combating heart disease, remains stubbornly hidden within our DNA. In recent genetic studies with lab mice, however, researchers at The Rockefeller University have begun to close in on the culpr

A California research team has mapped an entire group of human enzymes, providing important information for the development of a new generation of drugs to treat cancer and other diseases. The findings will be published in the Dec. 6 issue of Science.

In the study, the team from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the biotechnology company SUGEN created a detailed catalog of the 518 protein kinase genes encoded by the human genome. Protein kinases are among the most important regu

A comparison of the newly completed, publicly available, genome sequence of the mouse with the prior sequence of the mouse from Celera Genomics Inc. and with the human genome provides a consensus view of the mouse and important insights into human genes. Hot on the heels of the mouse genome sequence published in this week’s Nature by the Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium of publicly funded laboratories, Genome Biology publishes the first comparison of this ’public’ mous

Researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and the University of Pittsburgh report in the current Journal of Medical Genetics that they have found defects in the gene that produces a common protein in urine and that these defects are linked to two inherited kidney diseases.

For six years, the researchers had studied a family from Western North Carolina that has been plagued with a rare kidney disease, trying to learn more about the genetics of the disease. Anthony J. Bleye

A totally new and highly controversial theory on the origin of life on earth, is set to cause a storm in the science world and has implications for the existence of life on other planets. Research* by Professor William Martin of the University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael Russell of the Scottish Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow, claims that living systems originated from inorganic incubators – small compartments in iron sulphide rocks. The new theory radically departs from existing perception

Researchers at Ohio State University have identified three genes that are involved in the seasonal clock that determines when hamsters reproduce.

While researchers have learned a lot about reproductive clocks in some animals, this study is unique in helping uncover at least part of the genetic basis for determining how the reproductive system shuts off in the fall and restarts in time for spring.

“This study offers some of the first insights into how changes in gene expression are a