Dr Lux Fatimathas was previously a Volunteer Writer at BioNews and the Editor of BioMed Central's online magazine Biome. She was previously Genetics Editor at BioNews and at the charity that publishes it, the Progress Educational Trust (PET). She has also worked as the Communications Editor at BioMed Central and as a Science Engagement Project Manager at the Public Engagement, Media and Grants Facility (now the Grants Engagement and Communications Facility) of the Medical Research Council's Clinical Sciences Centre. She has written for the Faculty of 1000, the New Science Journalism Project, the British Society for Cell Biology's Newsletter, and the journals General Physiology and Biophysics and Histology and Histopathology. Previously, she worked at the National University of Singapore's Mechanobiology Institute, where she was Managing Editor of the educational resource MBInfo. She also worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, a research institute of the Government of Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research, where her research involved using the zebrafish as a model for investigating skin development. She originally studied Neuroscience at University College London, and went on to obtain her PhD in Molecular Cell Biology at the Institute of Ophthalmology under the auspices of the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology's Graduate Programme. She is coauthor of a chapter in Nanomedicine and Cancer (buy this book from Amazon UK).
Non-invasive pre-natal screening for certain abnormalities in fetal chromosomes should be offered to at-risks mothers, recommends the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists...
Scientists have generated the specialised cells in the embryo that go on to form spinal cord, muscle and bone tissue and used them to produce nerve and muscle cells...
Fertility drugs used to stimulate ovulation did not increase the chances of breast cancer for most women in a long-term study of around 10,000 women in the USA...
An artificial 'gene circuit' implanted in obese mice promotes weight loss by reducing appetite, while having no effect when implanted in mice of normal weight...
Claims for the health benefits of the typically Mediterranean diet high in olive oil, fish, and complex carbohydrates are common, if hard to substantiate...
The Medical Research Council has awarded £60 million to the University of Edinburgh to advance research into human genetic diseases...
US researchers have for the first time sequenced the genome of a fetus using only a blood sample from the mother. It is hoped this new form of non-invasive sampling could allow doctors to screen for a range of genetic diseases prenatally, with minimal risk to the fetus...
A chemical produced by stem cells promotes recovery in mice with the autoimmune neurological disease, multiple sclerosis. Hepatocyte growth factor, which is produced by human mesenchymal stem cells, appeared to both repair existing damage and prevent future neurological harm in a mouse model of the disease...
Scientists have discovered the enzyme in our cells which corrects the most frequently occurring mistake in DNA as cells divide...
Eleven scientists have each won £2 million as part of a prize to recognise the achievements of biomedical researchers, launched by entrepreneurs including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sergey Brin...
BioNews, published by the Progress Educational Trust (PET), provides news and comment on genetics, assisted conception, embryo/stem cell research and related areas.
