Some progress has been made in the study of the potential applications of a non-hormonal male contraceptive pill. Somewhat ironically, the same technique may also have an effect on the treatment of some forms of male infertility. A letter published in Nature has detailed a scientific study on the gene...
A poll of US laboratory directors found that medical research aimed at developing screening methods and treatments for congenital disorders is being slowed down by the rush to patent human genes. A quarter of those polled had received letters from lawyers acting for biotechnology companies ordering them to stop a...
American geneticists announced last week that they may be close to finding the minimum number of genes necessary for an organism to survive and reproduce. Reporting in the journal Science, the researchers involved in the 2-year Minimal Genome Project intend to remove all the original DNA from a single-celled...
Gene therapy is becoming a realistic treatment for a number of disorders. At the meeting of the American Society for Haematology in New Orleans, advances in gene therapy for two disorders were reported. These were X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and haemophilia B. In SCID, affected individuals have virtually no...
Those who so often worry that the British public feel nothing but animosity towards science may be breathing a huge sigh of relief this week. News last week that one of the 23 chromosomes in the human genome had been entirely mapped was met with almost universal good feeling. Those...
An international team of researchers has passed a scientific milestone by deciphering, for the first time, the complete genetic code of a human chromosome. Reporting in last week's Nature, researchers from the Wellcome Trust funded Sanger Centre in Cambridge, Keio University in Japan and various US laboratories announced their success...
Question: can you write an article about preimplantation genetic diagnosis without mentioning the words 'designer' and 'baby'? Answer: not unless you are a very rare breed of journalist. This week, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority launched a public consultation on preimplantation genetic diagnosis. In the consultation document, no mention...
Genetically altered mice that can live a third longer than average have thrown light on the mechanisms of ageing. Italian scientists produced the mice by removing a gene that appears to control how the body repairs chemical damage. Research in organisms such as worms, yeast and flies has shown a...
Scientists were astonished to recently discover that a therapeutic gene delivered to rats in a gene therapy experiment appeared to affect subsequent generations. A US government panel that oversees gene therapy considers the possibility of somatic gene therapy inadvertently contaminating sperm and eggs to be negligible. But Mohan Raizada and...
Since the US breakthrough in embryonic stem cell research last December, American politicians have been limbering themselves up for a fight over whether such research should receive federal funding. But, as we report in this week's BioNews, it might not be as much of a battle as had been previously...
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