The smallest particle of a substance that has all of the physical and chemical properties of that substance. Molecules are made up of two or more atoms - for example, a molecule of water is made up of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.
Doctors at the University of California, San Diego, have surgically implanted genetically modified cells into the brain of a patient suffering from Alzheimer's disease. A 60-year old woman was the first person to have gene therapy to combat the effects of the disease, in a procedure that involved drilling...
Two male dwarf Nigerian goats that have had spiders' genes transplanted into them have been bred with a herd of females. The female offspring of the herd is set to 'make scientific history' because they should produce milk that contains a super-rich 'spider fibre'. It is thought that this fibre...
In an unusual display of solidarity, the heads of the private and public projects aiming to decipher the entire human genome held an impromptu joint press briefing last week. Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics and Dr Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, shook hands and complimented each...
A number of major European life-science research centres are facing financial crisis in the wake of the European Commission's decision not to fund operational costs out of the fifth five-year Framework programme (FP5). The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge is one facility that is threatened. Under instruction from member...
A new method of performing gene therapy may lead to human trials as soon as next year. Groundbreaking research, carried out on mice by Clifford Steer and colleagues at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, has shown that it may be possible to fix faulty human genes, rather...
Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) report that much human sensitivity to pain - and the varied response people have to opiate pain medicine - has a genetic basis. It seems that many of the differences in pain perception are likely to be due to variations...
Stay up-to-date on all the latest developments in the fields of human fertility and genomics. And be the first to hear about upcoming events and other announcements.
