The physical characteristics of an organism, as distinguished from its genetic make up (genotype).
Genome sequencing for all, the abuse of stored genetic data and red tape halting research are just some of the issues the NHS will have to deal with this year, according to Sir John Burn, professor of clinical genetics at the University of Newcastle, chair of the British Society for Human Genetics (BSHG)...
In July 2011, the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS) announced its plans to improve the rules governing the protection of human subjects in research, after admitting current regulations were 'developed years ago'...
The third session of the Progress Educational Trust's annual conference 'The Best Possible Start in Life: The Robust and Responsive Embryo' boasted a redoubtable roll-call of eminent clinicians and researchers as speakers...
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US has demonstrated its intent to make personalised medicine a reality by outlining plans for projects set to cost almost half a billion US dollars...
The study of genetic diversity between ethnic groups can help explain the ways in which race influences our biology and susceptibility to disease. But what do we mean by 'race', exactly? These issues are considered in the collection of essays 'What's the use of race? Modern governance and the biology of difference', edited by Dr Ian Whitmarsh and Dr David Jones...
Variations in a single gene may have considerable impact on whether people come across as trustworthy and kind, scientists say. Furthermore, the snap judgments we make about people's kindness after only a brief contact may accurately correspond to whether or not they possess the more 'social' gene variant...
International researchers have mapped over 55 million genetic variations in the mouse genome in the hopes of better understanding human disease. The genomes of 17 strains of mice were analysed and variations in their DNA, called SNPs, were catalogued...
Forget 'you are what you eat'. Rather 'you are what your mother ate'. That is the dramatic message of the BBC's latest episode of Horizon 'The Nine Months That Made You', broadcast on Monday 22 August. The documentary was an account of the Barker Theory that birth weight determines health in later life...
Philosopher Langdon Winner rather poetically refers to scientific public engagement as 'technological somnambulism'. The image he invokes is that of a vast network of societal sleepwalking; interacting but not engaging. This is especially true within a biomedical context. Whenever an inventive entity creates novel technologies, he or she inspires and develops two important constructs. The first is the physical instrument, or perhaps something less concrete, such as an idea or methodology...
The intersection of racial categories and emerging genetic technology is bound to be vexed given - for example - the long history of eugenics and segregation in the United States. Although the topic has received little attention among the UK general public, pharmaceutical companies on both sides of the Atlantic are investing huge amounts of research and development into individually tailored drugs - pharmacogenetics....
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