Gene therapy halts early Alzheimer's disease in mice
A new gene therapy has slowed the progress of early Alzheimer's disease in mice...
BioNews
Transgenic
Describes a living thing that contains genes from another creature. Transgenic animals are bred in the laboratory, by genetically altering a newly fertilised egg.
51 articles
Event Review: The Physiological Society's 2014 annual public lecture
A doctor by training and a researcher at the forefront of fertility studies, Professor Lord Robert Winston, pioneer in the field of IVF and PGD, discusses the implications of new techniques for genetically modifying embryos in the Physiological Society's 2014 annual public lecture...
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
Last man standing: just two Y-chromosome genes needed for reproduction
Male mice are able to reproduce healthy offspring with only two Y-chromosome genes, researchers at the University of Hawaii have discovered...
Book Review: Chimera's Children - Ethical, Philosophical and Religious Perspectives on Human-Nonhuman Experimentation
Mythical ideas of 'chimera', or animals formed or forged of parts derived from various different organisms, have endured throughout history, from Greek folklore and Homer's Iliad through to contemporary science fiction. In fact, organisms arising from human-nonhuman genetic combinations are already with us...
Mouse study finds an anti-cancer gene could also prevent obesity
A gene known to protect from cancer might also prevent obesity, scientists say. The researchers had set out to search for a link between the Pten gene and a longer lifespan in mice, but to their surprise, a double dose of the gene also led the mice to be thinner than their normal counterparts...
Mouse study offers hope for treating leading genetic cause of infant death
Researchers have made a step forward in the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy, a serious genetic disorder, by using a stretch of RNA to trigger mice into producing a back-up version of a missing protein...
Aligning research legislation: interspecies embryos and animals containing human material
In 2008, important changes were made to the legislation governing the use of human embryos in research, the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFE Act) 1990. The legislation was extended to five categories of 'human admixed embryos' containing human and animal cellular or genetic components, which were brought within the licensing regime of the HFE Act...
Do humans carry a gene for detecting the Earth's magnetism?
Humans may retain a diminished ability to see the Earth's magnetic field, claims a new American study. Experiments were carried out to investigate the function of light-sensitive proteins called cryptochromes, in the eyes of fruit flies and Monarch butterflies...
Ohio senate bill proposes 'hybrid' ban
The Ohio (US) State Senate has passed legislation banning the creation of any embryo that would contain both human and animal DNA or tissues. Bill 243 proposes to ban the creation of 'human-animal hybrids'...
Fresh fears over the promise of iPS cells
A new study has cast doubt over how useful human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells could be for research and the treatment of degenerative disease...