Rival scientists and companies have been challenged to a 'gene count' showdown. In February, draft sequences of the entire human genome were published by the publicly funded human genome project (HGP) and Celera Genomics, both estimating the total number of genes to be between 30,000 and 40,000. But some biotech...
Canadian researchers have discovered that women who have a high probability of developing ovarian cancer might be able to reduce the risk by having their Fallopian tubes tied. They have shown that tubal ligation surgery is an alternative to the removal of ovaries in young women with mutations in the...
New embryo research guidelines were issued last week by the main research funding agency in Germany, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The guidelines would allow German researchers to use imported human embryonic stem cells. Currently, Germany law allows scientists to work on fetal stem cells but not those derived from embryos...
Researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Genome Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts have found that the majority of people of Northern European ancestry are likely to be descendants of a tiny prehistoric population. They used a technique made possible by the Human Genome Project (HGP) to show that Northern Europeans went...
BresaGen, an Australian biotech company, has announced that it has produced Australia's first cloned pig. Working with the St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, BresaGen said that the piglet was cloned from cells that had been frozen in liquid nitrogen for two years. The piglet is now nearly six weeks old...
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The politics of stem cells
by Juliet Tizzard
This week, Germany took one step closer to permitting at least some form of embryo stem cell research to take place within its national boundaries. In so doing, Germany joins a number of countries with rather restrictive rules on the use of human embryos in research which are now rethinking...