Having a particular genetic marker increases the chance of developing lung cancer. This is the finding of a of $5.9 million project carried out by the Genetic Epidemiology of Lung Cancer Consortium, an interdisciplinary team made up of researchers from across the US. The results, to be published in the...
Short-sightedness, or myopia as it is technically known, affects around a quarter of the UK population and its incidence is on the increase around the world. In Singapore the percentage of the population with myopia rose from 25 per cent to 80 per cent in the last 30 years, with...
He has been described as 'the Charles Darwin of the 20th century' by Professor Steve Jones of University College London and as 'the dominant hero of the heroic age of molecular biology' by Professor Richard Dawkins of Oxford University. He was a Nobel prize winner, a Fellow of the Royal...
Research carried out at Arizona State University reveals that the gene that allows people to see red has a surprising number of variations. As this gene is on the X chromosome, women have two copies whilst men have only one. The research team believes this may cause a difference between...
Japan's Council for Science and Technology Policy has approved a proposal made by a bioethics subcommittee earlier this month that will allow scientists to create human embryos for basic research purposes, including stem cell research. Embryos will now be able to be created either by the fertilisation of human eggs...
Charlie Whitaker, the boy at the centre of one of the fiercest debates over so-called 'saviour siblings' has had a stem cell transplant and is 'on the road to recovery', say his parents. Jayson and Michelle Whitaker made the decision last December to go ahead with the treatment, made possible...
Ron Reagan, the son of the late US president Ronald Reagan, has urged Democrat supporters to vote for candidates who would relax policy on human embryonic stem (ES) cell research. Speaking at the Democrat National Convention (DNC) on Tuesday, he told delegates that while he understood there were ethical and...
CellFactors plc, a small biotechnology company specialising in the development of human cell-based therapies, has gone into receivership. The announcement came after the company failed to raise the level of investment needed for pre-clinical development of its lead technology, a mixture of chemicals derived from human cells that promotes bone...
A team from Stanford University, US, has shown that fetal stem cells can migrate to the site of stroke damage and restore lost cells, indicating their potential as a treatment. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was carried out using human stem cells on rats...
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.
Comment
What they said about Francis Crick
by Juliet Tizzard
The recent death of Francis Crick, who, with James Watson, discovered the structure of DNA, has prompted a wave of adoring comment from obituary writers, news journalists and fellow scientists alike. And rightly so. As our news story on his death describes, Crick contributed not just to the discovery of...