Clinic offers free IVF treatment to winners of video competition
The Sher Institute, a network of eight fertility clinics in the USA, has announced the three couples to win an IVF giveaway contest...
News
Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family (from Greek and Roman mythology) entwined in coils of DNA.
NHS payout for children fathered by nephew sperm donor
Two children of a lesbian couple are due to receive £70,000 compensation from the NHS after a mistake led to the death of their sperm donor father. The man was also the nephew of one of the women...
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
Mother of first IVF baby dies at 64
Lesley Brown, the first woman to give birth after undergoing IVF treatment, has died aged 64. She made history when her daughter Louise was born in 1978 at Oldham General Hospital...
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.
Controversial publication of bird flu studies reveal virus' potential
Controversial research showing how the H5N1 'bird flu' virus can be altered to make it transmissible between mammals through the air has been published, nine months after it was first presented at a conference....
Image by K Hardy via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human embryo at the blastocyst stage (about six days after fertilisation) 'hatching' out of the zona pellucida.
Eye precursor and tiny liver grown from stem cells
Human embryonic stem cells have, for the first time, been used to grow a crucial part of the eye, a paper in Cell Stem Cell reports. It is hoped that in the future transplantation of such tissue could help visually impaired people recover their sight...
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.
Huntington's disease gene-silencing drug effective in animal studies
A single dose of an 'antisense' drug has been shown to slow, or even partially reverse, Huntington's disease in animal studies, according to a study published in Neuron....
Image by Bill Sanderson via the Wellcome Collection, © Wellcome Trust Ltd 1990. Depicts Laocoön and his family (from Greek and Roman mythology) entwined in coils of DNA.
EU urged to continue funding stem cell research
Six major UK research funding bodies have called for the continued funding of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research in the EU's programme for research and development...
Reviews
Image by Christoph Bock/Max Planck Institute for Informatics via Wikimedia Commons. Depicts a DNA molecule that is methylated on both strands on the centre cytosine.
Event Review: Twins - Identically Different
Epigenetics. What on earth is that? You're probably aware of the genetics vs environment debate can still divide people to this day, but epigenetics is something that we haven't quite got around to talking much about in the public sphere....
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.
Event Review: Marcus Brigstocke Invites Mark Thomas
How are we different from animals? Comedian Marcus Brigstocke met evolutionary geneticist Professor Mark Thomas at the Cheltenham Science Festival, and asked him about what makes humans so human. Their marvellously informative discussion of human achievement covered art, religion, Adam and Eve, and how they all tie into our genes....
Comment
Why the mitochondria debate shouldn't be left to the popular media
by Virginia Bolton
Predictably, the publication of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics' report supporting further research into a technique to prevent inheritance of mitochondrial disease prompted a flurry of publicity. Equally predictably, nearly every newspaper - whether broadsheet or tabloid - went for the sensationalist angle and used the 'three-parent IVF' tag in their headline...