The Human Dynasty

When neurons started dying in Clive Svendsen’s lab dishes, he couldn’t have been more pleased. The dying cells — the same type lost in patients with the devastating neurological disease spinal muscular atrophy — confirmed that the stem cell biologist had recreated the hallmarks of a genetic disorder in the lab, using stem cells derived from a patient.

Scientists have said they may be narrowing down the hunt for the cells which are the source of bowel cancer.

DNA yields unifying message in divided Lebanon

Hundreds of trillions of bacteria make their home in the vertebrate gut. Though many of these microbes perform helpful duties for their host, others — the pathogens — are unwelcome visitors, causing disease. New research unveils a key survival circuit, which activates a signaling cascade, switching on or off a suite of genes necessary to circumvent the body’s multiple defense mechanisms and cause illness.

Scientists have discovered a gene mutation that impairs the placenta and also is influential in cancer development.

Adult cells, from both humans and mice, can be converted into embryonic stem cell-like cells using a single virus to insert four reprogramming genes into the cells’ genomes. Previous reprogramming approaches have relied on four separate viruses, one virus for each gene, to deliver the genes to cellular nuclei. Because this new method inserts the genes in only one place, it is less disruptive to a cell’s genome.

A possible new therapeutic target for pancreatic cancer, the most lethal form of human cancer, has been identified in the proteins whose DNA recipe comes from the gene, “Seven-In-Absentia.”

Scientists hope to prevent the spread antibiotic resistance in hospitals by stopping the flow of genes between orgy-loving bacteria

Their love felt so right, but what if their genes are all wrong? puts her heart on the line with a DNA compatibility test

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, dies of leukaemia aged 76.