Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) report today on a new technique that improves the ability of scientists to target individual genes for inactivation—a technique with broad potential implications for both basic science research and human disease.

When a young gene known as sphinx is inactivated in the common fruit fly, it leads to increased male-male courtship, scientists report in the May 27, 2008, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The COMT gene – known already for its role in schizophrenia – has been found to play a role in preeclampsia, according to a report in today’s advance on-line issue of Nature.

Now that the genome (DNA) of humans and many other organisms have been sequenced, biologists are turning their attention to discovering how the many thousands of structural and control genes -- the “worker bees” of living cells that can turn genes on and off -- function.

A new study shows how genes control levels of many blood proteins implicated in disease. The findings are the result of an international collaboration between scientists at the University of Exeter, the National Institute on Aging, and the Tuscany and Florence Health Agencies.

The mouse is a stalwart stand-in for humans in medical research, thanks to genomes that are 85 percent identical. But identical genes may behave differently in mouse and man, a study by University of Michigan evolutionary biologists Ben-Yang Liao and Jianzhi Zhang reveals.

Scientists from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland School of Medicine have unveiled some of the evolutionary intricacies of rickettsial pathogens by analyzing over a decade’s worth of genomic data.

A patent for a system that gives more reliable results in gene technology-based diagnostic tests has been granted to researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH).

Researchers are closing in on a completed diagram of how human cells protect themselves against constant genetic mistakes that contribute to most diseases, according to a study to be published in the April 18 edition of the journal Cell.

Researchers have identified six new genes that play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes.

The nature vs. nurture debate is familiar to most people, and modern conclusions usually predict a balance between the two. A new paper published this week in the open-access journal PLoS Biology shows that there is a similar balance between the genes we inherit—nature—and the environment—nurture—in determining thousands of traits in yeast.

Yale University researchers report today in the journal Nature Genetics that they have discovered that rare genetic variants can be associated with a dramatically lower risk of developing high blood pressure in the general population.