A University of Saskatchewan team of scientists has isolated a gene that has never before been identified in helping plants to resist stress.

Genes have the ability to recognise similarities in each other from a distance, without any proteins or other biological molecules aiding the process, according to new research published this week in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

Researchers at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine (IGM) at Johns Hopkins will join other national and international scientists in the 1000 Genomes Project, an ambitious effort that will involve sequencing the genomes of numerous people from around the world to create the most detailed and medically useful picture to date of human genetic variation.

An international research consortium today announced the 1000 Genomes Project, an ambitious effort that will involve sequencing the genomes of at least a thousand people from around the world to create the most detailed and medically useful picture to date of human genetic variation.

Reporting in the online journal BMC Genetics, researchers from the Monell Center have for the first time attempted to count the number of genes that contribute to obesity and body weight.

The molecular machinery behind gene transcription - the intricate transfer of information from a segment of DNA to a corresponding strand of messenger RNA- isn't stationed in special "transcription factories" within a cell nucleus, according to Cornell researchers. Instead, the enzyme RNA polymerase II (Pol II) and other key molecules can assemble at the site of an activated gene, regardless of the gene's position.

A research team at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City has identified two genes that may be crucial to the production of an immune system cytokine called interleukin-10 (IL-10).

The Stowers Institute’s Baumann Lab has identified the long-sought telomerase RNA gene in a single-cell research model. Their findings have been posted to the Web site of the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and will appear in a future print edition.

In 2007, researchers were dazzled by the degree to which genomes differ from one human to another and began to understand the role of these variations in disease and personal traits. Science and its publisher, AAAS, the nonprofit science society, recognize “Human Genetic Variation” as the Breakthrough of the Year, and identify nine other of the year’s most significant scientific accomplishments in the 21 December issue.

Can a tiny winged insect’s salivary glands really tell us about processes relevant to human disease" Yes, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), who gained new insights into autophagy—a cellular degradation process associated with a form of programmed cell death—by studying the salivary gland cells of the fruit fly.

The development of higher forms of life would appear to have been influenced by RNA polymerase II. This enzyme transcribes the information coded by genes from DNA into messenger-RNA (mRNA), which in turn is the basis for the production of proteins.

Surrounding the small islands of genes within the human genome is a vast sea of mysterious DNA. While most of this non-coding DNA is junk, some of it is used to help genes turn on and off.