US scientists have managed to make old skin in mice young again after just two weeks of treatment by blocking a single gene, a study says. They did this by creating genetically modified mice with a defective gene that can be switched off so that their cells ceased to age when a cream was applied to the skin.

For years, scientists have been trying to develop a technique to clone primates. Now researchers in the US say they have successfully cloned embryos from rhesus monkeys.

What is the fundamental creative force behind life on Earth" It's a question that has vexed mankind for millennia, and thanks to theory and almost a year's worth of number-crunching on a supercomputer, Rice University physicist and bioengineer Michael Deem thinks he has the answer: A changing environment may organize the structure of genetic information itself.

Is sexual orientation something people are born with - like the colour of their skin and eyes - or a matter of choice"

An Australian genetic scientist has discovered two new genes that cause a form of arthritis that affects 22,000 Australians.

New evidence that genetics plays a key role in obesity is published today in the International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications. The findings relate to the genetics of modern Pima Indians who have an unusually high rate of obesity but could be extrapolated to all people. Their obesity is thought to be linked to a thrifty metabolism that allowed them to metabolize food more efficiently in times when little was available but causes problems when food is in abundance.

A group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and biologists from around the world have developed a computer algorithm that can help trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background. The team’s findings will be published in the September 2007 edition of the journal PLoS Genetics.

If you were a prehistoric human, would you prefer to able to sprint very fast for short distances or to jog comfortably for kilometres? That is one of the questions thrown up by the so-called "gene for speed," known as ACTN3.

The first individual genome ever sequenced has revealed genetic variation among humans far richer than previously imagined. The 2.8 billion contiguous bits of genetic code - a complete DNA blueprint of celebrity scientist Craig Venter - have been published in the online open-access journal PLoS Biology.

For the first time, scientists have identified one of the many genes which commonly influence our height. The work, which was partly funded by the EU, is published online by the journal Nature Genetics.

Alcohol and smoking can be harmful, if not deadly. While the desire for these substances can be due to environmental cues, genomic factors also play an important role. The etiology of these desires is multifactorial and a result of complex interactions with the environment.

Scientists have uncovered genetic markers of a deadly fungus that is wiping out frog populations worldwide. Researchers will now use them to pinpoint where on the globe the killer micro-organism originated.