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Autism Genome Project Phase 2 results published in Nature Mount Sinai researchers and the Autism Genome Project Consortium (AGP) announced today that they have identified new autism susceptibility genes that may lead to the development of new treatment approaches. These genes, which include SHANK2, SYNGAP1, DLGAP2 and the X-linked DDX53–PTCHD1 locus, primarily belong to synapse-related pathways, while others are involved in cellular proliferation, projection and motility, and intracellular signaling. The findings were published today in Nature by researchers at the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, together with an international consortium of researchers...

A gene silencing approach can save monkeys from high doses of the most lethal strain of Ebola virus in what researchers call the most viable route yet to treating the deadly and frightening infection. They used small interfering RNAs or siRNAs, a new technology being developed by a number of companies, to hold the virus at bay for a week until the immune system could take over. Tests in four rhesus monkeys showed that seven daily injections cured 100 per cent of them. U.S. government researchers and a small Canadian biotech company, Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, worked together to develop the new...

Most Tibetans are genetically adapted to life on the "roof of the world," according to a new study. The Tibetan Plateau (map) rises more than 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) above sea level. At such heights, most people are susceptible to hypoxia, in which too little oxygen reaches body tissues, potentially leading to fatal lung or brain inflammation. To survive the high life, many Tibetans carry unique versions of two genes associated with low blood hemoglobin levels, the researchers found. Since hemoglobin is the oxygen-carrying component of red blood cells, the find might seem "really counterintuitive," said study leader Tatum Simonson...

The next time you're tempted to call some oaf a Neanderthal, you might want to take a look in the mirror. According to a new DNA study, most humans have a little Neanderthal in them—at least 1 to 4 percent of a person's genetic makeup. The study uncovered the first solid genetic evidence that "modern" humans—or Homo sapiens—interbred with their Neanderthal neighbors, who mysteriously died out about 30,000 years ago. What's more, the Neanderthal-modern human mating apparently took place in the Middle East, shortly after modern humans had left Africa, not in Europe—as has long been suspected. "We can now...

AUSTIN, Texas—From deep within the genomes of organisms as diverse as plants, worms and yeast, scientists have uncovered new genes responsible for causing human diseases such as cancer and deafness. The University of Texas at Austin scientists exploited the fact that all life on Earth shares common ancestry, and therefore shares sets of genes. They found genes in yeast, for example, that humans use to make veins and arteries, even though yeasts have no blood vessels at all. Yeasts use those same genes to fix their cell walls in response to stress. "Basically, we figured out a way to discover...

Obesity is a disease of excess, but a new study suggests that a few obese patients are actually lacking something--a piece of one of their chromosomes. The loss might remove a gene that helps the body manage blood sugar and appetite. Obesity runs in families, and researchers have identified several genetic variants that seem to boost the odds of becoming obese. However, these variants only explain a minority of cases. In the last decade, researchers have discovered that genetic differences among people can stem from lost or duplicated sections of chromosomes, called copy number variants (CNVs). Because of CNVs, for...

IT really is a case of blonde ambition. Women with fair hair are more aggressive and determined to get their own way than brunettes or redheads, according to a study by the University of California. Researchers claim that blondes are more likely to display a “warlike” streak because they attract more attention than other women and are used to getting their own way — the so-called “princess effect”. Even those who dye their hair blonde quickly take on these attributes, experts found. The study could cast fresh light on the ability of Joanna Lumley, the actress and former model, to...

Need evidence for Darwinian evolution? Just make it up. That’s the lesson of Donald Prothero’s book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Prothero is a professor of geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles. On November 30, he teamed up with atheist Michael Shermer (founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine) to debate Stephen Meyer and Richard Sternberg of the Discovery Institute. Shermer wrote the foreword to Prothero’s book, calling it “the best book ever written on the subject.” In fact, “Don’s visual presentation of the fossil and genetic evidence for evolution is...

A study in mice has hinted at the impact that early life trauma and stress can have on genes, and how they can result in behavioural problems. Scientists described the long-term effects of stress on baby mice in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Stressed mice produced hormones that "changed" their genes, affecting their behaviour throughout their lives. This work could provide clues to how stress and trauma in early life can lead to later problems...... The team found that mice that had been "abandoned" during their early lives were then less able to cope with stressful situations throughout their lives. The...

People with gene variant perform more than 20 percent worse on driving test Bad drivers may in part have their genes to blame, suggests a new study by UC Irvine neuroscientists. People with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people without it - and a follow-up test a few days later yielded similar results. About 30 percent of Americans have the variant. "These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away," said Dr. Steven Cramer, neurology associate professor and senior author...

A few weeks ago I posted on a paper, Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe's First Farmers.Another one is out in the same vein, Ancient DNA Reveals Lack of Continuity between Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers and Contemporary Scandinavians: The driving force behind the transition from a foraging to a farming lifestyle in prehistoric Europe (Neolithization) has been debated for more than a century...Of particular interest is whether population replacement or cultural exchange was responsible...Scandinavia holds a unique place in this debate, for it maintained one of the last major hunter-gatherer complexes in Neolithic Europe, the Pitted Ware culture...Intriguingly, these late...

Study Shows Portuguese Water Dog Breed, Gift from Ted Kennedy, Has Mutant Genes - Based on new research from the National Institutes of Health, first dog Bo is once, twice, but not quite three times a mutant.Researchers from the NIH and several universities have shown that variation among the coats of different dog breeds can be traced back to three genes.

Julia Pastrana became famous as the "bearded lady" in the mid-1800s. Now, more than 150 years later, scientists have discovered the genetic mutations responsible for her rare condition. The disorder, known as congenital generalized hypertrichosis terminalis (CGHT) with gingival hypertrophy, is characterized by excessive growth of dark hairs all over the body, distorted facial features, and enlarged gums. In some cases, people can have CGHT with normal gums. All of these diseases fall into a group of conditions called congenital generalized hypertrichosis (CGH). The disease is difficult to study because it is so rare. After analyzing the genomes of members...

Middle-class children are more likely to be clever than those from poorer families because they have 'better genes', former Ofsted chief Chris Woodhead said yesterday. The comments caused an immediate storm, with critics calling them insulting and 'crazy'. However, Mr Woodhead won support in some quarters - including the backing of an evolutionary psychologist, who said research had shown there was a link between class and average IQ. Mr Woodhead called for a return to selection by ability at 11. He suggested that grammar school pupils were more likely to be middle-class because 'the genes are likely to be better...

"Junk DNA" are inactive parts of your genome, switched off long ago in evolutionary history. Now scientists say there's a junk gene that fights HIV. And they've discovered how to turn it back on. What these scientists have done could give us the first foolproof HIV vaccine. They have re-awakened the human genome's latent potential to make us all into HIV-resistant creatures. This evening in PLoS Biology, they've published their ground-breaking research. A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman and Alexander Colewhether wanted to try a new approach to fighting HIV - one that worked with the body's own...

An analysis of the the phylogenic tree (the component strains) present in the current swine flu cases in Texas and California show no identifiable components of Mexican origin.The H1 protein (hemagglutinin) shows evidence from past cases from Korea, China and Turkey as well as Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Kansas. The N1 protein (neuraminidase) shows evidence of having come from China, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Hokkaido, Japan, Chonburi and Chachoengsao (Thailand) and Italy. Figure 1 shows the phylogenic tree of the H1 protein (hemagglutinin) of the U.S. strain of the current influenza virus. Figure 2 shows the phylogenic tree of the N1...

"Gregory Cochran has always been drawn to puzzles. This one had been gnawing at him for several years: Why are European Jews prone to so many deadly genetic diseases?"

The era of personal genomic medicine may have to wait. The genetic analysis of common disease is turning out to be a lot more complex than expected. Since the human genome was decoded in 2003, researchers have been developing a powerful method for comparing the genomes of patients and healthy people, with the hope of pinpointing the DNA changes responsible for common diseases. This method, called a genomewide association study, has proved technically successful despite many skeptics’ initial doubts. But it has been disappointing in that the kind of genetic variation it detects has turned out to explain surprisingly little...

snip It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens. "Someday in the far distant future, enough genetic changes might have occurred so that future populations could not interbreed with the current one,'' Sussman said in an e-mail message. snip It's also the topic of a new book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion,'' by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. "For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the...

UCLA researchers find that genes determine brain's processing speed They say a picture tells a thousand stories, but can it also tell how smart you are? Actually, say UCLA researchers, it can. In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience Feb. 18, UCLA neurology professor Paul Thompson and colleagues used a new type of brain-imaging scanner to show that intelligence is strongly influenced by the quality of the brain's axons, or wiring that sends signals throughout the brain. The faster the signaling, the faster the brain processes information. And since the integrity of the brain's wiring is influenced by...