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Last Updated: Thursday, 8 September 2005, 16:30 GMT 17:30 UK Embryo with two mothers approved Image of cloning The aim is to get healthy offspring free of inherited genetic disorders. UK scientists have won permission to create a human embryo that will have genetic material from two mothers. The Newcastle University team will transfer genetic material created when an egg and sperm fuse into another woman's egg. The groundbreaking work aims to prevent mothers from passing certain genetic diseases on to their unborn babies. Such diseases arise from DNA found outside the nucleus, and thus inherited separately from DNA in...

Small but perfectly formed, Pelagibacter ubique is a lean machine stripped down to the bare essentials for life.Humans have around 30,000 genes that determine everything from our eye colour to our sex but Pelagibacter has just 1,354, US biologists report in the journal Science. What is more, Pelagibacter has none of the genetic clutter that most genomes have accumulated over time. There are no duplicate gene copies, no viral genes, and no junk DNA. 'Chicken soup'The spareness of its genome is related to its frugal lifestyle. The shorter the length of DNA that needs to be copied each generation, the...

'Worst GM pollution incident' vanishes By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 09/08/2005) What was billed by the media as the world's worst incident of pollution by genetically-engineered crops, one that provoked a row among scientists, has vanished, says a study published today. Four years ago, researchers reported finding cobs of genetically modified maize in Oaxaca, Mexico, suggesting that GM maize (corn) from the US had invaded a traditional maize variety. In a country whose culture and identity are linked to maize - the crop was developed there thousands of years ago - the thought of GM varieties that could contaminate...

As cat owners know, their feline friend would much rather chase and eat a live mouse than snack on the chocolate equivalent, and now researchers have discovered the reason – cats are simply unable to taste sweet things. An examination of feline genetics has shown a significant defect in one of the genes that codes for part of the sweet taste receptor. This “huge deletion” of 247 base pairs in the gene that codes for the T1R2 protein – one of two proteins that make up the sweet taste receptor in mammals – has left cats unable to detect sweet-tasting...

Just read Enough by leftist environmentalist Bill McKibben. The book delves into germline genetic therapy, wherein a zygote's DNA can be altered. McKibben posits that within 50 years, the technology will exist for parents to select the eye color, hair color, and even personality of their kids (assuming that personality is about 50% nature and 50% nurture). He bemoans the fact that parents will be able to "stack the deck" by making a child more patient or pious. For example, McKibben notes that parents may be able to give a child the charitable outlook of Mother Theresa. Then, however, he...

Does that mean that if fruitflies "do it," humans can do it too?Folks, the New York times published back on June 3 an article entitled For Fruit Flies, Gene Shift Tilts Sex Orientation, commenting on research that supposedly demonstrates the genetic ground for homosexuality. Dr. Barry Dickson, senior scientist at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and other researchers warned that:All the researchers cautioned that any of these wired behaviors set by master genes will probably be modified by experience. Though male fruit flies are programmed to pursue females, Dr. Dickson said, those...

A male fly's sexual courtship of a female fly is a complicated business of tapping, singing, wing vibration, and licking, but a single gene is all that is needed to produce this complex behavior, according to new research published in this week's issue of the journal Cell. The gene encodes the Fruitless protein. Male and female flies carry different versions of the fruitless protein, as a result of sex-specific splicing of the mRNA. The male form of Fruitless is critical for the male courtship ritual and males' preference for mating with females, as previous studies have shown. Now, Barry J....

Murder is genetically programmed in the human mind ON May 11, 2005, a jury convicted Pete Terrazas of murdering his next-door neighbor, Miguel Ruiz. Terrazas had been dating Ruiz's housekeeper, Maria Santillana, whom he deeply loved. When she abruptly broke off the relationship, Terrazas concluded that she had begun an affair with Ruiz. Terrazas loaded his .410-gauge shotgun, went over to his neighbor's driveway, blasted Ruiz in the back and then took deadly aim at the man's chest.Pete Terrazas had never before been violent. Nor had Scott Peterson before he killed his wife, Laci. Nor had Clara Harris before she...

Gay Men Respond Differently to Pheromones By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Gay men's brains respond differently from those of heterosexual males when exposed to a sexual stimulus, researchers have found. The homosexual men's brains responded more like those of women when the men sniffed a chemical from the male hormone testosterone. "It is one more piece of evidence ... that is showing that sexual orientation is not all learned," said Sandra Witelson, an expert on brain anatomy and sexual orientation at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Witelson, who...

May 4, 2005 Texas Thinks Hard about Stem Cell Research I would not have believed Texas could even consider state funding for embryonic stem cell research until I read this in the Dallas Morning News: One of the most important questions facing legislators in Austin this session is how to treat research that involves embryonic stem cells, which many scientists believe can help cure diseases such as juvenile diabetes and Parkinson's, as well as spinal cord injuries and other debilitating conditions. Such research is in addition to ongoing research using adult stem cells, which are much more limited in supply....

Fri, Apr. 29, 2005BusinessweekGenetic mingling mixes human, animal cells The Associated Press /RENO, Nev. By PAUL ELIAS AP Biotechnology Writer   RENO, Nev. - On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.

RENO, Nev. - On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs. The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can't wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus' brain about two months ago. "It's mice on a large scale," Chamberlain says with a shrug. As strange as his work may sound, it falls firmly...

Genetic testing reveals awkward truth about Xinjiang’s famous mummiesM (AFP) 19 April 2005 URUMQI, China - After years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China’s Tarim Basin 1,000 years before East Asian people arrived. The research, which the Chinese government has appeared to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in recent decades. “It is unfortunate that the issue has been so politicized because it...

Controversial theorist Aubrey de Grey insists that we are within reach of an engineered cure for aging. Are you prepared to live forever? On this glorious spring day in Cambridge, England, the heraldic flags are flying from the stone towers, and I feel like I could be in the 17th century—or, as I pop into the Eagle Pub to meet University of Cambridge longevity theorist Aubrey de Grey, the 1950s. It was in this pub, after all, that James Watson and Francis Crick met regularly for lunch while they were divining the structure of DNA and where, in February 1953,...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

Scientists find genetic link to bad behaviour By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent (Filed: 20/07/2004) The throw of the genetic dice helps to determine whether you see the world with pent up anger or placidly turn the other cheek, a study suggests. Researchers have found evidence that some people inherit a genetic make-up that makes them more prone to aggression and violence. However, the "bad behaviour gene" is activated only if people were neglected or abused as children, scientists say. The findings add to the growing evidence that the "nature versus nuture" debate is far too simplistic. Behaviour is actually influenced...

Traditionally the difference between the English and Scots, Welsh, Irish and Cornish was attributed to the foreign influence of invading forces such as the Anglo-Saxons, Celts and Vikings settling in different areas of Britain hundreds of years ago. But Professor Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University, believes the difference originates much further back in history... The professor of clinical sociomedical sciences at Oxford University said the Celts of Western Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall are descended from an ancient people living on the Atlantic coast while Britain was still attached to mainland Europe, while the English are more closely related...

Source: Science Daily 06/17/04 Shhhhhhh !! Don't tell the National Organization for Women,but researchers at Emory University's National Primate Research Center have been doing genetics experiments on meadow voles (whatever they are),and have discovered that transferring a single gene - the vasopressin receptor- into the brain of a normally promiscuous vole will make the critter monogamous. Consider the implications of that for a moment-then consider the implications of doing the same thing to humans ! How long do you think it will take before NOW makes such a gene transplant mandatory for men??

Is it better to feed the poor and make money, or appease Greenpeace and do neither? Biotech giant Monsanto's management faced that very question this week and opted to cave in to Greenpeace. It's another example of craven shortsighted corporate managers surrendering to pressure from anti-business activist groups to the detriment of corporate shareholders and the public. -----Snip------

<p>Human evolution may have hinged on a genetic mutation 2.4 million years ago that weakened the jaws of prehistoric man and allowed the development of bigger brains, say U.S. researchers.</p> <p>This hypothesis was reported in this week's issue of the scientific journal Nature by a team of biologists, anthropologists and plastic surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.</p>