Latest Population genetics Stories

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Genomic Medicine (CGM), together with colleagues at Kyoto University, Tsukuba University, Harvard University, and other medical institutions have identified three new loci associated with susceptibility to adult asthma in the Japanese population. The findings appear in Nature Genetics and derive from a genome-wide study of 4836 Japanese individuals.Around the world, hundreds of millions of people suffer from bronchial asthma, a chronic inflammatory disease...

Tokyo, Aug 1, 2011 - (JCN Newswire) - Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Genomic Medicine (CGM), together with colleagues at Kyoto University, Tsukuba University, Harvard University, and other medical institutions have identified three new loci associated with susceptibility to adult asthma in the Japanese population. The findings appear in Nature Genetics and derive from a genome-wide study of 4836 Japanese individuals.Around the world, hundreds of millions of...

New research has found that in urban fox families, the mothers are the ones who decide which cubs stay and which must leave. Red foxes have successfully established themselves in urban areas, living in family groups with a dominant male-female pair and a varying number of subordinate adults, according to the researchers. Some of the cubs remain in the family group for the rest of their lives, while others leave to search for another family to join. Scientists have hypothesized what drives...

Doctors have known for a long time that prostate cancer "runs in the family". Men with relatives who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer have an elevated risk of also developing this type of cancer. It was only last year that DKFZ scientists calculated that this risk rises with the number of affected direct family members and also depends on the relatives' age at outbreak of the disease (DKFZ Press Release 18/2010).The exact DNA variants that contribute to prostate cancer risk...

Biology textbooks maintain that the main function of sex is to promote genetic diversity. But Henry Heng, Ph.D., associate professor in WSU's Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, says that's not the case.Heng and fellow researcher Root Gorelick, Ph.D., associate professor at Carleton University in Canada, propose that although diversity may result from a combination of genes, the primary function of sex is not about promoting diversity. Rather, it's about keeping the genome context...

Lungless salamanders (Ensatina eschscholtzii) live in a horseshoe-shape region in California (a 'ring') which circles around the central valley. The species is an example of evolution in action because, while neighboring populations may be able to breed, the two populations at the ends of the arms of the horseshoe are effectively unable to reproduce. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology showed that this reproductive isolation was driven by...

The traffic of genes among populations may help living things better adapt to climate change, especially when genes flow among groups most affected by warming, according to a UC Davis study of the Sierra Nevada cutleaved monkeyflower. The results were published online June 27 by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The findings have implications for conservation strategies, said Sharon Strauss, professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis and an author of the...

Sharing about 95 percent of their genes with humans, mice are recognized around the world as the leading experimental model for studying human biology and disease. But, says Jackson Laboratory Professor Gary Churchill, Ph.D., researchers can learn even more "now that we really know what a laboratory mouse is, genetically speaking."Thanks to an in-depth analysis by a team led by Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena, PhD, in the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Department of Genetics and...

UT MD Anderson scientists also link the same SNP to longer telomeresA common genetic variation links to both bladder cancer risk and to the length of protective caps found on the ends of chromosomes, scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported today at the AACR 102nd Annual Meeting.These endings or tips, called telomeres, guard against chromosomal damage and genomic instability that can lead to cancer and other diseases."We found a single point of variation...

Study assigns meaning to regions beyond genes with implications for studies of common diseasesGenes make up only a tiny percentage of the human genome. The rest, which has remained measurable but mysterious, may hold vital clues about the genetic origins of disease. Using a new mapping strategy, a collaborative team led by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and MIT has begun to assign meaning to the regions beyond our genes and has...