Personalized Medicine
Genes underlying hangovers can aid in understanding alcoholism
Some people get hangovers after a night of drinking, while others don't, and the reason may be in their genes, ...
Genome sequencing is getting cheaper, but might make healthcare more expensive
Cheaper genomic sequencing will give more patients and their physicians access to genetics in the healthcare system. But will that ...
Economics of genetic testing and medicine
The first time scientists sequenced a person’s entire genome, it took more than a decade and cost hundreds of millions ...
Should Down syndrome fetuses be terminated? Abortion, Richard Dawkins & morality
Richard Dawkins tweeted that abortion is the moral choice for a Down syndrome fetus. As usual, vilification ensued. But the ...
New genome analysis method detects genetic diseases more efficiently, scientists claim
A team of scientists has developed Phen-Gen, the first computer analysis software that cross-references a patient’s symptoms and a person’s genome ...
Reprogrammed cells create whole, fully functioning organ
Laboratory-grown replacement organs have moved a step closer with the completion of a new study. Scientists have grown a fully ...
Don’t need much sleep? Thank your genes.
Allan Pack wasn’t always a sleep expert. He started his career as a pulmonologist and came to the University of ...
Where we are in the battle against Ebola
With hundreds of cases of Ebola in Africa, a panel of World Health Organization (WHO) experts has declared it is ...
Australian state legistlates anonymity agreement for sperm donors and their children
Victorians conceived through sperm donation will now be able to find out who their biological father is - but only ...
Beyond autopsies: Using post-mortem brain scans to understand stroke, head injury and death
Besides their ability to lie completely still in MRI scanners, making them excellent patients, corpses have a lot of offer ...
Epigenetic changes may be responsible for Crohn’s disease
A new study finds a wide range of epigenetic changes -- alterations in DNA across the genome that may be ...
Efficacy of treatments and the rise of personalized medicine
Personalized medicine is the ability to tailor therapy to an individual patient so that, as it’s often put, the right ...
Ten years in, first trial treatment from California’s stem cell initiative approved
It’s been ten years since California voters approved their state-funded stem cell initiative. Critics have charged that the initiative as ...
Computational genetics identifies disease-causing mutations
With 3 billion letters in the human genome, it seems hard to believe that adding a DNA base here or removing ...
Is the power of the microbiome overhyped?
Explorations of how the microscopic communities that inhabit the human body might contribute to health or disease have moved from ...
Female athlete teaches herself genetics, cracks her own rare disease
Kim Goodsell was running along a mountain trail when her left ankle began turning inward, unbidden. A few weeks later ...
Genome sequencing promising for curing lupus, personalized medicine
Medical researchers have used DNA sequencing to identify a gene variant responsible for causing lupus in a young patient. The ...
Interplay of genes, gender, and environment crucial to developing addiction
Studies of substance abusers have long hinted that some people are at least partially genetically predisposed to addiction. This certainly ...
Diet wars: ‘Caveman diet’ is all the rage, but ignores what our ancient ancestors really ate
Before the advances that made agriculture possible, humans ate solely what they could hunt and gather, which varied wildly depending ...
New horizons and future directions for epigenetics
Ever since the age of Darwin — and especially since the discovery of DNA — scientists have thought of biological inheritance ...
I’m more afraid of my kids’ genomic data NOT being sequenced than how it might be misused
The era of precision genomics is upon us, and as with GMO foods, that scares some people. But not GLP ...
Stem cell dysfunction may be responsible in some cases of schizophrenia
A gene long associated with schizophrenia and subsequently studied in rodent brain has now been scrutinized in human neurons. These neurons, derived ...
Biochip closely mimics biological cells
Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery, but mimicking the intricate networks and dynamic interactions that are inherent ...
23andMe moves to mend fences with FDA, seeks Bloom syndrome test approval
Seven months after the FDA forced 23andMe to stop reporting health results to its customers, the personal genomics company is ...
Alzheimer’s: Epigenetics and the APOE gene offer new reasons for hope
The genetics of Alzheimer's disease is complicated and still somewhat mysterious. But in the last week, researchers reported on two ...
How much can we actually tell from a genome scan?
On August 6, researchers announced in The New England Journal of Medicine that they had found that mutations in a ...
Genetic empowerment: Extreme athlete probes own genetics to streamline diagnosis
When extreme athlete Kim Goodsell discovered that she had two extremely rare but ostensibly unrelated genetic diseases, she taught herself ...