Climate hazards, including extreme heat, are associated with increased risks of developing complications that lead to adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes. These may include multiple causes of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality such as gestational diabetes, hyper tensive disorders of pregnancy, preterm birth, low birth weight and stillbirth. In …
Backache is the second major cause of employee absenteeism after common cold. Now, Susanna Annunen and her team from the University of Oulu in Finland report that inter-vertebral disk disease, also called sciatica, may well run in the families with a gene called COL9A2 that is responsible for the condition. …
all living creatures are the products of evolution by natural selection. In this selection, new and randomly occurring variations, which first come about on account of a gene's mutation, are tested in living organisms in terms of their effects on living and raising children. This is measured as an individual's …
The genetic link to male homosexuality has come under scrutiny. A team of researchers at the US National Cancer Institute had earlier studied 40 pairs of gay brothers from families with maternal gay relatives. They observed that the brothers conspicuously shared certain DNA markers on a region of the X …
Cells from the mother that remain in the body of the child since its foetal stage can trigger auto-immune diseases, in which the body attacks its own tissues. J Nelson and her colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, have found maternal cells in a 47-year-old man with …
New species arise abruptly because of mutations in the genes that control the development of embryos. If such mutations occur in several individuals that then breed among themselves, they can lead to a new species. Jeffrey Schwartz, palaeontologist at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, has proposed this new theory of …
alzheimer's disease is the commonest form of dementia afflicting millions across the world. Patients with the disease slowly loose all powers of thought and are eventually reduced to vegetables completely dependant on others for their survival. A lot of research has gone to find a cure or, at least, a …
UK's child haemophiliacs are to be given genetically-engineered clotting agents to remove any risk of their contracting Creutzfeltd-Jacob disease (CJD), a government spokesperson announced recently. A number of Britons could be incubating the new variant of CJD linked to meat from mad cow disease-infected cattle. Haemophiliacs, who receive clotting factors …
scientists at the Centre for Genetic Disorders have claimed to locate a new gene responsible for congenital eye cataract. The centre is being run by the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab. The researchers studied over 350 families afflicted with congenital cataract over a period of more than one year. …
the release of toxic emissions by chemical, paint and other polluting industries in the Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh is leading to serious genetic disor-ders among the people. P P Reddy, an expert in genetic toxicology and the director of the Institute of Genetics, Osmania University, Hyderabad says that …
EVOLUTION has moulded living creatures in such a manner that their ability to survive an reproduce is constantly improving. on a rough sense, one may say that given two populations, one of ancestors and a second of descendants, the descendants will carry a subset of ancestral genes: genes which contribute …
The last battleground of the Vietnam war is still marked by strife. A generation after chasing off the Americans, Vietnam is putting up with what may be called its
for millions of Indians, Africans and those living in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, it is an unfortunate genetic legacy that has been passed over several generations
previous studies on the fruitfly Drosophila have revealed that heterochromatin in a chromosome represses or silences genes that lie close to it. Heterochromatin is most commonly found at the centromere, the point of attachment on a chromosome during cell division when sister chromosomes are pulled apart. The activation and repression …
A rare genetic defect has been found to cause high blood pressure. The gene is responsible for making an enzyme that converts the stress hormone cortisol into inactive cortisone. Paul Stewart and colleagues at Birmingham University, UK, report that a defect in the gene leads to an excess of cortisol …
Cytocell, a biotech firm from Oxfordshire, UK, has developed a simple, safe and reliable test that uses foetal blood cells that leak through the placenta into the mother's circulation, to detect genetic abnormalities. The technique may eventually replace amniocentesis, which presents a one-in-200 chance of a miscarriage. But the test …
GOING by the recent experiences in the patent market, some scientists have expressed concern about the entry of us- based Progene Inc to set up genetic testing centres in the country diagnosing for genetic abnormalities. The department of biotechnology (DBT) recently received fresh information questioning the company's credentials. It has …
HUMAN genetic defects are suddenly at a premium. A deal between Genset, a research company based in Paris, and the Chinese government allows the former to wade through scores of genetic samples from Chinese people for the purposes of medical research. What has, however, left geneticists in a quandary is …
coat colour in mammals comes high on the list of genetically encoded characters that have been studied in detail. The reason is, of course, that colouration is an extremely obvious trait. Because it is small and reproduces rapidly, the mouse has been a popular animal for such studies. There are …
The discovery of the cause of a rare hereditary disease that makes sufferers insensitive to pain may lead to the discovery of more effective painkillers. Researchers at the Kumamoto University School of Medicine in Japan examined DNA from four people suffering from CIPA or chronic insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis …
being a barfly is most of the times associated to bad upbringing or other social reasons. A few years back, some scientists had taken up the task of associating alcoholism to a gene. The scientists had to confront disappointment day after day when they read the news: a gene found …
