High-risk neuroblastoma is an aggressive childhood cancer with poor treatment outcomes. Despite intensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy, less than 50 percent of these children survive for five years. While the genetics of human neuroblastoma have been extensively studied, actionable therapeutics are limited.

Now researchers in the Feng lab at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), in collaboration with scientists in the Simon lab at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), have not only discovered why this cancer is so aggressive but also reveal a promising therapeutic approach to treat these patients. These findings appear online in the journal Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

“Our work pinpoints a targeted therapy for treating this group of at-risk patients, likely leading to improved survival,” said corresponding author Hui Feng, MD, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and medicine at BUSM.

The artist’s remains are reportedly buried in France’s Chateau d’Amboise. Now, scientists may finally be about to identify them.

😀 This could to more complex organisms being resurrected.

Deep in the tissues of sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish are strange yellow cells which are genetically distinct from the marine animals.

More than a century after these cells were first assigned a now forgotten genus, a new paper has resurrected the name and described six new species from around the world.

“Because our team comprises scientists from seven countries, we were able to collect all of these samples, and some during the global pandemic,” said lead author of the study, biologist Todd LaJeunesse from Penn State University.

Most biological traits are inherited via genes, but there are exceptions to this rule. Two teams from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have been investigating the location of centromeres—specific sites on chromosomes that are essential for cell division. They found that in the small worm Caenorhabiditis elegans, the transmission of the correct location of these sites to the offspring is not mediated by genes, but by an epigenetic memory mechanism. These results have been published in the journal PLOS Biology.

Living organisms, from humans to microscopic worms, inherit physical and sometimes behavioral traits from their parents. The transmission of biological traits is usually mediated by DNA which is replicated at each cell division and contains the genes. However, some characteristics can be transmitted from one generation to the next independently of genes: these are epigenetic phenomena.

Researchers have finally sequenced the complete human genome, filling the gaps in the Human Genome Project’s (HGP) historic first draft.

“Having been part of the original Human Genome Project in 2001, and especially focused on the difficult regions, it’s really satisfying for me to see this done even though it took 20 years,” researcher Evan Eichler, a genome scientist from the University of Washington in Seattle, told New Scientist.

The human genome: A genome is like a genetic instruction manual — it contains all the information an organism needs to grow and function. The human genome is written in DNA, and while your exact genome is unique to you, about 99.9% of it is identical across all people.

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This video explains the mendel’s law of independent assortment.

Thank You For Watching.