If you aren’t freaked out by privacy concerns of DNA testing kits (basically, they may sell anonymized genetic data, but not personally identifiable data), the tests are getting better, and 23andMe’s are on sale today.
Read more
Category: genetics – Page 450
Peripheral Elevation of a #Klotho Fragment Enhances Brain Function and Resilience in Young, Aging, and α-Synuclein Transgenic Mice.
Klotho is a longevity factor associated with cognitive enhancement when genetically and widely overexpressed over the lifetime of mice. Leon et al. show that peripheral delivery of a klotho fragment, αKL-F, acutely enhances cognition and neural resilience in young, aging, and disease model mice, establishing its therapeutic relevance and dissecting its underlying mechanisms.
Read more
A man in Paris has become the world’s first to successfully receive two facial transplants.
Jérôme Hamon, 43, underwent his first face transplantation procedure in 2010 to treat neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder characterized by the growth of tumors along nerves in the skin, brain and other parts of the body. Yet Hamon’s body rejected the original transplant.
In January, a team of surgeons and paramedics at Georges Pompidou European Hospital AP-HP, led by surgeon Dr. Laurent Lantieri, performed Hamon’s second transplant.
Read more
In a big win for the biotech industry, the US Department of Agriculture says once and for all it won’t regulate plants whose genomes have been altered using gene-editing technology.
Why it’s a field day: The decision means that we could see a boom in newfangled plants from firms like Monsanto, universities, and startups like Calyxt, whose oil-altered soybeans featured in our cover story late last year.
Here’s the logic: The USDA says gene editing is just a (much) faster form of breeding. So long as a genetic alteration could have been bred into a plant, it won’t be regulated. That includes changes that create immunity to disease or natural resistance to crop chemicals, as well as edits to make seeds bigger and heavier. It doesn’t include transgenic plants (those with a gene from a distant species)—those will still be regulated.
Read more