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Bioscience News - GEG Tech top picks
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BigField GEG Tech's insight:
Cells face a daunting task. They have to neatly pack a several meter-long thread of genetic material into a nucleus that measures only five micrometers across. This origami creates spatial interactions between genes and their switches, which can affect human health and disease. Now, an international team of scientists has devised a powerful new technique that 'maps' this three-dimensional geography of the entire genome. 
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BigField GEG Tech's insight:
Less is more for biologist Craig Venter and his team, who have booted up a cell with only the bare minimum genetic instructions required for life, encoded in synthetic DNA. After years of failure, they discovered that 473 genes are all that’s needed to create a living, stripped-down version of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides.
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BigField GEG Tech's insight:
The source of any life involves the duplication (or replication) of DNA, a mechanism that is essential to cell division. A team of biologists has recently performed the most exhaustive analysis to date of thousands of sites (called origins) where this replication of the genome is initiated in multicellular organisms.
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Do you know your biological age? It's not the same as your chronological age.
BigField GEG Tech's insight:
By reading a "signature" based on 150 of a person's genes, researchers can determine the individual's biological age, which may be different from his or her chronological age, according to a new study.
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Exploitation of the remarkable properties of spider silk has been slow, due in part to the challenges involved in identifying and characterizing spider silk genes, but researchers have now made a major advance with the largest-ever study of spider silk genes.
BigField GEG Tech's insight:
As they report today in an advance online paper in Nature Genetics, Penn scientists and their collaborators sequenced the full genome of the golden orb-weaver spider (Nephila clavipes), a prolific silk-spinner that turns out to produce 28 varieties of silk proteins. In addition to cataloguing new spider silk genes, the researchers discovered novel patterns within the genes that may help to explain the unique properties of different types of silk.
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BigField GEG Tech's insight:
A gene test that detects the illicit injection of DNA to boost an athlete's performance will be used at the Olympic Games in Rio for the first time. The test can identify the presence of synthetic genes for the erythropoietin (EPO) hormone which artificially stimulates the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells in the body.
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BigField GEG Tech's insight:
Researchers at South China Agricultural University, lead by Liu Jianhua, have discovered a gene in China, called MCR-1, which makes bacteria resistant against polymyxins. Chinese pigs are a few of the biggest consumers of the drug colistin, a kind of polymyxin, which is used to fatten them up.
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BigField GEG Tech's insight:
Missing a gene may be less problematic than you'd think. This is one of the conclusions that emerge from the most extensive catalog of changes in large sections of a person's DNA sequence to date. This reference catalog of structural variations across the globe will help guide future studies of genetics, evolution and disease.
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Some companies offer tests that rank embryos based on their risk of developing complex diseases such as schizophrenia or heart disease. Are they accurate — or ethical?