Enlarged hearts are found often, but not exclusively, in those who are obese, have diabetes or high blood pressure. People with none of these underlying problems can be affected, as can elite athletes.  For example, a post-mortem diagnosed the problem in Cameroon football midfielder Marc-Vivien Foe, who died in 2003 after collapsing during an international match in France. Elite runner Olympic hopeful Ryan Shay died of complications involving an enlarged heart – the very condition that made him a great runner.
An international  research team headed up by Imperial College, UK say they have for the first time linked enlarged hearts with a gene, …read more

A nationwide team of researchers, funded in part by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has produced the first sequence-based map of large-scale structural variation across the human genome.
Recently created maps such as the HapMap have catalogued the patterns of small-scale variations in the genome that involve single DNA letters, or bases.  A sequence-based map provides much finer resolution and location information.
Researchers constructed the structural variation map by partially sequencing the genomes of eight people: four people of African descent, two of Asian descent and two of European descent. Sequence data …read more

 
KQED Public Broadcasting in San Francisco recently did a radio story about the UC San Francisco Canine Behavioral Genetics Project run in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania. The aims of the project are:
1. To explore the relationship between genes and behavior, both normal and abnormal, in domestic dogs.
2. To assess the amount and nature of genetic diversity in domestic dogs, both within and between breeds. 
Melanie Chang of the CBG project
Anyone wishing to send in their dog’s DNA can visit the site:
http://www.k9behavioralgenetics.com/ 
Dog DNA samples waiting to be processed at the CBG project 
However, it is often said dogs and their owners resemble each other. …read more

Charles Darwin
Following my recent article about Darwin’s 150th Anniversary, the first draft of his book, “The Origin of Species” which changed the world’s attitude to evolution is available for the first time online.  Papers which led to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution were previously only available to scholars at Cambridge University’s library.
This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free.
The online archive about Charles Darwin is so vast it would take someone two months to view it all if they downloaded one image per minute!
Here’s the link….
http://darwin-online.org.uk/
Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

In January, The New England Journal of Medicine published an article criticizing the popularization of genetic testing by companies such as 23andme, deCode, Navigenics and Knome who doctors believe are introducing genetic testing prematurely into a commercial setting and confusing public and medics alike.  The authors of this article coined the phrase ‘recreational genomics’ for this type of testing.
While all of these companies claim that their tests should not be used as the basis for medical decisions, some physicians are concerned that customers for these tests will nevertheless begin seeking medical direction based on their results.  Doctors have been unprepared for the genetic advice they need …read more

‘Clover structure’ of Transfer RNA 
Transfer RNA (tRNA) is ancient. It is the most direct intermediary between genes and proteins. Like many other RNAs (ribonucleic acids), tRNA aids in translating genes into the chains of amino acids that make up proteins. The fact that tRNA is so central to the task of building proteins probably means that it has been around for a long time.
Professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés and Feng-Jie Sung of Univeristy of Illinois-Urbana Champaigne had a hunch that understanding the structural properties of tRNA would shed light on how organisms and viruses evolved.
All tRNAs assemble themselves into a shape that, if …read more

 
(Image courtesy of www.ustc.edu.cn) 
Latest news from the GenomeWeb:
“The Beijing Genomics Institute at Shenzhen announced that it is launching an International Giant Panda Genome Project.
Scientists at BGI-Shenzhen plan to sequence a panda to be selected from the Chengdu and Wolong breeding centers using high-throughput sequencing technology. They hope to have a draft genome sequence assembled within six months. The giant panda genome is roughly the same size as the human genome and contains some 20,000 to 30,000 genes.
The project is intended to provide new insights into panda ecology and evolution. This could shed light on the panda’s history, migration, and relationships to …read more

 
Galileo’s tomb 
Over 360 years ago Galileo died living as a recluse in Italy, a convicted heretic.  His crime - he fell foul of the religious authorities of the day by arguing that the Earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa.  His theory was subsequently found to be perfectly true.
Italian researchers, led by Prof Paulo Galluzzi, want to exhume his body from the city’s Basilica of the Holy Cross, for DNA tests to find the cause of the blindness that afflicted him. They also want to confirm, through DNA profiling, whether the body that shares his grave is that of Galileo’s beloved daughter, Sister Marie Celeste.
The …read more

 
(The Smiling Faces of Boddhastavas, Cambodia)
Ever the eternal optimist, here’s a piece of research which I can really relate to … Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh working with researchers at Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Australia found that happiness is partly determined by personality traits and that both personality and happiness are largely hereditary.
Rating personalities with the ‘Five factor model’ the researchers found that people who do not excessively worry, and who are sociable and conscientious tend to be happier. The findings suggest that those lucky enough to have the right inherited personality mix have an ‘affective reserve’ of happiness which can …read more

Further to my various articles on our ancestry, differences in gene expression levels between people of European versus African ancestry appear to affect how each group responds to certain drugs or fights off specific infections, report researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center and the Expression Research Laboratory at Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, CA.
The researchers used lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from blood from 180 healthy individuals. They studied 60 nuclear families, including mother, father and child. Thirty of the families were Caucasians from Utah and 30 were Yorubans from Ibadan, Nigeria.
Mainly focusing on cancer treatments, the researcher sought to understand …read more