Your Weekly KromoNews: June
26th, 2005
This Week in Genetics
Smoking and excessive weight accelerate genetic ageing
The study from the St. Thomas Hospital in London provides yet another incentive
for women to stop smoking and start exercising in order to lose weight. The
scientists discovered that smoking and obesity accelerate the shortening of
telomeres. Telomeres are the caps on the ends of chromosomes and are involved in
cell division cycle. An average person loses 27 DNA base pairs from each
telomere every year. Smoking accelerates this process, resulting in loss of 200
base pairs each year, and obese women lose 240 base pairs a year.
Read Full Story
Political
choices affected by genes?
Geneticists, who study personality and behavior
have known for 30 years that the person's instinctive emotional responses to
certain issues are influenced by genes. Certainly it does not mean that the
choice of political party is imprinted in DNA, but genetics do determine
whether an individual responds openly or cautiously to various social and
political trends. New study from the three large universities in the United States
surveyed more than 8,000 sets of twins in order to learn how the genetics, when
combined with childhood experiences and social influences, affect the political
and ethical behavior.
Read Full Story
Key
to understanding some diseases may come from imprinted genes
Why do people seem to inherit certain traits from one side of the family?
The explanation may come from the discovery of the so-called imprinted genes.
Unlike dominant and recessive genes, which are molecularly different, imprinted
genes are identical, but they come with special tags, called silencers. If the
mother's gene for a trait is healthy, but bears a silencer tag, and the father's
gene is defective but does not have a silencer, the child will inherit the
father's gene. Three genes located on chromosome 10 appear to be imprinted and
inherited from the mother: gene for late onset Alzheimer's disease, gene for
obesity and gene for male sexual orientation. Traits like autism and
schizophrenia appear to be inherited from the father. Most imprinted genes are
expressed long before the birth, but recent studies on animals show that some
silencers can be turned off under the influence of environmental toxins. While
having a potential for inducing an expression of a silenced defective gene, such
an intervention could also become a treatment option for diseases like Alzheimer's
or cancer.
Read Full Story
Topic of the Week: Genetics of Obesity
Scientists have long contemplated
that tendency to excessive weight gain may be genetically determined,
and recent discoveries of several obesity-related genes demonstrate
that genes do influence the individual's body weight, similar to the height or eye color.
Body weight appears to be influenced by many different genes, including genes that code for fat metabolism and storage (Leptin), genes that determine metabolic rate, genes that regulate hormones, and genes that code for the specific receptors, such as Leptin receptor. Rarely, obesity is caused by a single mutation in a gene, and such individuals become overweight early in childhood. Scientists believe that tendency to obesity may be an autosomal recessive trait, which follows a simple Mendelian pattern of inheritance. Researchers from University of Iowa found an evidence of autosomal recessive obesity gene in a study of 277 schoolchildren and their parents.
Read full Article
GeneMarket
This week we recommend: "The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank " by David Plotz.
This just released book, based on a series of articles by Plotz, describes the fates
of children born from artificial insemination using Nobel Prize Sperm bank.
The book talks about the unforeseen emotional consequences of genetic engineering of "designer babies".
Its relevance can only increase in the times to come.
A must read!
ASIN: 1400061245, around 16$ USD, and available from
Amazon.
GeneMatics Update
Attributes in GeneMatics 2.2.4 can be customized on demand! Buy it here!
Upcoming Events
KromoNews is pleased to announce genetics related events all across the globe.
While not all the events may be relevant or reachable from your particular location,
we are making efforts to customize this content
based on individual preferences, location and language.
"Genomics in Business, 2005"
will be held from October 2-4, 2005 at Wageningen, The Netherlands. Experts interested in
exploiting the business potential of genomics in the Agro-Food industry come together at this conference.
Further, Genomics in Business 2005 offers you the opportunity to give your company's presentation
during one of the parallel sessions,
free of charge. The deadline for submission is September 1st, 2005.
Genetic Term of the Week
Retrovirus:
A retrovirus is a virus which has a genome consisting of RNA molecules.
It relies on reverse transcriptase to perform the reverse transcription
of its genome from RNA into DNA, which can then be integrated into the host's genome.
Once integrated into the host DNA, virus can use cellular machinery for
its own replication.
HIV-1 and HIV-2, the agents that cause AIDS, are retroviruses.
› Read more about retroviruses here.
Trivia
(I bet you knew that)
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, genetics found one unlikely adversary in the form of consortiums
against racism. Some people believed that a very complete understanding of genetics
could allow certain individuals to classify different human races, thus cementing
any differences between them. It was somewhat reminiscent of an aspect of science
endorsed by Adolf Hitler. Fortunately, genetics has only brought all
of us together, and we sure hope that it continues that way.
Read an example of this phenomenon here.
This edition of KromoNews brought to you by GeneMatics: http://www.genematics.com .
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