ISG professors Dr. Hannah Landecker and Dr. Aaron Panofsky have published a paper titled “From Social Structure to Gene Regulation, and Back: A Critical Introduction to Environmental Epigenetics for Sociology” in the Annual Review of Sociology. Abstract: Epigenetics is a burgeoning area of biomedical research into the mechanisms by which genes are regulated—how the activity of producing proteins is controlled. Although molecular epigenetic…
The use of genome-wide analysis (GWA), where the entirety of an individual’s DNA is examined to look for the genomic mutations or variants which can cause health problems is a massively useful technology for diagnosing disease. However, it can also pose major ethical problems if used incorrectly, say new recommendations from the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) published on…
Albert Erives, associate professor in the University of Iowa Department of Biology, and his graduate student, Justin Crocker, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Janelia Farm Research Campus, have conducted a study that reveals important and useful insights into how and why developmental genes often take inputs from two independent “morphogen concentration gradients.” Using the…
A new study suggests that the large majority of noncoding DNA, which is abundant in many living things, may not actually be needed for complex life. The clues lie in the genome of the carnivorous bladderwort plant, Utricularia gibba. The U. gibba genome is the smallest ever to be sequenced from a complex, multicellular plant. The researchers who sequenced it say that 97…
ISG faculty Patrick Allard published a paper, “A C. elegans Screening Platform for the Rapid Assessment of Chemical Disruption of Germline Function” scheduled to appear in the June edition of Environmental Health Perspectives. Abstract: Despite the developmental impact of chromosome segregation errors, we lack the tools to assess environmental effects on the integrity of the germline in animals. Here, we report the development of an…
In the middle of the South Atlantic, there’s a patch of sea almost devoid of life. There are no birds, few fish, not even much plankton. But researchers report that they’ve found buried treasure under the empty waters: ancient DNA hidden in the muck of the sea floor, which lies 5000 meters below the waves. The DNA, from tiny, one-celled…