Hummingbirds took just 22 million years to diversify from a single common ancestor into 338 tiny, colorful species. And they have not finished yet. Evolutionary biologist Jim McGuire of the University of California, Berkeley, and his collaborators have found that although some hummingbird groups have saturated the available space in their environments, others are still developing into new species at…
MIT scientists report the use of a CRISPR methodology to cure mice of a rare liver disorder caused by a single genetic mutation. They say their study (“Genome editing with Cas9 in adult mice corrects a disease mutation and phenotype”), published in Nature Biotechnology, offers the first evidence that this gene-editing technique can reverse disease symptoms in living animals. CRISPR, which provides a…
One in a thousand children in the United States is deaf, and one in three adults will experience significant hearing loss after the age of 65. Whether the result of genetic or environmental factors, hearing loss costs billions of dollars in healthcare expenses every year, making the search for a cure critical. Now a team of researchers led by Karen…
ISG Director, Eric Vilain, and his research team have published a paper titled “Mutant Cohesin in Premature Ovarian Failure” in the premier medical journal New England Journal of Medicine SUMMARY: Premature ovarian failure is a major cause of female infertility. The genetic causes of this disorder remain unknown in most patients. Using whole-exome sequence analysis of a large consanguineous family with inherited…
Keeping track of what we reveal about ourselves each day—through email and text messages, Amazon purchases and Facebook “likes”—is hard enough. Imagine a future when Big Data has access not only to your shopping habits, but also to your DNA and other deeply personal data collected about our bodies and behavior—and about the inner workings of our proteins and cells.…
Ew, boys! A species of spider monkey has been found to live in strictly sexually segregated societies, apparently because the males attack the females if they spend too much time together. They are the first non-human primate species known to systematically separate along gender lines. Geoffroy’s spider monkeys, Ateles Geoffroyi, live in loose groups of a few dozen individuals, and anecdotal evidence…