Hi: My friend Charlie Bonfield sends interesting notes to his friends. Here is a very interesting one.An article on the possible connection between cancer and genes unique to humans.Among the approximately 23,000 genes found in human DNA, scientists currently estimate that there may be as few as 50 to 100 that have no counterparts in…
Read moreAdipose-tissue contains the largest store of energy in the body and has important roles in regulating energy partitioning. Adipose tissue is also seen as an active biological tissue rather than a mass of fat. Developments in genomics, in particular microarray-based expression profiling have: provided scientists with a number of new candidate genes whose expression in…
Read moreThe mammalian central nervous system is a very complicated system, with an array of different cell types each with its singular morphology , connections and function. The phenotypic properties of each cell are the product of combinations of expressed gene products peculiar to that cell type. The Allen brain atlas project ( http://www.brain-map.org is studying…
Read moreIn 1913, RA Fisher, an evolutionary biologist and pioneer of modern statistics, published a paper on the genetic causes of disease that brought together two rival factions.1. Geneticists who proposed a theory that diseases worked like Mendel’s pea plants, with just one or two genes responsible for each condition.2. Biometricians, however, advocated a continuous distribution…
Read more