Scientists at the Department of Energy’s BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) have taken a huge step towards the possibility of enhancing ethanol production following their discovery of a mutated gene that improves ethanol tolerance in microorganisms. This finding could have implications in our ability to meet alternative energy challenges associated with nonrenewable fuels. The research is published in the August 16 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers from the NYU Langone Medical Center analyzed the genetic data from nearly 50,000 individuals to uncover several DNA sequence variations that are associated with the electrical impulses that make our hearts beat. They hope the findings will lead to a better understanding of the underlying factors that may contribute to irregular heart rhythms and sudden cardiac arrests.

The 'central dogma' of genetics: DNA --> RNA --> Protein ... it's been the foundation to our understanding of the transfer of sequence information in living organisms since Francis Crick first coined the term 50 years ago. Despite our advances in decoding the human genome, scientists estimate that we still know very little as to the function of nearly 95% of our DNA.

A neurodegenerative disease affecting between 1 and 2 percent of people over the age of 65, Parkinson's disease can be difficult to diagnose as no definitive test exists. Its symptoms, which include tremors, sluggish movement, muscle stiffness and difficulty with balance, can be caused by many other things, including other neurological disorders, toxins and even medications.

Up until about twenty years ago, late-onset Parkinson's disease was thought to be caused exclusively from environmental factors. Even after researchers determined the disease to have genetic components - previous studies had only helped to confirm that genes previously had been found to confer "risk".

This new study took 18 years to build, and studied more than 4,000 individual DNA samples - half from unrelated patients with the disease, and the other half from healthy 'controls'. Patients from whom samples were taken were tracked for at least a dozen years after their initial diagnoses to assure that they indeed had Parkinson’s.

On March 11, 2010, researchers from the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), in Seattle, WA announced that they had, very successfully, analyzed the first whole genome sequences of a family of four. ISB partnered with Complete Genomics, of Mountain View California, to sequence the genomes of a father, mother and two children – both of which had two recessive genetic disorders, Miller Syndrome (a rare craniofacial disorder), and Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (or PCD – a lung disease). The results demonstrate the tremendous benefits of having the complete genome from an entire family with which to work – allowing the team to minimize the error rates in sequencing and increase the accuracy of the sequencing data to 99.999%.

The man who helped to first sequence the human genome ten years ago, is looking to use biology to tackle the energy problem.

 Using just four hairs and a few small fragments of bone from an ancient man discovered in the permafrost of western Greenland, a research team from the University of Copenhagen have sequenced about 80% of the ancient man's genome. 

Biomedical engineers from Boston University have developed a new sequencing technique that eliminates the time-consuming, and often error-prone step of DNA amplification - which will make future genome sequencing both faster and less expensive than any current technologies.

As published in Nature's advanced online edition yesterday, researchers from the Beijing Genomics Institute have successfully completed the sequencing and initial analyses of a draft version of the giant panda genome. One surprising discovery is that the Chinese bear lacks any recognizable genes required for digesting its staple food, bamboo.

From the Salk Institute

LA JOLLA, CA-When you eat may be just as vital to your health as what you eat, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Their experiments in mice revealed that the daily waxing and waning of thousands of genes in the liver-the body's metabolic clearinghouse-is mostly controlled by food intake and not by the body's circadian clock as conventional wisdom had it.