Religion meddling in Scientific progress in UK

This week the UK’s MPs’ vote on a decision regarding mitochondrial gene therapy. You would think that the obvious rational decision should be “of course” because this is about making a dramatic change in the lives of those who might inherit a mitochondrial disease, which is passed on to children from mothers who possess mutations in the DNA … Read more

Breakthrough study overturns theory of ‘junk DNA’ in genome

This is big news, the international Encode project has found that about a fifth of the human genome regulates the 2% that makes proteins. What was the previous thinking? Until now, the thought was that the vast stretches of DNA between our 20,000 or so protein-coding genes – more than 98% of the genetic sequence … Read more

New branches on the tree of life

Now this is simply fascinating to me, and hopefully to you as well. Venter, Eisen and colleagues report in the journal Public Library of Science One that they have analysed marine DNA and discovered genes that look quite different from any seen before. To clarify, the tree of life, as we know it was basically … Read more