Topic genetics

News genetics

• Diabetes genes in South Asians discovered by Imperial College

  An international team of researchers led by Imperial College London has identified six new genetic variants that could potentially be the causative agents of type 2 diabetes in South Asian populations (Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, and Sri Lankan). The findings published in Nature Genetics, give s more

• Researchers use genome sequences to peer into early human history

  Cornell researchers have developed new statistical methods based on the complete genome sequences of people alive today to shed light on events at the dawn of human history.They applied their methods to the genomes of individuals of East Asian, European, and western and southern African descent. The more

• Rice's origins point to China, genome researchers conclude

  Rice originated in China, a team of genome researchers has concluded in a study tracing back thousands of years of evolutionary history through large-scale gene re-sequencing. Their findings, which appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicate that domesticated rice may more

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• Genotypes in Smokers: Correlations with Smoking Behavior
  

  Smoking behavior is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Moreover, smoking initiation and smoking persistence have a heritability of at least 50%. A large body of work has been dedicated to associating multiple genetic markers of neurobiological pathways previously linked to addiction and smoking such as the central dopaminergic, serotoninergic, and nicotinergic pathways with different aspects of smoking behavior. In order to investigate the feasability of future genetic analyses, we genotyped 14 SNPs in 288 samples of addicted smokers using the LightCycler® 480 System with HybProbe assays. more

• The Universal ProbeLibrary - a Versatile Tool for Quantitative Expression Analysis in the Zebrafish
  

  The teleost zebrafish is a widely used model organism for the study of developmental and disease-related processes in vertebrates, including humans. Understanding these processes at a molecular and cellular level frequently requires the estimation of gene expression levels. Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) is an important tool towards this goal but has, until now, been relatively neglected in zebrafish. Here, we describe the comparison of the Universal ProbeLibrary (UPL)-based qPCR to a conventional SYBR Green I-based qPCR assay using embryonic zebrafish cDNA. We found that the Universal ProbeLibrary-based assay shows equal or better performance compared with the SYBR Green I assay. more

• Real-Time PCR Quality Control for Gene Expression
  

  Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) has become the de facto standard for nucleic acid quantification. This achievement is due in large part to its sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, large dynamic range of linear quantification, and its speed. The qPCR technology has matured to a ready-to-use commonly available method in most molecular biology laboratories. Nevertheless, the reliability of the final quantification result depends heavily on all elements in the workflow, such as the quality of the input template (integrity and absence of inhibitors), the PCR assay (specificity, efficiency, limit of detection), and normalization strategy (validated reference genes). more

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