Cameron vows to defend the Falklands

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Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to defend the Falkland Islands after a 'momentous' year in which residents voted to remain a British overseas territory.

In a Christmas message, Cameron said the world should respect the overwhelming result of a referendum in March which came in the face of increasing calls from Argentina to negotiate the island's sovereignty.

'2013 will be remembered as a momentous year in the history of the Falkland Islands,' Cameron said on Friday.

'So as we look to 2014, you can count on the British government's continued support in countering the Argentine government's campaign to claim the islands' resources and to inflict damage on your economy.'

Cameron said Argentina's attempts to damage the islands' economy involved recent 'shameful attempts to discourage hydrocarbons exploration' in Falklands waters.

The islanders voted 99.8 per cent in favour of staying British in a referendum last month, but Argentina rejected the vote as meaningless.

Cameron said Britain would 'remain steadfast in its commitment to your sovereignty and security'.

'The Argentine government will never succeed in any attempt to misrepresent the history of your islands or question your right to self-determination,' the prime minister added.

'Britain will always be ready to defend the Falkland Islands.'

Argentina invaded the Falklands, a windswept archipelago, on April 2, 1982, but surrendered on June 14 after a British task force reclaimed it.

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Human genetic variation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Human genetic variation is the genetic differences both within and among populations. There may be multiple variants of any given gene in the human population (genes), leading to polymorphism. Many genes are not polymorphic, meaning that only a single allele is present in the population: the gene is then said to be fixed.[1] On average, biochemically all humans are 99.9% similar to any other humans.[2]

No two humans are genetically identical. Even monozygotic twins, who develop from one zygote, have infrequent genetic differences due to mutations occurring during development and gene copy number variation.[3] Differences between individuals, even closely related individuals, are the key to techniques such as genetic fingerprinting. Alleles occur at different frequencies in different human populations, with populations that are more geographically and ancestrally remote tending to differ more.

Causes of differences between individuals include the exchange of genes during meiosis and various mutational events. There are at least two reasons why genetic variation exists between populations. Natural selection may confer an adaptive advantage to individuals in a specific environment if an allele provides a competitive advantage. Alleles under selection are likely to occur only in those geographic regions where they confer an advantage. The second main cause of genetic variation is due to the high degree of neutrality of most mutations. Most mutations do not appear to have any selective effect one way or the other on the organism. The main cause is genetic drift, this is the effect of random changes in the gene pool. In humans, founder effect and past small population size (increasing the likelihood of genetic drift) may have had an important influence in neutral differences between populations. The theory that humans recently migrated out of Africa supports this.

The study of human genetic variation has both evolutionary significance and medical applications. It can help scientists understand ancient human population migrations as well as how different human groups are biologically related to one another. For medicine, study of human genetic variation may be important because some disease-causing alleles occur more often in people from specific geographic regions. New findings show that each human has on average 60 new mutations compared to their parents.[4][5] Apart from mutations, many genes that may have aided humans in ancient times plague humans today. For example, it is suspected that genes that allow humans to more efficiently process food are those that make people susceptible to obesity and diabetes today.[6]

Genetic variation among humans occurs on many scales, from gross alterations in the human karyotype to single nucleotide changes.[7]

Nucleotide diversity is the average proportion of nucleotides that differ between two individuals. The human nucleotide diversity is estimated to be 0.1%[8] to 0.4% of base pairs.[9] A difference of 1 in 1,000 amounts to approximately 3 million nucleotide differences, because the human genome has about 3 billion nucleotides.

A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is difference in a single nucleotide between members of one species that occurs in at least 1% of the population. It is estimated that there are 10 to 30 million SNPs in humans.

SNPs are the most common type of sequence variation, estimated to comprise 90% of all sequence variations.[10] Other sequence variations are single base exchanges, deletions and insertions.[10] SNPs occur on average about every 100 to 300 bases [10] and so are the major source of heterogeneity.

A functional, or non-synonymous, SNP is one that affects some factor such as gene splicing or messenger RNA, and so causes a phenotypic difference between members of the species. About 3% to 5% of human SNPs are functional (see International HapMap Project). Neutral, or synonymous SNPs are still useful as genetic markers in genome-wide association studies, because of their sheer number and the stable inheritance over generations.[10]

A coding SNP is one that occurs inside a gene. There are 105 Human Reference SNPs that result in premature stop codons in 103 genes. This corresponds to 0.5% of coding SNPs. They occur due to segmental duplication in the genome. These SNPs result in loss of protein, yet all these SNP alleles are common and are not purified in negative selection.[11]

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Human genetic variation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Study: Some plants won’t cope with human-induced climate change

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GAINESVILLE, Fla., Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Human-induced climate change may pose a bigger threat than first believed to plants and global agriculture, a University of Florida scientist says.

Evolutionary genetics Professor Pam Soltis, co-author of a study published in the journal Nature, said most flowering plants, trees and agricultural crops may not have the evolutionary traits needed to rapidly respond to human-induced climate change.

Many of these plants needed millions of years to evolve mechanisms to cope with freezing temperatures as they radiated into nearly every climate during pre-historic times, she said, and likely acquired many of these adaptive traits prior to their movement into colder regions.

"Only some plants were able to make the adjustments to survive in cold climates," Soltis said in a university release Friday. "In fact, some had traits used for other purposes that they co-opted for cold tolerance. The results have implications for plant response to climate change -- some plant lineages, including many crops, will not have the underlying genetic attributes that will allow for rapid responses to climate change."

Because evolutionary strategies to resist cold would have taken millions of years, researchers said, it could mean many plants will have trouble with accelerating human-caused climate change.

"Some of these changes were probably not as simple as we once thought," Soltis said. "Adjusting to big shifts in their environments is probably not easy for plants to do.

"With climate change that is human-induced, all habitats will be affected over a short period of time, and plants and other organisms will have to adapt quickly if they are to survive," she said.

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Changes in Gene Explain More of Inherited Risk for Rare Disease

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Newswise BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Changes to a gene called LZTR1 predispose people to develop a rare disorder where multiple tumors called schwannomas form near nerve pathways, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Genetics and led by researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The formation of multiple schwannomas is one sign that a person has the genetic disorder called schwannomatosis, which is one of the three major forms of neurofibromatosis, besides neurofibromatosis types 1 and 2. The condition is so named because the tumors originate in Schwann cells that form in sheaths that insulate nerves to cause severe, chronic pain in many patients.

To date, physicians cannot give most patients a confirmed diagnosis for schwannomatosis, even if they show symptoms, because changes in genes linked to the condition by past studies explain only about 50 percent of familial and less than 10 percent of sporadic cases.

Work in 2007 determined that inheritable mutations in SMARCB1 predisposed to schwannomatosis. In addition, the schwannomas showed a loss of the long arm of chromosome 22, and different mutations in the neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) gene were found in each tumor studied.

Despite these many known details, much of the risk for schwannomatosis remained unexplained going into the current study. Several research groups had proposed that other schwannomatosis-predisposing genes existed, but no one had found any. Specializing in genetic studies for all forms of the neurofibromatoses, the UAB Medical Genomics Laboratory chose to focus its research on a subset of schwannomatosis samples that did not harbor SMARCB1 mutations, which framed their experiments such that the role of LZTR1 was revealed.

We have been working urgently to identify the genetic mechanisms behind these diseases because doing so is central to efforts to understand schwannoma tumor development as well as to identify new drug treatments, said Ludwine Messiaen, Ph.D., director of the Medical Genomics Laboratory, professor in the Division of Clinical Genetics in the Department of Genetics within the UAB School of Medicine and corresponding study author. This is pertinent as only some of the schwannomas can be surgically removed without neurological consequences, and there is no widely accepted approach for treating the severe, chronic pain in these patients.

The study, conceived and coordinated by Arkadiusz Piotrowski of the University of Gdansk in Poland and Messiaen, resulted in the identification of LZTR1 on chromosome 22q as a novel tumor-suppressor gene predisposing to multiple schwannomas in patients without a mutation in SMARCB1. The results were seen in patients whose schwannomas also showed a loss of the long arm of chromosome 22 and a different somatic NF2 mutation in each tumor. The team found that in all 25 schwannomas studied from 16 unrelated schwannomatosis patients, all tumors showing a loss of the long arm of chromosome 22 and a different somatic NF2 mutation in each tumor also had LZTR1 mutations present, strongly supporting the contribution to the disease by the combination of these factors.

The LZTR1 mutations were found using massive parallel sequencing (e.g. next-generation sequencing) of highly evolutionary conserved sequences specifically on chromosome 22. LZTR1 mutations likely will be found in a high fraction of familial as well as sporadic schwannomatosis patients, whose predisposition is not caused by SMARCB1, says Messiaen. Indeed, LZTR1 mutations were found in 6/6 familial and 8/11 sporadic such patients. Both causal genes, LZTR1 and SMARCB1, show a potential functional link to chromatin remodeling mechanisms, which play a crucial role in cell differentiation and adaptation to environmental stimuli. Further, LZTR1 and SMARCB1 are known to interact with histone deacetylase 4 or HDAC4, which is a target for histone deacetylase inhibitors, a new class of anti-tumor drugs. The present findings will encourage further studies aiming at potential treatment for schwannomatosis.

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Senator Blunt Outlines Common-Sense Health Care Solutions To Replace ObamaCare 12/18/13 – Video

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Senator Blunt Outlines Common-Sense Health Care Solutions To Replace ObamaCare 12/18/13
On Wednesday, December 18, 2013, U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) spoke on the Senate floor to highlight common-sense health care solutions to replace ObamaCare.

By: SenatorBlunt

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Feds extend health care sign up by one day

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GWEN IFILL: Tonight, we get the latest on the health care exchanges and why the Obama administration is giving people another day to sign up. The deadline for new coverage that would take effect on January 1 was supposed to be midnight tonight, but the administration quietly pushed it back. That decision came as White House officials announced President Obama has himself signed up for a health plan.

Alex Wayne covers health care for Bloomberg News, and he joins us now.

So, what is the real reason that this is being pushed back, Alex?

ALEX WAYNE, Bloomberg News: Sure.

Well, the website the federal government has to sell insurance to people who need it saw more than a million visitors just today. And a lot of those visitors probably ran into the same screen that I ran into when I tried it a few times throughout the day, which was basically a holding screen that said very politely, look, we have too much traffic right now. Please wait until there's less traffic. And if you would give us an e-mail address, we will send you an e-mail in a few hours and you can come back when traffic subsides and sign up.

They don't want these people to go away without coverage. They want to make sure that all those people get the coverage they came to the website expecting to sign for. And so they are giving really everybody in the country another day, not just the folks who visit today.

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Health coverage deadlines changed to prevent insurance gaps

GWEN IFILL: So as long as you were there today and as long as you registered and got this -- signed up for this e-mail...

ALEX WAYNE: Yes.

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Feds extend health care sign up by one day

Deadline looms for Texans seeking health care

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Health care workers and officials in Texas rushed to sign people up for health plans Monday as they faced a looming deadline for those buying coverage under the new federal health care law to have their plans kick in Jan. 1.

In Dallas and Houston, hundreds of people trained to assist with enrollment worked the day before Christmas Eve, forgoing a vacation day that many others enjoyed. Tuesday is the last day for those who want their insurance plans to go into effect on New Years Day.

We expect, just like we see on all deadline days, that well see a crush of people, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said, encouraging people to get online or call immediately to enroll.

Dont wait till late afternoon or nightfall when the biggest procrastinators will be clogging up the phones and the websites, Jenkins said.

About 25 percent of Texas residents, or some 6 million people, lack health insurance. It is the highest rate in the nation. Caring for those people costs millions of taxpayer dollars annually, officials said. So the opportunity to get them health insurance through President Barack Obamas signature law is key to lowering those costs, Jenkins said. About 14,000 Texans enrolled for coverage in October and November.

In Dallas and Houston, health care workers and nonprofit groups doing outreach to the uninsured held dozens of events in recent days. Many people wrongly believed they also had to pay on Monday for Jan. 1 coverage, so part of the job was explaining that payments were not due at the same time, said Mario Castillo, who is leading outreach and enrollment efforts in a 13-county region surrounding Houston for Enroll America, a nonprofit whose mission it is to get people coverage under the new law.

Enrolling Texans is crucial to the laws success. In Dallas County alone, Jenkins said, taxpayers spent some $685 million in 2012 to care for those who lack insurance, much more than the $430 million the county collected in hospital taxes.

But Texas Gov. Rick Perry, like many other conservative Republicans, has staunchly opposed the law. The state deferred to the federal government to set up Texas enrollment website, and it rejected federal funding to expand Medicaid. As a result, more than a million people could remain uninsured because they will not qualify for subsidized insurance under the exchange but will also earn too much to qualify for Medicaid in its current configuration in Texas.

Still, every person that gets coverage will help decrease the strain on the system.

Its key from a public health standpoint, and its the most important thing we can do economically to keep our taxes low and to keep our economy strong, Jenkins said.

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CNN Poll: Health care law support drops to all-time low

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Washington (CNN) Support for the country's new health care law has dropped to a record low, according to a new national poll.

And a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday also indicates that most Americans predict that the Affordable Care Act will actually result in higher prices for their own medical care. CNN/ORC International survey full results

Only 35% of those questioned in the poll say they support the health care law, a 5-point drop in less than a month. Sixty-two percent say they oppose the law, up four points from November.

Nearly all of the newfound opposition is coming from women.

"Opposition to Obamacare rose six points among women, from 54% in November to 60% now, while opinion of the new law remained virtually unchanged among men," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "That's bad news for an administration that is reaching out to moms across the country in an effort to make Obamacare a success."

According to the survey, 43% say they oppose the health care law because it is too liberal, with 15% saying they give the measure a thumbs down because it is not liberal enough. That means half the public either favors Obamacare, or opposes it because it's not liberal enough, down four points from last month.

Sixty-three percent say they believe the new law will increase the amount of money they personally pay for medical care, which may not be a good sign for a law known as the "Affordable Care Act."

The survey also indicates that 42% say they will be personally worse off under Obamacare, with 16% saying the law will help them, and four in 10 saying it will have no effect on them.

Just over six in 10 say they believe they will be able to receive care from the same doctors that they now use, with 35% saying they will not be able to see the same doctors.

The Affordable Care Act, which is the signature domestic achievement for President Barack Obama, was passed along party lines in 2010, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Since that passage, Republicans have fought to either repeal, defund, or severely restrict the law. A push by congressional conservatives to defund the law was the catalyst for October's 16-day long partial federal government shutdown, the first in nearly two decades.

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CNN Poll: Health care law support drops to all-time low

Poll: Health care law support hits new low

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -

Support for the country's new health care law has dropped to a record low, according to a new national poll.

And a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday also indicates that most Americans predict that the Affordable Care Act will actually result in higher prices for their own medical care.

Only 35% of those questioned in the poll say they support the health care law, a 5-point drop in less than a month. Sixty-two percent say they oppose the law, up four points from November.

Nearly all of the newfound opposition is coming from women.

"Opposition to Obamacare rose six points among women, from 54% in November to 60% now, while opinion of the new law remained virtually unchanged among men," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "That's bad news for an administration that is reaching out to moms across the country in an effort to make Obamacare a success."

According to the survey, 43% say they oppose the health care law because it is too liberal, with 15% saying they give the measure a thumbs down because it is not liberal enough. That means half the public either favors Obamacare, or opposes it because it's not liberal enough, down four points from last month.

Sixty-three percent say they believe the new law will increase the amount of money they personally pay for medical care, which may not be a good sign for a law known as the "Affordable Care Act."

The survey also indicates that 42% say they will be personally worse off under Obamacare, with 16% saying the law will help them, and four in 10 saying it will have no effect on them.

Just over six in 10 say they believe they will be able to receive care from the same doctors that they now use, with 35% saying they will not be able to see the same doctors.

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Poll: Health care law support hits new low

Health care sign-up deadline extended to Tuesday

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. Monday was supposed to be the deadline for health care enrollment, but those taking it down to the wire have been given a reprieve again. President Barack Obama pushed the deadline back one day to Tuesday for those seeking coverage effective on January 1st.

In the metro area, the Shepherd Center was a busy place where navigators dealt with back-to-back appointments and a rush of people wanting health care coverage. Jenny Gottsch graduated from college last weekend. Shes looking for a job and an affordable plan.

Ive been enrolled in programs before where it`s just been too expensive for me to pay, she said.

Jenny started the enrollment process on healthcare.gov, but said she needed help figuring out which plan is best for her.

Its supposed to be user-friendly, but I`m still confused as a 22-year-old. I`m still learning about all this stuff, she said.

George Mayer is a trained navigator, one of 80,000 in the country working to help people like Jenny.

We dont sell insurance. Were not employed by an insurance company. Were just here to help people get through the system, Mayer said.

The system had its share of problems. During the first two months of enrollment there were many hardware and software defects. Consumers were frustrated by error messages.

Early on the web site was very unstable, but things have gotten a lot better now and were signing up people every day, Mayer said.

George said it takes anywhere from 45 minutes to four-and-a half hours to enroll in a plan. It just depends on a clients personal situation. For Jenny, a young woman with a bright future, having coverage is a relief.

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Health care sign-up deadline extended to Tuesday

Health care law worries some Wis. businesses

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APPLETON, Wis. (AP) Some Wisconsin companies are putting off decisions to hire or expand because they're not sure how the new health care law will play out, some business leaders said.

Some said they are worried that their health care costs will rise, while others said they suspected the law would keep changing, Gannett Wisconsin Media reported (http://post.cr/1hz42Y4 ). Some corporate leaders said they want to wait and see how the law plays out before committing to any new long-term investments.

Health care costs have been a growing concern in recent years. Over the past five years, the cost of premiums per employee has risen an average of 5 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Under the law, most small businesses do not have to provide coverage. But companies with 50 or more employees will have to offer insurance or risk fines from the government in 2015.

That could mean cost increases of 12 to 15 percent for larger employers, said Pam Branshaw, a partner at Wipfli, an accounting company that oversees employee benefits. Small-business owners who provide coverage could see even higher increases in the 25 percent range, she said.

"It's going to be such a volatile time period I think until we get through 2015," Branshaw said. "(Small businesses) think real hard before they hire more people."

That's the case for Cap Wulf, president and chief executive officer of Wulf Brothers home comfort systems. His Sturgeon Bay company has 62 employees, and he said he'd have to take a "long hard look" before hiring anyone else because of health care costs and other employee expenses.

"The costs are getting so incredible that it definitely makes you look at, 'OK, what can we do to avoid hiring another person? Can we work in some extra overtime?'" he said.

Despite the uncertainty, some say the concerns to small businesses are being exaggerated. Lori Compas, who runs the Wisconsin Business Alliance, has been giving presentations to business groups for the past few months in which she discusses how small companies should see little impact from the new law.

"No penalties, no fees, no fines that was my main message, and people were just flabbergasted," Compas said. "I'm just afraid there's been a lot of misinformation out there. A lot of small-business owners were unnecessarily frightened."

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Health care law worries some Wis. businesses

Health care law support drops to all-time low

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Support for the country's new health care law has dropped to a record low, according to a new national poll.

And a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday also indicates that most Americans predict that the Affordable Care Act will actually result in higher prices for their own medical care.

Only 35% of those questioned in the poll say they support the health care law, a 5-point drop in less than a month. Sixty-two percent say they oppose the law, up four points from November.

Nearly all of the newfound opposition is coming from women.

"Opposition to Obamacare rose six points among women, from 54% in November to 60% now, while opinion of the new law remained virtually unchanged among men," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "That's bad news for an administration that is reaching out to moms across the country in an effort to make Obamacare a success."

According to the survey, 43% say they oppose the health care law because it is too liberal, with 15% saying they give the measure a thumbs down because it is not liberal enough. That means half the public either favors Obamacare, or opposes it because it's not liberal enough, down four points from last month.

Sixty-three percent say they believe the new law will increase the amount of money they personally pay for medical care, which may not be a good sign for a law known as the "Affordable Care Act."

The survey also indicates that 42% say they will be personally worse off under Obamacare, with 16% saying the law will help them, and four in 10 saying it will have no effect on them.

Just over six in 10 say they believe they will be able to receive care from the same doctors that they now use, with 35% saying they will not be able to see the same doctors.

The Affordable Care Act, which is the signature domestic achievement for President Barack Obama, was passed along party lines in 2010, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Since that passage, Republicans have fought to either repeal, defund, or severely restrict the law. A push by congressional conservatives to defund the law was the catalyst for October's 16-day long partial federal government shutdown, the first in nearly two decades.

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Health care law support drops to all-time low

Genetic Engineering | The Earth Times | Encyclopaedia

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Genetic engineering is a scientific development that involves the artificial manipulation of an organism's genes by using techniques such as molecular cloning and transformation in order to alter their nature and structure. Many of these transformations are achieved by manipulation of an organism's DNA, which effectively is the code inscribed in every cell to determine how it will function.

As with most scientific developments there are a number of arguments both for and against.

There has been a considerable amount of research into the genetic engineering of crops such as potatoes, tomatoes, soybean and rice, with the aim of obtaining new strains that have better nutritional qualities and better yields.

In a world where there is a continual need to produce more food; genetically engineered crops are being developed to grow on land that is currently not suitable for cultivation. By manipulating the genes in crops the aim is to improve their nutritional value, their rate of growth and their flavour.

Seeds can be engineered so that they are resistant to pests and can survive cultivation in relatively harsh climatic conditions. Biotechnology can also be used to slow down the process of food spoilage so that fruit and vegetables can have a longer shelf life.

Although on the face of it genetic engineering might appear to bring a number of very positive benefits, there is by no means a universal approval of this practice.

Greenpeace International is very firm in its opposition, pointing out that there is no adequate scientific understanding of the impact that genetically modified organisms might have on the world's environment and on human health.

Undesirable genetic mutations can lead to allergies in crops and critics believe that while genetic engineering might enhance taste and appearance of foodstuffs, it could also hamper the nutritional value. At the very least, in order to inform consumers, all foodstuffs or products that have been made from genetically modified food should be clearly labelled as such at point of sale.

Whole new substances such as proteins and other food nutrients can be produced as a result of genetic engineering. The genetic modification of foods can be used to increase their medicinal value, thus making available a range of homegrown medical vaccines.

Greenpeace maintains that commercial interests are the prime movers to introduce genetically modified organisms into the food chain and stresses that once these organisms have been released into the environment they cannot be recalled.

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Genetic Engineering – Biology Questions and Answers

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Learn the Fundamentals of Biotechnology

1. What is biotechnology?

Biotechnology is the application of biological knowledge to obtain new techniques, materials and compounds of pharmaceutical, medical, agrarian, industrial and scientific use, i.e., of practical use.

The pioneer fields of biotechnology were agriculture and the food industry but nowadays many other practical fields use its techniques.

2. What is genetic engineering?

Genetic engineering is the use of genetic knowledge to artificially manipulate genes: It is one of the fields of biotechnology.

3. At the present level of the biotechnology what are the main techniques of genetic engineering?

The main techniques of genetic engineering today are: the recombinant DNA technology (also called genetic engineering itself) in which pieces of genes from an organism are inserted into the genetic material of another organism producing recombinant beings; the nucleus transplantation technology, popularly known as cloning, in which a nucleus of a cell is grafted into a enucleated egg cell of the same species to create a genetic copy of the donor (of the nucleus) individual; the technology of DNA amplification, or PCR (polymerase chain reaction), that allows millions replications of chosen fragments of a DNA molecule.

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Genetic Engineering - Biology Questions and Answers

Genetic Engineering | Buzzle.com

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Genetic Engineering is a very complex field where there is a direct manipulation of an organism's genes. It is also called recombinant DNA technology, which involves creating a DNA by bringing together DNA sequences which otherwise, normally would not be combined. Techniques like transformation and molecular cloning are used in genetic engineering to modify the structure and the characteristics of genes.

Interesting Examples of Genetic Engineering

Genetic engineering is the technique that gives the power to desirably manipulate the genome of an organism. This ability has been explored and experimented in several organisms, some of which have been commercialized whereas the...

Common Misconceptions in Genetics

In the mid-19th century, Gregor Mendel propagated his theories related to heredity. A lot of progress has been made in the field of genetics since then. However, even today, there exist a lot of misconceptions owing to incorrect...

Benefits of Genetic Engineering

Genetic engineering process manipulates the DNA sequence to create a new one. The write-up focuses on the various benefits of genetic engineering.

Genetic Engineering in Humans

With the advancements in the field of genetic engineering, science in the future may give us the power to genetically modify and create 'near perfect' life. Read this write-up to know more about genetic engineering in humans.

Pros and Cons of Genetic Engineering

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Gene Therapy – American Medical Association

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Gene therapy is a novel approach to treat, cure, or ultimately prevent disease by changing the expression of a persons genes. Gene therapy is in its infancy, and current therapies are primarily experimental, with most human clinical trials still in the research stages.

How does gene therapy work? Genes are composed of DNA that carries information needed to make proteins the building blocks of our bodies. Variations in the DNA sequence or code of a gene are called mutations, which often are harmless but sometimes can lead to serious disease. Gene therapy treats disease by repairing dysfunctional genes or by providing copies of missing genes.

To reverse disease caused by genetic damage, researchers isolate normal DNA and package it into a vehicle known as a vector, which acts as a molecular delivery truck. Vectors composed of viral DNA sequences have been used successfully in human gene therapy trials. Doctors infect a target cell usually from a tissue affected by the illness, such as liver or lung cellswith the vector. The vector unloads its DNA cargo, which then begins producing the proper proteins and restores the cell to normal. Problems can arise if the DNA is inserted into the wrong place in the genome. For example, in rare instances the DNA may be inserted into a regulatory gene, improperly turning it on or off, leading to cancer.

Researchers continue to optimize viral vectors as well as develop non-viral vectors that may have fewer unexpected side effects. Nonviral gene delivery involves complexing DNA with an agent that allows it to enter a cell nonspecifically. DNA delivered in this manner is usually expressed for only a limited time because it rarely integrates into the host cell genome.

Initial efforts in gene therapy focused on delivering a normal copy of a missing or defective gene, but current programs are applying gene delivery technology across a broader spectrum of conditions. Researchers are now utilizing gene therapy to :

What diseases could be treated with gene therapy? About 4,000 diseases have been traced to gene disorders. Current and possible candidates for gene therapy include cancer, AIDS, cystic fibrosis, Parkinsons and Alzheimers diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), cardiovascular disease and arthritis.

In cases such as cystic fibrosis or hemophilia, disease results from a mutation in a single gene. In other scenarios like hypertension or high cholesterol, certain genetic variations may interact with environmental stimuli to cause disease.

Has gene therapy been successfully used in humans? Gene therapy is likely to be most successful with diseases caused by single gene defects. The first successful gene therapy on humans was performed in 1990 by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. The therapy treated a four-year-old child for adenosine deaminase (ADA) deficiency, a rare genetic disease in which children are born with severe immunodeficiency and are prone to repeated serious infections.

Since 1990, gene therapy had been tested in human clinical trials for treating such diseases as severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID), cystic fibrosis, Canavan's disease, and Gaucher's disease. In 2003, more than 600 gene therapy clinical trials were under way in the United States but only a handful of these are in advanced stages. SCID, in which children lack natural defenses against infection and can only survive in isolated environments, remains the only disease cured by gene therapy.

Are genetic alterations from gene therapy passed on to children? Gene therapy can be targeted to somatic (body) or germ (egg and sperm) cells. In somatic gene therapy, the patients genome is changed, but the change is not passed along to the next generation. In germline gene therapy, the patients egg or sperm cells are changed with the goal of passing on changes to their offspring. Existing gene therapy treatments and experiments are all somatic.

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Gene Therapy - American Medical Association

Gene Therapy – Genetics Home Reference

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Please choose from the following list of questions for information about gene therapy, an experimental technique that uses genetic material to treat or prevent disease.

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Gene therapy is an experimental technique that uses genes to treat or prevent disease. In the future, this technique may allow doctors to treat a disorder by inserting a gene into a patients cells instead of using drugs or surgery. Researchers are testing several approaches to gene therapy, including:

Replacing a mutated gene that causes disease with a healthy copy of the gene.

Inactivating, or knocking out, a mutated gene that is functioning improperly.

Introducing a new gene into the body to help fight a disease.

Although gene therapy is a promising treatment option for a number of diseases (including inherited disorders, some types of cancer, and certain viral infections), the technique remains risky and is still under study to make sure that it will be safe and effective. Gene therapy is currently only being tested for the treatment of diseases that have no other cures.

MedlinePlus from the National Library of Medicine offers a list of links to information about genes and gene therapy.

Educational resources related to gene therapy are available from GeneEd.

The Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah provides an interactive introduction to gene therapy.

The rest is here:

Gene Therapy - Genetics Home Reference