Category Archives: Genome

Dr. Colleen McBride : Role of Behavioral Social Sciences
Dr. Colleen McBride of the National Human Genome Research Institute discusses the role that behavioral and social scientists can play in the area of research.From:NIHODViews:2 0ratingsTime:01:24More inEducation

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Dr. Colleen McBride : Role of Behavioral Social Sciences - Video

Dr. Susan Persky : How The Research Benefits Health Providers
Dr. Susan Persky of the National Human Genome Research Institute discusses how her research benefits medical providers.From:NIHODViews:4 0ratingsTime:00:43More inEducation

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Dr. Susan Persky : How The Research Benefits Health Providers - Video

Dr. Colleen McBride : Phenotyping
Dr. Colleen McBride of the National Human Genome Research Institute discusses the importance of phenotyping.From:NIHODViews:2 0ratingsTime:01:11More inEducation

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Dr. Colleen McBride : Phenotyping - Video

Dr. Colleen McBride : What Excites Me
Dr. Colleen McBride of the National Human Genome Research Institute discuss what excites her about innovations that are being made in genomic research.From:NIHODViews:3 0ratingsTime:01:09More inEducation

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Dr. Colleen McBride : What Excites Me - Video

More Dicer Cascade
The Dicer cascade decomposition of a collection of introns from the human genome as folded and decomposed by FastRNAFrom:Richard J. FeldmannViews:0 0ratingsTime:11:11More inScience Technology

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More Dicer Cascade - Video

Dr. Colleen McBride : GWAS
Dr. Colleen McBride of the National Human Genome Research Institute discusses the importance of GWAS (Genome-Wide Association Studies).From:NIHODViews:3 0ratingsTime:01:32More inEducation

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Dr. Colleen McBride : GWAS - Video

Washington, November 25 (ANI): Short snippets of DNA found in human brain tissue have provided new insight into human cognitive function and risk for developing certain neurological diseases, researchers from the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have revealed.

There are nearly 40 million positions in the human genome with DNA sequences that are different than those in non-human primates, making the task of learning which are important and which are inconsequential a challenge for scientists.

Rather than comparing these sequences strand by strand, Schahram Akbarian, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, wanted to identify the crucial set of differences between the two genomes by looking more broadly at the chromatin, the structure that packages the DNA and controls how it is expressed.

They found hundreds of regions throughout the human genome, which showed a markedly different chromatin structure in neurons in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region that controls complex emotional and cognitive behaviour, compared to non-human primates. The findings of the study provide important insights for diseases that are unique to humans such as Alzheimer's disease and autism.

"While mapping the human genome has taught us a great deal about human biology, the emerging field of epigenomics may help us identify previously overlooked or discarded sequences that are key to understanding disease," said Dr. Akbarian.

"We identified hundreds of loci that represent untapped areas of study that may have therapeutic potential," he stated.

Dr. Akbarian and his research team isolated small snippets of chromatin fibers from the prefrontal cortex. Next, they analyzed these snippets to determine what genetic signals they were expressing. Many of the sequences with human-specific epigenetic characteristics were, until recently, considered to be "junk DNA" with no particular function.

Now, they present new leads on how the human brain has evolved, and a starting point for studying neurological diseases. For example, the sequence of DPP10-a gene critically important for normal human brain development-not only showed distinct human-specific chromatin structures different from other primate brains such as the chimpanzee or the macaque, but the underlying DNA sequence showed some interesting differences from two extinct primates-the Neanderthal and Denisovan, most closely related to our own species and also referred to as 'archaic hominins'.

"Many neurological disorders are unique to human and are very hard as a clinical syndrome to study in animals, such as Alzheimer's disease, autism, and depression. By studying epigenetics we can learn more about those unique pieces of the human genome," said Dr. Akbarian.

The research team also discovered that several of these chromatin regions appear to physically interact with each other inside the cell nucleus, despite being separated by hundreds of thousands of DNA strands on the genome. This phenomenon of "chromatin looping" appears to control the expression of neighbouring genes, including several with a critical role for human brain development.

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Short DNA strands in human genome could shed light on Alzheimer's and autism

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Precision BioSciences, Inc., a leader in the field of genome engineering, today announced that research, The Bayer Scientific Magazine, has published an article describing the successful use of Precisions DNE technology to modify the genome of cotton. The article describes pioneering work performed by Kathleen DHalluin and her colleagues at Bayer CropScience, who used an engineered DNE meganuclease produced by Precision to insert a gene into cotton. In doing so, DHalluin was able to produce a trait stack in which two genes conferring valuable traits were targeted to the same location in the cotton genome. This is the first time that a gene editing approach, such as DNE, has been used successfully in cotton. Precisions patent-protected technology provides plant researchers with exquisite control over a plant genome and offers enormous improvements in breeding efficiency.

We are enormously pleased with the results published by Bayer CropScience, said Jeff Smith, Precision BioSciences Chief Scientific Officer. Cotton is a notoriously difficult plant to manipulate and we expect DNE to play an important role in the genetic modification of such recalcitrant crop species.

Precisions long-standing focus on the development of the world's premier genome editing technology is continuing to pay off, said Precision BioSciences CEO Matthew Kane. We look forward to solving future unmet genome engineering challenges requiring the levels of precision that only DNE allows.

A link to the full pdf containing this article can be found at: http://www.research.bayer.com/en/straight-into-the-cotton-genome.aspx

About Precision BioSciences

Precision BioSciences mission is to continually provide, improve, and enable the worlds most powerful genome engineering technology. Precisions proprietary Directed Nuclease EditorTM (DNE) technology enables the production of genome editing enzymes that can insert, remove, modify, and regulate essentially any gene in mammalian or plant cells.

Precision BioSciences vision is to be the conduit through which the worlds greatest genome engineering challenges are solved. Precision has successfully utilized its DNE technology to create innovative products in partnerships with many of the worlds largest biopharmaceutical, agbiotech, and animal research firms. Internally, Precision is developing applications of DNE in biological production and human therapeutics. For additional information, please visit http://www.precisionbiosciences.com.

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Precision BioSciences Announces Publication of Cotton Trait Stacking Success in Collaboration with Bayer CropScience

University of Otago researchers are working on an "ambitious" project to map the tuatara's genome, which, when completed, will be one of the biggest genomes assembled.

Prof Neil Gemmell said the project had attracted interest from the international science community due to the uniqueness of the species as the only member of an archaic reptilian order.

This meant the species was a link to the now extinct stem reptiles from which dinosaurs, modern reptiles, birds and mammals evolved.

This and the importance of the species to New Zealanders meant it was an exciting project to work on, Prof Gemmell said.

"There are few things that are more iconic in New Zealand's fauna than the tuatara."

Having a genome sequence could help conserve the species by providing information on how it wards off disease. It could also add to knowledge about how global warming might affect the ratio of females to males, with sex being determined by the temperature of eggs during incubation.

"With rising temperatures you tend to get more males, so there is a suggestion that if climatic change continues in the direction that it is, then we may get a more male-biased population."

Mapping of the DNA began in May and the entire project was expected to be completed by the end of next year, he said.

Prof Gemmell said the tuatara's genome had between five billion and six billion base pairs of DNA sequence, compared to three billion in the human genome.

The project had compiled about 300 billion base pairs of information, which took up about two terabytes of data.

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Tuatara genome mapping

Public release date: 25-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Jia Liu liujia@genomics.cn BGI Shenzhen

November 25, 2012, Shenzhen, China An international team led by Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, BGI, and other institutes has completed the genomic sequence of watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) and the resequencing of 20 watermelon accessions. The genomic data presented in this study will shape future efforts on watermelon genetics and evolutionary research, and also provide an invaluable resource for other plants research and crop genetic improvement. The results were published online in Nature Genetics.

Watermelon is an important cucurbit crop and one of the most important fruits that contributes to food and economic security in addition to human nutrition. It is favored for the sweet, low calorie, high fiber, nutrient rich characters and now, there's more. Evidence from lots of studies suggests that watermelon is also a useful crop species for genetic research because of its small genome size, and the diverse genetic mutants and variants. The availability of a reference genome for a crop is extremely important in the deeper understanding of its molecular breeding and evolutionary history. In the watermelon genome study published in Nature Genetics, researchers presented a high-quality genome sequence of an East-Asia watermelon cultivar 97103 and resequencing of 20 watermelon accessions spanning the genetic diversity of C. lanatus.

Genome-wide duplication is a common event for angiosperms, and represents an important molecular mechanism that has shaped modern plant karyotypes. To access the origin of modern cucurbit genome structures, researchers analyzed the syntenic relationships between watermelon, cucumber, melon and grape. They proposed an evolutionary model that has shaped the eleven watermelon chromosomes from the seven-chromosome eudicot ancestors, through the transition from the 21-chromosome eudicot intermediate ancestors involving 81 fissions and 91 fusions.

Many of the watermelon cultivars have narrow genetic diversity and are susceptible to a large number of diseases and pests. In the study, researchers resequenced 20 watermelon accessions representing three different C. lanatus subspecies. As expected, wild watermelon contains greater genetic diversity than the cultivars. The results provide genetic opportunity for watermelon improvement.

The watermelon crop suffers significant losses from numerous diseases. It is urgent for researchers to investigate the molecular basis for better improving the pathogen resistance of this important crop. The results in this study showed that many resistance genes were located on chromosomes in clusters, indicating tandem duplications may serve as the evolutionary basis of resistance genes in watermelon genome. Moreover, evidence from the study supported the previous hypothesis that a large portion of disease resistance genes have been lost during watermelon domestication.

The integrative genomic and transcriptomic analysis yielded important insights into aspects of phloem-based vascular that held both in watermelon and cucumber. It is noteworthy that the watermelon phloem contained 118 transcription factors (TFs), whereas in cucumber only 46 TFs were identified and 32 TFs exit in both. Moreover, the team identified several genes associated with the valuable fruit quality traits, including sugar accumulation and citrulline metabolism.

Jianguo Zhang, Project Manager from BGI, said, "The high-quality genomic sequence opens a new way for the further studies of watermelon. The data resources could serve as a robust tool for better exploring the mechanisms underlying significant economic traits and regulatory networks and further for breeding improvement. It will also promote the evolutionary research of cucurbit crops and other basic biological studies such as sugar metabolisms."

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Chinese scientists decode watermelon genome, possible future benefits for crop improvement