The first high-quality Australian dingo genome gives a multi-thousand-year-old snapshot into the evolutionary history of dogs.
The National Institutes of Health estimates the existence of 7,000 rare diseases, with some affecting only a handful of people.
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Deciphering the biological pathways behind rare genetic diseases often involves assembling a team of specialists to work closely with the family members of those affected.
For patients, often children, with rare diseases, getting a diagnosis is difficult and time-consuming.
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Record-breaking technology can sequence an entire human genome in a matter of hours. The work could be a lifeline for people suffering from the more than 5,000 known rare genetic diseases.
The subtleties of how genes are transcribed into RNA molecules like the one depicted here are key to understanding the inner workings of cells.
Christoph Burgstedt/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
Shang Gao, University of Illinois Chicago and Jalees Rehman, University of Illinois Chicago
Machine learning is great at finding patterns but doesn’t know what those patterns mean. Combine it with knowledge gained from genetic research and you have a powerful view into the workings of cells.
Kevin Thiele, The University of Western Australia and Jane Melville, Museums Victoria Research Institute
After more than 300 years of effort, scientists have documented fewer than one-third of Australia’s species. The remaining 70% are unknown, and essentially invisible, to science.
The glue that gives spider webs their stickiness is a form of spider silk protein. Researchers can imagine cool uses for a synthetic version – but had to wait for the tricky glue gene to be sequenced.
The genome is becoming the unit of currency for all kinds of genetic testing.
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Do you own your own genetic data? The future of genomic databases is almost here, and now is the time to figure out how we are going to allow this information to be used.
The California two-spot octopus, Octopus bimaculoides, has distinctive blue ‘eye’ spots on either side of its head.
Roy Caldwell/UC Berkeley
While many of the fruits of the human genome project could be decades away, DNA sequencing of drug-resistant bacteria has been striding forwards
The discovery of the genes that influence the beak shape in the famous Galapagos finches highlight the underlying unity of all life.
Paul Krawczuk/Flickr
Darwin’s finches are known to be a paragon of evolution by natural selection, but a recent genetic discovery relating to their beaks highlights the evolutionary connectedness of all life.
Genomics is increasingly hailed by many as the turning point in modern medicine. Advances in technology now mean we’re able to make out the full DNA sequence of an organism and decipher its entire hereditary…
An ambitious project has been launched that will involve sequencing genomes of 100,000 individuals to improve our understanding of a range of diseases and – hopefully – eventually find new treatments for…
Genetic testing is a powerful tool. Two years ago, with the help of my colleagues, it was this tool that helped us identify a new disease. The disease, called Ogden Syndrome, caused the death of a four-month…
Algal genes are introduced into tobacco cells that grow into plants.
Peggy Lemaux/UC Berkeley
Tobacco doesn’t immediately conjure up ideas of fuel for cars and planes. But that’s precisely what a three-year, $4.8m project from the US Department of Energy’s ARPA-E PETRO (Plants Engineered to Replace…
This Yellow Wagtail is a fugitive in flight, but forensic technology will track him down.
Flickr: jcoelho
The extinction of an animal is no longer the end of our opportunity to learn new things about its ecology and biology. The same technology that recently reconstructed the genome of the Neanderthal man…