genes

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY

To See How Facial Features Are Controlled By Genes We Scanned The DNA Of 8,000 People

You might think it’s rather obvious that your facial appearance is determined by your genes. Just look in the family photo album and observe the same nose, eyes or chin on your grandparents, cousins and uncles and aunts. Perhaps you have seen or know someone with a genetic syndrome – that often results from a damaging alteration to one or more genes – and noticed the often distinctive facial features. Using 3-D facial images researchers have identified changes in the DNA that contribute to variation in facial features. Julie D. White, CC BY-SA Takeaways A new study reveals more than 130 regions in human DNA play a role in sculpting facial features. The nose is the facial feature most influenced by your genes. Understanding the link between specific genes and facial features could b...

The Immune System Metabolism, And Genes Controlling Aging Can Be Influenced By Exposure To Man-Made Chemicals

Today humans are exposed to thousands of man-made chemicals. Yet the effects on people’s health are still not fully understood. In 2020 the number of registered chemicals reached 167 million. Every day people are exposed to them through food, water, contaminated air, drugs, cosmetics and other man-made substances. Less than 1% of these chemicals were tested for toxicity, and those that were tested demonstrate ability to disrupt almost every biological process in our body. Can we infer how cumulative exposures shape our health? I am an environmental toxicologist studying effects of man-made chemicals on our health. I decided to develop a computational approach to objectively compare sensitivity of all genes to all chemicals and identify the most vulnerable biological processes. Unbiased a...

From marmots to mole-rats to marmosets – studying many genes in many animals is key to understanding how humans can live longer

Much of longevity and aging research focuses on studying extremely long-lived species, including bats, naked mole-rats and bowhead whales, to find genetic changes that contribute to long life. However, such work has yielded highly species-specific genetic changes that are not generalizable to other species, including humans. As a graduate student, I have studied growing evidence, including recent work from my advisers’ labs (Maria Chikina and Nathan Clark), that supports the hypothesis that lifespan is a complex and highly context-dependent trait that calls for a shift in how biologists think about aging. Old age: The human problem Aging is the process by which the likelihood of death increases the longer an organism is alive. In mammals, aging is hallmarked by several molecular changes, ...