| Childhood Plus Gene Causes Depression? | | Posted Thursday, October 12, 2006 10:57:39 AM by Blog57 Team | | The power of love from a nurturing family may trump genetic risk for depression, new research shows. A person's childhood experiences may interact with their genes to affect their depression risk, according to the study in Biological Psychiatry's October edition. The notion that nature (genetics) and nurture (experiences) affect health isn't new. But the UCLA study shows how complicated the nature-nurture relationship may be. "Genes are not destiny," says researcher and UCLA psychology professor Shelley E. Taylor, PhD, in a university news release. Some genes, she says, including the gene she and her colleagues studied, "are clearly highly responsive" to environmental influences. "That means, among other conclusions, that there is an important role that parents and even friends can play in providing protection against the risk of depression that stress can confer," Taylor says.... | |
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| | | NIH proposes genetic-studies database | | Posted Thursday, August 31, 2006 12:58:26 PM by Blog57 Team | | The National Institutes of Health seeks comments on a proposed policy to let researchers access from a repository the data resulting from NIH-funded, genomewide association studies. Genomewide association studies rely on newly available research tools and technologies to rapidly analyze genetic differences between people with specific illnesses, such as diabetes or heart disease, compared with healthy individuals. The differences may point to genetic risk factors for the development or progression of disease. NIH, an agency of the Health and Human Services Department, will accept comments through Oct. 31, according to the request for information published in today?s Federal Register. Several NIH institutes recently launched or are planning genomewide initiatives with the expectation that the results will hasten the development of better diagnostic tools and the design of new and highly effective treatments.... | |
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| | | Genome Research Approves Genetic Screening | | Posted Wednesday, August 02, 2006 10:58:14 AM by Blog57 Team | | The Human Genome Research Project has reported positively on the use of a technique that allows implant embryos to be screened for genetic disorders. The New Zealand Law Foundation-sponsored project, led by ProfessorMark Henaghan, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago, finds that though Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is not yet widely used, data from PGD centres leads to the conclusion that it is medically safe. “PGD is seen by some as the beginning of a slippery slope towards designing the perfect baby, but in reality the procedure cannot be used to screen for intelligence or physical attributes - in other words, it cannot be used to improve or modify embryos," he says. "However it can be used to screen for embryos with severe inherited genetic disorders, such as cystic fibrosis, so they can be removed from the pool of embryos available for transfer." Choosing Genes for Future Children: Regulating Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, is the first major report from the three-year multidisciplinary project which draws together a team of New Zealand and international researchers in Law, Bioethics, Science, Mäori and Paediatrics to examine whether, how and to what extent, human genome-based technologies should be regulated.... | |
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| | | The race for the perfect chicken | | Posted Saturday, July 01, 2006 12:55:30 PM by Blog57 Team | | The race for the perfect chicken was accentuated in the country with the opening of international markets and currently involves from genetic improvement programmes to building high technology poultry farms and the application of more efficient vaccines. "Our technology for poultry is similar to the best in the world," says the researcher in the field of rural economics at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), Dirceu Talamini. The fact may be substantiated in a quick visit through national poultru farms. Little chicks running about in the dirt, food and humidity, in improvised wooden sheds, is a scene from a very remote past in national aviculture. Today, being a chicken in Brazil means having the right to an acclimatised environment. The majority of national farms have acclimatisation systems, which keep the ideal temperature inside the birdhouse according to the age of the animals.... | |
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