There has been quite a buzz circulating about the possibility of therapeutic gene silencing strategies. Today I want to take a first look at what these therapies mean. One great example where gene silencing could be used is in polyglutamine disorders. This includes several disorders where genes accumulate, by replication errors, a repeat expansion of [Read More →]
… and what is it good for? This is a pretty controversial issue, so you’ve probably already heard the term, but what does it really mean? Genetic Diagnosis is a very generic term. Here, detecting Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs)- single changes in the sequence of DNA- is what is veing investigated. Preimplantation refers to our [Read More →]
The origins of disease can take many forms. We can think about environmental causes, which means basically anything outside of genetics. These could be things like pollution, a virus/bacteria/fungus infection, mal- or under-nourishment, injury… the list goes on and on. There are also genetic causes. Understanding which malfunctioning genes lead to diseases is an ongoing [Read More →]
A common term in genetics research these days is Massively Parallel Sequencing. It’s been around for a number of years, but it still gets researchers very excited. It’s not often communicated to the lay person, because, well… it sounds kinda goofy, and the details are a bit hard to grasp. But let me try to [Read More →]
