'Soft' CRISPR may offer a new fix for genetic defects

Curing debilitating genetic diseases is one of the great challenges of modern medicine. During the past decade, development of CRISPR technologies and advancements in genetics research brought new hope for patients and their ...

How electric fish were able to evolve electric organs

Electric organs help electric fish, such as the electric eel, do all sorts of amazing things: They send and receive signals that are akin to bird songs, helping them to recognize other electric fish by species, sex and even ...

Only 10 vaquita porpoises survive, but species may not be doomed

The vaquita porpoise, the world's smallest marine mammal, is on the brink of extinction, with 10 or fewer still living in Mexico's Gulf of California, their sole habitat. But a genetic analysis by a team of UCLA biologists ...

Mutations across animal kingdom shed new light on aging

The first study to compare the accumulation of mutations across many animal species has shed new light on decades-old questions about the role of these genetic changes in aging and cancer. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger ...

Spider silk could stabilize cancer-suppressing protein

The p53 protein protects our cells from cancer and is an interesting target for cancer treatments. The problem is, however, that it breaks down rapidly in the cell. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now ...

Machine learning discovers new sequences to boost drug delivery

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rare genetic disease usually diagnosed in young boys, gradually weakens muscles across the body until the heart or lungs fail. Symptoms often show up by age 5; as the disease progresses, ...

For tomato genes, one plus one doesn't always make two

Both people and tomatoes come in different shapes and sizes. That is because every individual has a unique set of genetic variations—mutations—that affect how genes act and function. Added together, millions of small ...

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