UNC School of Medicine researchers discovered that the major developmental function of heterochromatin – a form of tight DNA packaging found in chromosomes – is likely to suppress activity of virus-like DNA elements known ...
Biotechnology
Sep 1, 2016
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How can fungi that only multiply vegetatively adapt so quickly to in the immune system of plants? The answer appears to lie in the way how the DNA of an asexual pathogen can rapidly adapt due to 'jumping genes' and also genetic ...
Biotechnology
Aug 25, 2016
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Organisms from bacteria to humans must defend themselves against parasitic genetic elements called transposons, and the stakes are high. These pieces of DNA, which disrupt genes by jumping around in the genome, can cause ...
Biotechnology
Oct 15, 2015
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An international team of scientists has identified large-scale genetic changes that marked the evolution of pregnancy in mammals.
Biotechnology
Jan 29, 2015
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We like to think of evolution as a fine-tuning process, one that whittles away genetic redundancies. The only problem is, we are not fine-tuned machines. Our bodies are chock-full of parts that either don't work anymore or ...
Biotechnology
Nov 17, 2014
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Studying a distant relative of viruses known as transposons, the University of Delaware's Blake Meyers is working with researchers from Cold Spring Harbor (N.Y.) Laboratory to see how small RNAs in plants are activated and ...
Biotechnology
Apr 29, 2014
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(Phys.org) —Cheng Qin of Sichuan Agricultural University in China and his colleagues have sequenced the genomes of wild and domesticated peppers and found that a large percentage of the pepper genome consists of transposons, ...
The story of why we are all so different goes well beyond the endless mixing and matching of DNA through breeding. A new study in the journal Nature Communications, for instance, reports a new molecular mechanism of individual ...
Biotechnology
Nov 8, 2013
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(Phys.org)—Transposable elements—or transposons—are DNA sequences that move in the genome from one location to another. Discovered in the 1940s, for years they were thought to be unimportant and were called "junk DNA." ...
Biotechnology
Nov 29, 2012
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Small, mobile sequences of DNA left over from viruses, called transposons or "jumping genes" because of their ability to move around the genome, pose a significant threat to the genetic integrity and stability of an organism. ...
Biotechnology
Dec 22, 2011
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