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Deeply hidden in the bone marrow are rare hematopoietic stem cells that produce all types of blood cells in the circulatory system. A new study shows that the latexin gene affects the size of this population of cells.
Two new studies show that the Fanconi anemia complementation group N results from biallelic mutations in PALB2, which encodes a recently identified interaction partner of the breast cancer susceptibility protein BRCA2. A third study shows that monoallelic PALB2 mutations are associated with breast cancer susceptibility, providing yet more links between Fanconi anemia, homologous recombination repair and cancer predisposition.
A new study identifies 'quantitative trait transcripts' for nicotine resistance in large populations of wild strains of Drosophila melanogaster by comparing global gene expression patterns, survival time and metabolite levels in the presence or absence of nicotine. The results provide proof-of-concept for a correlation-based statistical approach that can be used in personalized medicine.
Members of the Hedgehog family of secreted proteins are central to animal development, with different levels of Hedgehog signaling activity specifying distinct cellular identities. A new study shows that a microRNA is involved in this process by modulating a component of the Hedgehog signal transduction pathway.
A new study examines the agn43 epigenetic switch of Escherichia coli, providing an alternative to feedback regulation as a model for gene expression regulation. Through a combination of synthetic network construction and computational modeling, the authors show that the generated bistable gene expression involves transitions between several rarely occupied states between 'on' and 'off'.
The eighth annual Human Genome Variation Meeting was held in September 2006 in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. The meeting highlighted recent advances in characterization of genetic variation, including genome-wide association studies and structural variation.