genetics

For the first time the genome of the cultivated tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and that of its wild relative (Solanum pimpinellifolium) have been sequenced. The milestone is an important step towards improving the nutritional properties, resistance to diseases, taste and color of this food, as announced by the authors in the latest issue of the journal Nature.

To accelerate progress in the fight against cancer and other diseases, the University of Washington Pediatric Cancer Genome Project at St. Jude Children's Hospital has announced the launch of the largest collection of human cancer genome data ever to date, freely accessible to the global scientific community.

After three years of work and 750 attempts, Jerome Bonnet and his colleagues at Stanford University have developed a system to encode, store and erase digital data in the genetic material of living cells. In practical terms, they have created the genetic equivalent of a "bit", the smallest unit of digital information, with which two values, zero or one, off or on, can be represented.

Although a person's genetic code remains unchanged from birth, DNA molecules change a lot throughout life. And as Juleen Zierath of the Karolinska Institute has shown, one of the main drivers of these changes - called epigenetic changes - is physical exercise.

A study from the University of Colorado School of Medicine (USA), published in the journal Nature Genetics, reveals that people with blue or green eyes are less likely to suffer from vitiligo, an autoimmune disease in which defenses attack to normal pigment cells, which is manifested in the appearance of irregular spots on the skin and hair. However, having blue eyes implies an increased risk of skin cancer, specifically melanoma.

An international team of researchers has located a gene that determines both brain size and intelligence. The study, published in Nature Genetics, has collected brain images from more than 20,000 people from around the world.

That your neighbor is friendly or that he barely manages to answer you with a grunt when you pass him in the elevator may have a genetic condition. Researchers at the University of Buffalo and the University of California, in the United States, have identified variants of the receptors of two hormones that push certain people to be charming and generous, while others conform selfishly.

An international study has deciphered the gorilla genome for the first time, revealing that this ape looks much more like our species than we thought. Specifically, in 15 percent of our genome, humans are evolutionarily closer to the gorilla than to the chimpanzee. Researchers from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (Pompeu Fabra University and CSIC, Barcelona) have participated in the international work.