Word: molecular
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week Egeland, who is from the University of Miami School of Medicine, and a group of scientists at Yale and M.I.T. confirmed that traditional Amish explanation. By employing the tools of molecular biology along with the handwritten genealogical records of Amish families, they showed that the mental disorder known as manic depression is indeed at least partly a matter of bloodlines. Their report, published in the journal Nature, conclusively linked cases of manic depression in an Amish family to genes in a specific region of human chromosome 11. "This is the first demonstration of a possible genetic basis...
...perhaps as many as 70% -- of Alzheimer's cases are inherited, the researchers began analyzing the DNA from four large families that had one thing in common: a history of the disease stretching back over many generations. After three years of work, they isolated two genetic markers, or molecular signposts, on chromosome 21 that are located close to the still unknown gene responsible for the inherited form of the disease. "The identification of these markers overcomes a major hurdle," says M.G.H. Neurogeneticist James Gusella, who directed the research. "This is the first step toward the identification of the primary cause...
...researchers concede some uncertainties: about the mutation rate, for example, and whether it is constant. Still, Stoneking says, the evidence shows that "mtDNA is a good molecule for tracing relationships between populations in general." And, adds Cann, "it is a way of welding molecular biology and anthropology. Sometimes fossils are misleading. We're trying to build better pictures of how humans evolved...
...rather oblique direction. UCSD Biochemist Marlene DeLuca has been investigating for 20 years how the firefly protein -- in this case, an enzyme called luciferase -- produces light. But the process of collecting and grinding up fireflies to extract the enzyme was laborious and costly. She and Donald Helinski, a molecular geneticist, decided to isolate the luciferase gene, cloning exact copies of it and splicing it into the genetic machinery of the common bacterium E. coli. The E. coli could then massproduce luciferase by the vat. DeLuca and Helinski accomplished this task by using standard recombinant DNA techniques developed over the past...
...choose tobacco? Says Howell: "Tobacco is the laboratory rat of plant molecular biologists. It's a model system that we use in these sorts of experiments." Responding to orders from the firefly-virus gene, the plants dutifully produced their own luciferase...