Category Archives: Genome

Science Daily

Stream of surprises from the Atlantic cod genome Science Daily The Atlantic cod genome consists of approximately 700 million pairs of DNA bases (remember that the DNA molecule is a double helix with matching base pairs on each strand). With the recent study, the researchers have now surveyed a total of 93 per cent ...

Continued here:
Stream of surprises from the Atlantic cod genome - Science Daily

March 7, 2017 The evolution of globin gene domain 3-D organization exhibits a tendency to the formation of globular structures. Embryonic and adult globin genes are designated with light grey and dark grey circles, respectively. The major regulatory element (MRE) of the Danio rerio major globin gene locus and -globin gene domains of warm-blooded vertebrates is designated with red hexagon. The locus control region (LCR) of the -globin gene domains of warm-blooded vertebrates is designated with a set of red rectangles. Experimentally validated insulators and putative ones are designated with dark blue ellipses and light blue ellipses, respectively. The spatial configuration of the mouse -globin gene domain and the interaction frequency between the insulators in the chicken -globin gene domain in embryonic erythroid cells before globin expression switching are currently unknown. Credit: Razin lab

It seems like a feat of magic. Human DNA, if stretched out into one, long spaghetti-like strand, would measure 2 meters (six feet) long. And yet, all of our DNA is compacted more than 10,000 times to fit inside a single cell. How is this accomplished while preserving the overall, vital genomic organization?

With new techniques, scientists are beginning to understand the principles of 3-D genome folding. And in one of the studies of its kind, Anastasia Kovina, Sergey Razin a et al. have examined the well-studied globin gene cluster to understand the evolution of genome folding behind a vital process, delivering oxygen throughout the body.

Their study sheds light on the genomic evolutionary process that resulted in segregation of the alpha and beta-globin genes into two differently regulated domains in warm-blooded vertebrates. "We suggest that globin gene domains of some modern, cold-blooded animals retain certain features of an ancient, ancestral domain," said corresponding author Sergey Razin.

By investigating globin genes in the zebrafish model organism, their evidence points toward their suggestion that modern clusters of - and -globin genes of warm-blooded animals evolved from an ancestral locus, contained within a globular genomic cluster that was located close to other evolutionary conserved genes.

They found that evidence of a dynamic genomic organization of globin gene cluster that differs depending on the developmental age of the zebrafish. Using different assays, they have shown that the adult globin sub-compartment of the zebrafish gene locus is insulated from the embryonic larval component.

"We have found that the major globin gene locus of zebrafish (Danio rerio) is structurally and functionally segregated into two spatially distinct subloci harboring either adult or embryo-larval globin genes," said Razin. "These subloci demonstrate different organization at the level of chromatin domains and different modes of spatial organization, which appears to be due to selective interaction of the upstream gene enhancer with the sublocus harboring globin genes of the adult type."

This organization drastically differs from that of the mammalian - and -globin gene domains, where both embryo-fetal and adult globin genes are recruited to the same regulatory elements in a developmental and stage-specific process.

The finding of a functional separation of adult and embryo globin genes reflected in the 3-D genomic organization chromatin will provide an important contribution to the field and interesting evolutionary perspective to how gene clusters are organized and expressed.

Explore further: Researchers find potential treatments for hemoglobinopathies

More information: Evolution of the genome 3D organization: comparison of fused and segregated globin gene clusters, Molecular Biology and Evolution (2017).

An article published in Experimental Biology and Medicine (Volume 242, Issue 3, February, 2017) identifies microRNAs (miRNAs) as key factors in some hemoglobinopathies, genetic disorders characterized by alterations in the ...

Promising results from the first clinical trials of globin gene transfer to treat beta-thalassemias-inherited forms of anemia-have eliminated the need for blood transfusions in some individuals. Enhancing current gene therapy ...

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with Estonian Competence Centre on Health Technologies have developed a new gene expression analysis method to widen the usage of blood in biomarker discovery and analysis. ...

In biology, free radicals are often regarded as the source of all evil and the major cause of molecular damage and aging. However, free radicals are indispensable as signaling molecules governing important functions in the ...

Genetic mutations that affect our blood cells' haemoglobin are the most common of all mutations. It has been estimated that around 5% of the world's population carry a defective globin gene.

UCLA stem cell researchers have shown that a novel stem cell gene therapy method could lead to a one-time, lasting treatment for sickle cell diseasethe nation's most common inherited blood disorder.

It seems like a feat of magic. Human DNA, if stretched out into one, long spaghetti-like strand, would measure 2 meters (six feet) long. And yet, all of our DNA is compacted more than 10,000 times to fit inside a single cell. ...

Scientists are beginning to realize that many cellular behaviors, such as metastasizing cancer cells moving through the body or wound healing, aren't random events, but the result of coordinated actions by cells.

Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Purdue University have completed a model of unprecedented near-atomic resolution of the chemical ...

Black swan events are rare and surprising occurrences that happen without notice and often wreak havoc on society. The metaphor has been used to describe banking collapses, devastating earthquakes and other major surprises ...

The speed at which a tiny ant evolves to cope to its warming city environment suggests that some species may evolve quickly enough to survive, or even thrive, in the warmer temperatures found within cities, according to a ...

While there are already a number of species named after famous British broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough, including mammals, reptiles, invertebrates and plants, both extinct and extant, not until now has the ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

Read more from the original source:
Principles of 3-D genome folding and gene expression studied across species - Phys.Org

March 7, 2017 Quinn, an autistic boy, and the line of toys he made before falling asleep. Repeatedly stacking or lining up objects is a behavior commonly associated with autism. Credit: Wikipedia.

The newest study from the Autism Speaks MSSNG project - the world's largest autism genome sequencing program - identified an additional 18 gene variations that appear to increase the risk of autism.

The new report appears this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience. It involved the analysis of 5,205 whole genomes from families affected by autism - making it the largest whole genome study of autism to date.

The omitted letters in MSSNG (pronounced 'missing') represent the missing information about autism that the research program seeks to deliver.

"It's noteworthy that we're still finding new autism genes, let alone 18 of them, after a decade of intense focus," says study co-author Mathew Pletcher, Ph.D., Autism Speaks' vice president for genomic discovery. "With each new gene discovery, we're able to explain more cases of autism, each with its own set of behavioral effects and many with associated medical concerns."

To date, research using the MSSNG genomic database has identified 61 genetic variations that affect autism risk. The research has associated several of these with additional medical conditions that often accompany autism. The goal, Dr. Pletcher says, "is to advance personalized treatments for autism by deepening our understanding of the condition's many subtypes."

The findings also illustrate how whole genome sequencing can guide medical care today. For example, at least two of the autism-associated gene changes described in the paper were associated with increased risk for seizures. Another has been linked to increased risk for cardiac defects, and yet another with adult diabetes. The findings illustrate how whole genome sequencing for autism can provide additional medical guidance to individuals, families and their physicians, the investigators say.

The researchers also determined that many of the 18 newly identified autism genes affect the operation of a small subset of biological pathways in the brain. All of these pathways affect how brain cells develop and communicate with each other. "In all, 80 percent of the 61 gene variations discovered through MSSNG affect biochemical pathways that have clear potential as targets for future medicines," Dr. Pletcher says.

Increasingly, autism researchers are predicting that personalized, more effective treatments will come from understanding these common brain pathways - and how different gene variations alter them.

"The unprecedented MSSNG database is enabling research into the many 'autisms' that make up the autism spectrum," says the study's senior investigator, Stephen Scherer, Ph.D.

For instance, some of the genetic alterations found in the study occurred in families with one person severely affected by autism and others on the milder end of the spectrum, Dr. Scherer notes. "This reinforces the significant neurodiversity involved in this complex condition," he explains. "In addition, the depth of the MSSNG database allowed us to identify resilient individuals who carry autism-associated gene variations without developing autism. We believe that this, too, is an important part of the neurodiversity story."

Dr. Scherer is the research director for the MSSNG project and directs The Centre for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), in Toronto. MSSNG is a collaboration between the hospital, Autism Speaks and Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences), which hosts the MSSNG database on its cloud platform.

Traditional genetic analysis looks for mutations, or "spelling changes," in the 1 percent of our DNA that spells out our genes. By contrast, the MSSNG database allows researchers to analyze the entire 3 billion DNA base pairs that make up each person's genome.

In their new study, the investigators went even further - looking beyond DNA "spelling" variations to find other types of genetic changes associated with autism. These included copy number variations (repeated or deleted stretches of DNA) and chromosomal abnormalities. Chromosomes are the threadlike cell structures that package and organize our genes.

The researchers found copy number variations and chromosomal abnormalities to be particularly common in the genomes of people affected by autism.

In addition, many of the copy number variations turned up in areas of the genome once considered "junk DNA." Though this genetic "dark matter" exists outside of our genes, scientists now appreciate that it helps control when and where our genes switch on and off. The precise coordination of genetic activity appears to be particularly crucial to brain development and function.

Through its research platform on the Google Cloud, Autism Speaks is making all of MSSNG's fully sequenced genomes directly available to researchers free of charge, along with analytic tools. In the coming weeks, the MSSNG team will be uploading an additional 2,000 fully sequenced autism genomes, bringing the total over 7,000.

Currently, more than 90 investigators at 40 academic and medical institutions are using the MSSNG database to advance autism research around the world.

Explore further: Largest-ever autism genome study finds most siblings have different autism-risk genes

More information: Whole genome sequencing resource identifies 18 new candidate genes for autism spectrum disorder, Nature Neuroscience (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nn.4524

Journal reference: Nature Neuroscience

Provided by: Autism Speaks

The largest-ever autism genome study, funded by Autism Speaks, reveals that the disorder's genetic underpinnings are even more complex than previously thought: Most siblings who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have different ...

A new study from Autism Speaks' MSSNG program expands understanding of autism's complex causes and may hold clues for the future development of targeted treatments. The report, appearing in npj Genomic Medicine is the largest-ever ...

Autism Speaks, the world's leading autism science and advocacy organization, today launched the web-based portal for its MSSNG database, making the resource available to researchers worldwide. The MSSNG portal enables qualified ...

A new study from investigators with the Autism Genome Project, the world's largest research project on identifying genes associated with risk for autism, has found that the comprehensive use of copy number variant (CNV) genetic ...

Autism Speaks, the world's largest autism science and advocacy organization, and BGI, the largest genomic organization in the world and a global leader in whole genome sequencing, jointly announce their partnership to create ...

Princeton University and Simons Foundation researchers have developed a machine-learning approach that for the first time analyzes the entire human genome to predict which genes may cause autism spectrum disorder, raising ...

Since the first case was documented in the United States in 1938, the causes of autism have remained elusive. Hundreds of genes, as well as environmental exposures, have been implicated in these brain disorders. Sex also ...

The newest study from the Autism Speaks MSSNG project - the world's largest autism genome sequencing program - identified an additional 18 gene variations that appear to increase the risk of autism.

Concrete links between the symptoms of autism and synaesthesia have been discovered and clarified for the first time, according to new research by psychologists at the University of Sussex.

A national research network led by UNC School of Medicine's Joseph Piven, MD, found that many toddlers diagnosed with autism at two years of age had a substantially greater amount of extra-axial cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) ...

Results of a small study of adults with autism at Johns Hopkins has added to evidence that their brains can learn to compensate for some language comprehension challenges that are a hallmark of the disorder in children.

In the February 2017 issue of Pediatrics, investigators representing the South Carolina Act Early Team report a five-fold increase in the number of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) eligible for early intensive ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

Excerpt from:
World's largest autism genome database shines new light on many 'autisms' - Medical Xpress

Genome editing: Pressing the 'delete' button on DNA Science Daily CRISPR-Cas9 is a revolutionary technique for editing genomes and until recently, most studies employing it were aimed at silencing protein-coding genes, the best-studied part of our genome. However our genome consists of 99% of DNA that does not ... and more »

Read more here:
Genome editing: Pressing the 'delete' button on DNA - Science Daily

Provides knowledge, information to help ecosystems and nature

A full beaver genome has been sequenced at Oregon State University using DNA derived from a beaver at the Oregon Zoo after a little more than a year of fundraising and work.

The Beaver Genome Project was first announced in September 2015, with a crowdfunding campaign launched in order to generate funds for the project. This crowdfunding project was led by Jeannine Cropley, assistant to the director of the Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing at OSU.

We were able to raise $20,000 from the crowdfunding project, Cropley said. These were all from small donations paying in increments of around $50 or $100, and there were no significantly large donors. We got the equivalent of the other $10,000 from a company, Illumina Inc. They donated all the sequencing parts needed for this project.

The crowdfunding project brought in a lot of publicity when the project was first introduced, which was necessary in order to raise enough funds for the project.

I think a lot of it is school pride, with alumni wanting to support their beaver and whatnot, Cropley said. But its also due to the fact that this project is pretty cool; the beaver genome could help with a lot of scientific research.

If it wasnt for the help of many of the younger participants of the Beaver Genome Project, the crowdfunding campaign wouldnt have reached out to the public as much as it did, according to Cropley. They were taught to use social media platforms, such as Twitter.

This beaver genome project was inspired by previous sequencing of genomes, including the well-known Human Genome Project, in which all the genes of human beings were completely mapped and understood. In the same way, the beaver genome was sequenced by collecting the complete set of DNA of a beaver. The goal is to uncover knowledge about beavers that could tie directly to helping ecosystems and nature, according to Brent Kronmiller, the bioinformatics scientist of CGRB.

There was a period of time when beavers were almost extinct due to people hunting (them) for their fur, but fortunately they were rehabilitated and are adapting back to normal, Kronmiller said. We really want to focus on a couple things, including how beavers are able to build dams, how they are a keystone species in terms of modifying ecosystems. Beavers can be a crucial part to learning more about survival within animals.

While the crowdfunding project went on from September through October 2015, there were many other components necessary to complete the overall project. The DNA was first derived from Filbert, a beaver at the Oregon Zoo.

There are many steps, Kronmiller said. First, we had to sequence the DNA and record the giga basepairs received from it. This didnt take that long, maybe a couple weeks. But then we also had to assemble a genome draft, collect RNA samples, which can take a while because we have to do many trials in order to be precise. Theres a whole process involved, and afterwards we have to create presentations and compile all the data together.

Other than the many involved in the crowdfunding campaign, there were also 20 others involved in the actual research and scientific investigations tied to the project. Adelaide Rhodes, an undergraduate researcher, represents one of the many.

Genomes are an extremely interesting topic to me, so being a part of this project is extremely fulfilling, Rhodes said. Although this project took a long time to complete, Ive learned so much from it, all the way from DNA sequencing to acquiring tissues. There were a lot of us part of this project, and I think we were all important in making this project complete.

The beaver genome project was finished by the beginning of January, and received its first accolades at the 25th annual Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego.

This is a really big conference in which many, many genomic scientists gather around to talk about their findings in genome research, Kronmiller said. It was rewarding that we were able to be a part of it this year and provide our own presentations about the beaver species.

This project is special, not just because its the first beaver genome to be sequenced, according to Rhodes.

Oregon State University represents the first Pac-12 university to sequence their mascots genome, which is pretty cool, Rhodes said. Theres a lot of school spirit involved in this, and as we continue to research, more publicity will be coming along the way.

Now that the project is complete, scientists at Oregon State University can use the full genome to conduct research. Because the research is so new, many questions have yet to be answered.

All of our research is still pretty new, but essentially there are multitudes of things we can test using this new genome, Kronmiller said. Were looking for potential genes to see how the beaver adapts to its unique lifestyle. Were looking for relations between beavers and other animals and comparing their characteristics. Weve found that the kangaroo rat is most closely related to the beaver, out of the 19 species that we compared.

Because the DNA samples were collected from just one beaver, Filbert, there may be a few raw factors that are unaccounted for.

Im not too familiar with the specific characteristics and personality traits of Filbert, Rhodes said. But depending on what kind of traits Filbert may have, the genome may not represent all beavers the same way.

All of the completed research will be available online, according to Cropley.

Were not trying to make any money from this, Cropley said. There are websites and databases in which results from studies are posted, and theres one specifically for genomic research. These will all be made public and available for everyone to see.

More:
OSU researchers sequence full beaver genome - The Daily Barometer

Dolphins and humans are very, very similar creatures, said NISTs Ben Neely, a member of the Marine Biochemical Sciences Group and the lead on a new project at the Hollings Marine Laboratory, a research facility in Charleston, South Carolina that includes the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as one of its partner institutions. As mammals, we share a number of proteins and our bodies function in many similar ways, even though we are terrestrial and dolphins live in the water all their lives.

Studies have recently revealed that lesser-known proteins in the blood of marine mammals may be playing a big role in the dives by protecting bottlenose dolphins kidneys and hearts from damage when blood flow and oxygen flow start and stop repeatedly during those underwater forays.

One of these proteins is known as vanin-1. Humans produce vanin-1, but in much smaller amounts. Researchers would like to gather more information on whether or not elevating levels of vanin-1 may offer protection to kidneys.

Theres this gap in the knowledge about genes and the proteins they make. We are missing a huge piece of the puzzle in how these animals do what they do, said Mike Janech from the Medical University of South Carolina. His group has been researching vanin-1 (link is external) and has identified numerous other potential biomedical applications for the dolphin genome just created by NIST.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:Diving deep into the dolphin genome could benefit human health

Follow this link:
Deep dive into dolphin genome may uncover drugs that protect human hearts, kidneys from damage - Genetic Literacy Project

The American chestnut may get a do-over. With a significant new round of grants, The American Chestnut Foundation, based in North Carolina, plans to develop ways to predict chestnut trees resistance to diseases that cause chestnut blight and root rot. This method, known as genomic selection, is expected to accelerate selection of the most disease resistant trees from the groups breeding program.

If we can develop genomic tools to restore American chestnut, we can do this with almost any forest tree species imperiled by the introduction of invasive pathogens" said project partner Jeremy Schmutz, director of the American chestnut genome project at HudsonAlpha, in a statement.

Chestnut blight arrived from Asia in the early 1900s and quickly reduced an estimated 4 billion American chestnut trees to root sprouts. Phytophthora root rot eradicated American chestnut from forests in the southeastern Piedmont region prior to the introduction of chestnut blight.

The loss of American chestnut impacted other species, significantly reducing the population of bear, Eastern wild turkey and pollinators in forests of the eastern United States.

For some 30 years, the Chestnut Foundation has been attempting to breed resistance into American chestnut from Chinese chestnut, which is resistant to these diseases. The major bottleneck in the foundations breeding program has been in screening the thousands of trees needed to combine the right mixture of blight-resistance and American chestnut traits.

The first step in assessing a trees resistance, according to a media release from The American Chestnut Foundation, is to artificially inoculate it with the fungus that causes chestnut blight. After the most susceptible trees are culled, additional selections are made by screening descendents of the remaining trees for disease resistance. Using this method at the current rate of seed production, it would take more than 30 years to complete selection.

Genomic selection would reduce the time necessary to complete the selection of disease-resistant parents to five years. Genomic selection doesnt create Franken Nuts. Using high quality reference genome sequences for American and Chinese chestnut species, it sequences individual genes involved in disease resistance.

Researchers want to know why the Chinese and American chestnut species differ so much in their resistance to blight and root rot. Collaborators at Pennsylvania State University are assembling a reference genome sequence for Chinese chestnut. With the recently awarded funding, collaborators at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, a nonprofit genomics and genetics research institute in Alabama, intend to lead a parallel effort to assemble a reference genome sequence for American chestnut.

Restoring a species is a hopeful and ambitious undertaking, said said American Chestnut Foundation president and CEO Lisa Thomson, in a statement. We are thankful these private family foundations have invested in a plan for reintroduction of a resistant American chestnut tree, once one of the most important hardwood trees in the Eastern forests.

Read the original here:
Genomic research used in effort to restore America's chestnut trees ... - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Hindu

Battling Leptospira at the genome level The Hindu At a glance: At the heart of these efforts is the focus on a 'One Health' approach, which integrates efforts to predict and control a disease at the human-animal-ecosystem interface. Getty Images/iStockphoto | Photo Credit: jarun011/Getty Images ...

More here:
Battling Leptospira at the genome level - The Hindu

Would you want to know if you were at a higher risk of getting dementia later in life? Would you want to know that you could die under general anaesthesia, or might die suddenly of heart failure? Would you want to know if you had a higher-than-normal chance of getting cancer? You could learn these things by looking at your genome. But would you want to be faced with the answers?

Your genome is the complete set of genetic information in the cells of your body. It is like a recipe book that provides the instructions for who you are, and the recipes are your genes. Each gene provides a set of instructions for the protein molecules that make up your body. Much like how your cake recipe might differ from your neighbours, these genetic recipes can differ slightly from person to person. However, if there is a significant error in the recipe for example, if baking powder were left out this can have a damaging effect on the final product. So, if there is a harmful variant in a gene, this can affect the protein produced, which can cause genetic disease.

When a doctor suspects that you have a genetic disease, they can now read your genome from cover to cover. After nearly 13 years of international collaboration, the first complete sequence of the human genome was unveiled in 2003. Since then, the cost of genome sequencing has dropped from 1 billion to less than 1,000 allowing genome sequencing to enter routine clinical care, and transforming the way we diagnose and treat disease.

NHS England is currently sequencing 100,000 genomes, and the US has plans to sequence 1m genomes. A 2015 study predicted that up to two billion people worldwide could have their genomes sequenced within the next decade comparable to the reach of the internet. With so many genomes getting sequenced, and increasing opportunities to get genetic information outside of the healthcare system, you could be next.

Read the original post:
Do You Really Want To Know What's Lurking In Your Genome? - IFLScience

March 2, 2017 Deletion of genomic DNA by paired CRISPR. Cas9 proteins (scissors) are guided to their target sites by single guide RNAs (sgRNAs, orange ribbons). The target region in between is removed. CRISPETa software enables researcher to design such deletion experiments quickly and conveniently. Credit: Pulido-Quetglas et al, CC BY

Until recently, genomics was a "read-only" science, but scientists have developed a tool for quick and easy deletion of DNA in living cells. This software, published in PLOS Computational Biology, will boost efforts to understand the vast regions of non-coding DNA, or "Dark Matter", in our DNA and may lead to discovery of new disease-causing genes and potential new drugs.

CRISPR-Cas9 is a revolutionary technique for editing genomes and until recently, most studies employing it were aimed at silencing protein-coding genes, the best-studied part of our genome. However our genome consists of 99% of DNA that does not encode any protein. Often described as the "Dark Matter" of the genome, this "non-coding DNA" is recognised to be crucially important for understanding all aspects of human biology, including disease and evolution.

The Johnson lab recently created a tool based on CRISPR-Cas9, called "DECKO", which can be used to delete any desired piece of non-coding DNA. The unique advantage of DECKO is that it uses two individual sgRNAs, acting like two "molecular scissors" that snip out a piece of DNA. The approach was widely adopted, but as no software was available for designing the pairs of sgRNAs that are required, designing deletion experiments was time-consuming.

In response to this, the researchers in this study led by Carlos Pulido, created a software pipeline called CRISPETa, a flexible solution for designing CRISPR deletion experiments. The user tells CRISPETa what region they wish to delete, and the software returns a set of optimised pairs of sgRNAs that can directly be used by experimental researchers. One of the key features is that it can create designs at high scales, with future screening experiments in mind.

The researchers showed that CRISPETa designs efficiently delete their desired targets in human cells. Most importantly, in those regions that give rise to RNA molecules, the researchers showed that the RNA molecules also carry the deletion.

"Ultimately, we expect that CRISPR deletion and other genome engineering tools to lead to a revolution in our ability to understand the genomic basis of disease, particularly in the 99% of DNA that does not encode proteins. Apart from being used as a basic research tool, CRISPR may even be used in the future as a powerful therapeutic to reverse disease-causing mutations," adds Rory Johnson.

CRISPETa is designed for use by non-experts so that it can be useful for scientific researchers, from even the most modest experimental laboratory. These users may, for example, delete a suspected functional region of non-coding DNA, and test the outcome on cellular or molecular activity. This software will also be potentially valuable for groups aiming to utilise CRISPR deletion for therapeutic purposes, by for example, deleting a region of non-coding DNA that is suspected to cause a disease state.

"We hope that this new software tool will allow the greatest possible number of researchers to harness the power of CRISPR deletion in their research," says Carlos Pulido, the student who wrote the CRISPETa software.

Explore further: Modifying fat content in soybean oil with the molecular scissors Cpf1

More information: Pulido-Quetglas C, Aparicio-Prat E, Arnan C, Polidori T, Hermoso T, Palumbo E, et al. (2017) Scalable Design of Paired CRISPR Guide RNAs for Genomic Deletion. PLoS Comput Biol 13(3): e1005341. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005341

A team from the Center for Genome Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Research (IBS), succeeded in editing two genes that contribute to the fat contents of soybean oil using the new CRISPR-Cpf1 technology: an alternative ...

Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have harnessed the power of CRISPR/Cas9 to create more-potent chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that enhance tumor rejection in mice. The unexpected findings, ...

Scientists at the Center for Genome Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), in collaboration with KIM Eunji (ToolGen Inc.) and KIM Jeong Hun (Seoul National University) have engineered the smallest CRISPR-Cas9 ...

Cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Huntington's disease and phenylketonuria are all examples of disorders caused by the mutation of a single nucleotide, a building block of DNA. The human DNA consists of approximately 3 ...

Scientists have developed a process that improves the efficiency of CRISPR, an up-and-coming technology used to edit DNA.

Genome editing using CRISPR/Cas9 "gene scissors" is a powerful tool for biological discovery and for identifying novel drug targets. In pooled CRISPR screens, a large number of cells are edited simultaneously using CRISPR ...

Within the human digestive tract, there are trillions of bacteria, and these communities contain hundreds or even thousands of species. The makeup of those populations can vary greatly from one person to another, depending ...

What makes a cluster of cells become a liver, or a muscle? How do our genes give rise to proteins, proteins to cells, and cells to tissues and organs?

The scientists who uncovered why zebras have black and white stripes (to repel biting flies), took the coloration question to giant pandas in a study published this week in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

Research by the University of Southampton has found that methods used to predict the effect of species extinction on ecosystems could be producing inaccurate results. This is because current thinking assumes that when a species ...

Zika may be spread by as many as 35 species of mosquitoes, including seven found in the United States, according to a predictive model created by University of Georgia ecologists and published Tuesday in the journal, eLife.

Out of the more than 300,000 plant species in existence, only three speciesrice, wheat, and maizeaccount for most of the plant matter that humans consume, partly because in the history of agriculture, mutations arose ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

See the original post:
Genome editing: Pressing the 'delete' button on DNA - Phys.Org