Category Archives: Transhuman News

"Genome Dynamics and Instability in Autism" by Dr. Scott B. Selleck
Genome Dynamics and Instability in Autism by Dr Scott B Selleck. Uploaded by psuscienceu on Mar 11 2013.

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"Genome Dynamics and Instability in Autism" by Dr. Scott B. Selleck - Video

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have for the first time mapped the genomes of tapeworms, shedding light on the evolution of one of humankind's oldest parasites and revealing new possibilities for drug treatments.

DNA analysis of the tapeworms suggests that a number of existing medicines for cancer, viruses and other diseases may be able to fight serious illness caused by their larvae, which can spread through the body causing damaging cysts.

Identifying drugs already approved for other uses should save both time and money, said lead researcher Matthew Berriman of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, eastern England.

"Having existing drugs will act as a chemical starting-point for drug companies, cutting many years off development times."

That may encourage drugmakers, even though devastating tapeworm infections, like echinococcosis and cysticercosis, occur mainly in less developed tropical countries where there is little commercial incentive for drug development.

Larval tapeworms can exist in the body for decades before eventually causing a range of debilitating illnesses and, in some cases, death. Cysts caused by the parasites proliferate throughout the body like cancer, triggering complications such as blindness and epilepsy.

Recorded by the Ancient Greeks, tapeworms were among the first known parasites of humans. Yet finding an effective cure has proved elusive.

Tapeworm cysts are treated by chemotherapy or surgery but side effects are a problem, so new approaches are badly needed.

"These are very grotesque, almost medieval, diseases," Berriman said.

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Tapeworm genome points way to better drug treatments

Mar. 12, 2013 In a collaborative study published online March 13 in Nature Communications, researchers from Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, BGI-Shenzhen, and University of Arizona have completed the genome sequencing of wild rice Oryza brachyantha. This work provides new insights for researchers to understand the function and evolution of Oryza genomes.

The genus Oryza is an idea model system for studying plant comparative genomics, evolutionary biology and functional biology. There are two cultivated rice and more than twenty wild rice species. Among them, the wild relatives can provide invaluable genomic resources for rice improvement. As the most diverged wild relative of O. sativa (rice), O. Brachyantha has resistance against many rice pathogens and various stress environments. It was also proved to have the most compact genome in the genus Oryza, suggesting the genome may not experience many changes after the divergence of Oryza species.

In this study, researchers generated a high-quality reference genome sequence of O. brachyantha (~261Mb), and 96% genome sequences are anchored on 12 chromosomes based upon BAC-based physical map. After the comprehensive analysis, they found that the compact genome of O. brachyantha was caused by the silencing of LTR (Long terminal Repeats) retrotransposons and massive internal deletions of ancient elements.

Compared with the rice genome, the team found that many gene families were expanded in rice, where tandem duplications and gene movements mediated by double-strand break repair are responsible for the amplification of these genes. Researchers also observed that segmental and tandem duplications, further expanded by transposable element insertions, contributed to transition from euchromatin to heterochromatin in the rice genome, reflecting the dynamic nature of the Oryza genomes.

Quanfei Huang, Project Manager from BGI, said "This work revealed many important genomic mechanisms underlying Oryza genome, such as the genome size variation, gene movement and transition of euchromatin to heterochromatin. In the near future, I believe there will be more genomes of Oryza species to be cracked, enabling the genus Oryza be an unparalleled system for functional and evolutionary studies in plants."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by BGI Shenzhen.

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Whole genome sequencing of wild rice reveals the mechanisms underlying oryza genome evolution