How to breed more intelligent humans? This is a difficult question, one which raises numerous questions both ethical and scientific. Would you give your eyesight away to become brighter? As crazy as this question may sound, a blinding mutation might increase intelligence. The CORD7 (cone-rod dystrophy 7) mutation of the RIMS1 gene produces progressive blindness in humans,…

In the last years, CRISPR-Cas9 technology has revolutionised gene editing, having enormous research and clinical potential. However, gene editing can be tricky and have unexpected effects, like recently reported in the journal PNAS, where tweaking a gene produced aggresive hamsters instead of the calm, zen animals the researchers were aiming for. Arginine-vasopressin (AVP) and its…

One of the biggest difficulties of bringing new therapeutic methods into clinical practice is targeted delivery. A recent study published in Nature Medicine shows the potential of using a gel for topical gene therapy. Recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa is a genetic disease that affects proper skin formation. The affected people have an extremely fragile skin,…

If you follow anything related to genetics, you’re probably thinking that is old news, as the first draft was already published in 2000, but actually there were still missing parts. Now, thanks to new sequencing technologies the human genome is completely sequenced. In the journal Science, six papers published back-to-back explain how this was achieved….

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were hints at particular genes which increased some people’s susceptibility to get infected and the severity of illness once infected. Now, an international study (nearly 3500 researchers from 25 countries) on more than 45000 people infected with SARS-CoV-2, showed a link between 13 genetic variants and the…

Gene editing could be the solution to progeria, a genetic disease, characterised by extremely fast aging. Progeria causes fast aging and premature death in people carrying a single-point mutation in the LMNA gene, which basically leads to the production of a toxic protein which slowly damages the cells, aging the bodies. This simple misspelling of deadly…

Mitochondria are the energy-making machines in the cell. Also, since evolutionarily they are thought to evolve from symbiotic bacteria, they have their own little genomes, which are mainly evolved through the maternal side, and also maybe because of their important function, mutations in genes affecting them are very damaging, and even lethal. However, mitochondrial DNA…

Loss of gene function is a common occurrence in evolution that is usually associated with loss of fitness. However, it seems that as many say: “where there’s a problem, there is an opportunity“, for as researchers from Leuven University led by Rob Jelier have recently reported, gene loss was found to drive adaptation. If you…

Like intelligence, height is genetically determined, however there are thousands of genes implicated in height determination. That is why the finding by researchers from Harvard Medical School of a gene variant responsible for shortening the average height of peruvians in about 2.2 centimeters is so interesting. There are other rare gene variants known that cause…

It seems that the genetic risk of an APOE4 variant in the APOE gene, not only increases risk for Alzheimer’s but also increases the chances of getting infected by the COVID-19 virus. The APO protein is involved in cholesterol metabolism and the immune system. However, its precise role in Alzheimer’s disease is as of yet…