Health & Fitness

Genetic genealogy has become a popular hobby over the past several years, thanks to direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing and relative-finder services offered by some DTC genetic testing companies. Researchers now report results from a survey that asked people who had participated in these services what effect the discovery of previously unknown relatives had on their lives.

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Researchers have discovered a new type of stem cell that resembles cells in the early human embryo during the transition of 'genomic power' from mother to embryo. During this major developmental event the genome is reset and reorganized with large numbers of embryonic genes being expressed for the first time. If unsuccessful, further embryo development fails or there may be implications for later developmental stages. The newly identified stem cells provide the closest model available to study this process without the need for human embryos. This model of the early embryo will allow the study of human genome activation in a much more detailed way, providing important functional insights into genome regulation, developmental disorders, and early embryo loss.

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Researchers have uncovered how a process involved in the regeneration of tissue damaged by radiation can aid the spread of cancer.

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Neurons are constantly performing complex calculations to process sensory information and infer the state of the environment. For example, to localize a sound or to recognize the direction of visual motion, individual neurons are thought to multiply two signals. However, how such a computation is carried out has been a mystery for decades. Researchers have now discovered in fruit flies the biophysical basis that enables a specific type of neuron to multiply two incoming signals. This provides fundamental insights into the algebra of neurons -- the computations that may underlie countless processes in the brain.

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For more than 30 years, scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of how a key biological molecule self assembles into a rogue protein-like substance known as amyloid, which is thought to play a role in the development of type-2 diabetes - a disease that affects 300 million people worldwide. A team of scientists at the University of Leeds has, for the first time, been able to identify the step-by-step changes that take place in the molecule known as human islet amyloid polypeptide, or hIAPP, as it changes into amyloid.

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