FoxJ1 Helps Cilia Beat a Path to Asymmetry

piggy submitted, created time 2 days 17 hours (www.sciencedaily.com)

New work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies reveals how a genetic switch, known as FoxJ1, helps developing embryos tell their left from their right. While at first glance the right and left sides of our bodies are identical to each other, this symmetry is only skin-deep. Below the surface, some of our internal organs are shifted sideways—heart and stomach to the left, liver and appendix to the right.

Creating this left-right asymmetry is a key step in early embryonic development, and requires hundreds of tiny hairlike structures called nodal cilia to beat in unison

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HNF4A and Diabetes: Injury Before Insult?

jerry submitted, created time 5 months 1 week (diabetes.diabetesjournals.org)

This research tried to confirm a relationship between embryonic environment, particularly intrauterine growth retardation, and later occurrence of type 2 diabetes.

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Pre-implantation genetic screening reduces both ongoing pregnancy and live birth rates in over 35s

bianjie submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (www.eurekalert.org)

Pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS), often considered to hold out the best chance for older women undergoing IVF to have a pregnancy and birth, does not increase ongoing pregnancy or live birth rates, an embryologist told the 23rd Annual Conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Wednesday, July 4). The research is published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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