Gene Mutation Linked to Longer Life

How We Learn from Our Mistakes

Eric wu submitted, created time 1 year 1 month (www.time.com)

Everyone can learn from their mistakes — but some people have genes that may make it harder. That's the message from German researchers, writing in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science, who have shown how a common gene variant affects some people's ability to respond to, and learn from, the negative repercussions of their actions.

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The gene that makes us once bitten, twice shy

jane2007 submitted, created time 1 year 1 month (www.nature.com)

Most people tend to learn from their mistakes and avoid making the same blunder twice. Now research reveals a genetic mutation that helps to determine the extent to which certain people are doomed to repeat history.

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Common regulatory networks in leaf and fruit patterning revealed by mutations in the Arabidopsis ASYMMETRIC LEAVES1 gene

saury submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (dev.biologists.org)

"Carpels and leaves are evolutionarily related organs, as the former are thought to be modified leaves. Therefore, developmental pathways that play crucial roles in patterning both organs are presumably conserved. In leaf primordia of Arabidopsis thaliana, the ASYMMETRIC LEAVES1 (AS1) gene interacts with AS2 to repress the class I KNOTTED1-like homeobox (KNOX) genes BREVIPEDICELLUS (BP), KNAT2 and KNAT6, restricting the expression of these genes to the meristem

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Revertant mosaicism in junctional epidermolysis bullosa due to multiple correcting second-site mutations in LAMB3

badboy submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.jci.org)

"DNA analysis showed different second-site mutations in revertant keratinocytes of distinct biopsy specimens, implying that there is not a single preferred mechanism for the correction of a specific mutation. Our data offer prospects for EB treatment in particular cases, since revertant mosaicism seems to occur at a higher frequency than expected. This opens the possibility of applying revertant cell therapy in mosaic EB of the LAMB3 gene by using autologous naturally corrected keratinocytes, thereby bypassing the recombinant gene correction phase."

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Efficient target-selected mutagenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans: Toward a knockout for every gene

angelfish submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.genome.org)

"Reverse genetic or gene-driven knockout approaches have contributed significantly to the success of model organisms for fundamental and biomedical research. Although various technologies are available for C. elegans, none of them scale very well for genome-wide application. To address this, we implemented a target-selected knockout approach that is based on random chemical mutagenesis and detection of single nucleotide mutations in genes of interest using high-throughput resequencing

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Tiny, spontaneous gene mutations may boost autism risk

BIOBOSS submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.eurekalert.org)

Tiny gene mutations, each individually rare, pose more risk for autism than had been previously thought. These spontaneous deletions and duplications of genetic material were found to be ten times more prevalent in sporadic cases of autism spectrum disorders than in healthy control subjects -- but only twice as prevalent in autism cases from families with more than one affected member. The results implicate the anomalies as primary, rather than just contributory, causes of the disorder.

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