http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. (Medical Xpress)—Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and University of Cambridge have unpicked genetic variants that affect the formation of blood cells. They found that around a third of the variants play a role in gene regulation, and that the action of these variants is specific to individual cell types. The discovery is an important step towards unravelling the biological mechanisms behind variants identified in genome-wide scans of blood traits. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-closer-biology-genetic-variants-linked.html Genetics Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:43:41 EST news285410601 In one of the first genome-wide studies to hunt for both genes and their regulatory "tags" in patients suffering from a common disease, researchers have found a clear role for the tags in mediating genetic risk for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an immune disorder that afflicts an estimated 1.5 million American adults. By teasing apart the tagging events that result from RA from those that help cause it, the scientists say they were able to spot tagged DNA sequences that may be important for the development of RA. And they suspect their experimental method can be applied to predict similar risk factors for other common, noninfectious diseases, like type II diabetes and heart ailments. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-genes-regulatory-tags-conspire-rheumatoid.html Genetics Sun, 20 Jan 2013 13:00:19 EST news277899999 Scientists have long known that the human genome is incredibly complex. However, after almost 10 years of hard work, a team of more than 400 scientists at 32 research institutions worldwide has finally made serious headway in beginning to understand the structure, function and internal logic of the approximately 3.2 billion bases found within every cell of our body. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-staking-unknown-genomic-territory.html Genetics Fri, 04 Jan 2013 09:40:02 EST news276513381 (Medical Xpress)—More than a million people die each year of malaria caused by different strains of the Plasmodium parasite transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito. The medical world has yet to find an effective vaccine against the deadly parasite, which mainly affects pregnant women and children under the age of five. By figuring out how the most dangerous strain evades the watchful eye of the immune system, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have now paved the way for the development of new approaches to cure this acute infection. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-deadly-malaria-parasite-evades-immune.html Medical research Mon, 03 Dec 2012 08:58:30 EST news273747380 Researchers at the University of Washington have determined that the majority of genetic changes associated with more than 400 common diseases and clinical traits affect the genome's regulatory circuitry. These are the regions of DNA that contain instructions dictating when and where genes are switched on or off. Most of these changes affect circuits that are active during early human development, when body tissues are most vulnerable. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-encode-disease-hidden-genome-circuitry.html Genetics Wed, 05 Sep 2012 13:00:01 EST news266059353