April Genetics Society of America's Genetics highlights:
Methods, Technology and Resources
1. Marker density and read depth for genotyping populations using genotyping-by-sequencing, pp. 1073-1081Timothy M. Beissinger, Candice N. Hirsch, Rajandeep S. Sekhon, Jillian M. Foerster, James M. Johnson, German Muttoni, Brieanne Vaillancourt, C. Robin Buell, Shawn M. Kaeppler, and Natalia de Leon
U.S. adolescents' high levels of poor health behaviors and unfavorable cardiovascular risk factors may increase their chances of heart disease as adults, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
OAKLAND, Calif., April 1, 2013 – Chicken pox, the childhood affliction of earlier generations, has been largely neutralized by the varicella vaccine, according to a new study by the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, which appears in the current online issue of Pediatrics.
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have discovered a new biological pathway of innate immunity that ramps up inflammation and then identified agents that can block it, leading to increased survival and improved lung function in animal models of pneumonia. They reported their findings today in Nature Immunology.
Despite their safety and efficacy in adults, only 3 percent of adolescents who use contraceptives have an IUD, and far fewer use implantable contraception.
Through in-depth interviews with 28 New York City-based family physicians, pediatricians and obstetrician-gynecologists, researchers identify multiple factors affecting their likelihood of prescribing long-acting reversible contraception to adolescents, and they find numerous barriers, including financial concerns, the clinical environment, and physicians' knowledge, attitudes and beliefs.
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With low back pain responsible for more than 20 million office visits and $100 billion dollars in health care costs annually in the United States, researchers examine the efficacy of osteopathic manual treatment and ultrasound therapy in the largest such trial ever conducted.
Estrogen plus progestin use is linked with increased breast cancer incidence. In addition, prognosis is similar for both users and nonusers of combined hormone therapy, suggesting that mortality from breast cancer may be higher for hormone therapy users as well, according to a study published March 29 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, MD, PhD, Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute lead researcher and author of a study released March 29 by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, issued the following statement regarding the latest findings from the Women's Health Initiative, the largest-ever study of hormonal therapy in post-menopausal women.
A strategy widely used to prevent pests from quickly adapting to crop-protecting toxins may fail in some cases unless better preventive actions are taken, suggests new research by University of Arizona entomologists published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Athens, Ga. – While pearl millet is a major food staple in some of the fastest growing regions on Earth, relatively little is known about the drought-hardy grain.
Recently, plant geneticists at the University of Georgia successfully isolated the gene that creates dwarfed varieties of pearl millet. It is the first time a gene controlling an important agronomic trait has been isolated in the pearl millet genome. Their work appeared in the March edition of the journal G3: Genes, Genomics, Genetics.
When blessed with a resource in overwhelming abundance it's generally a good idea to make valuable use of that resource. Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic material on Earth. For thousands of years it has been used as animal feed, and for the past two centuries has been a staple of the paper industry. This abundant resource, however, could also supply the sugars needed to produce advanced biofuels that can supplement or replace fossil fuels, providing several key technical challenges are met.
Performing surgery on a pregnant patient is a delicate matter. Risks to both mother and baby must be carefully weighed in every decision a surgeon makes. Recently, at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, a surgeon performed a groundbreaking robotic laparoscopic procedure on a 35-year-old pregnant patient whose cervix was too short to sustain a pregnancy.
A research coordinated by the scientists at SISSA of Trieste has now developed and studied a numeric model of the chromosome that supports the experimental data and provides a hypothesis on the bundle's function.
The sooner a person smokes a cigarette upon waking in the morning, the more likely he or she is to acquire lung or oral cancer, according to Penn State researchers.
"We found that smokers who consume cigarettes immediately after waking have higher levels of NNAL -- a metabolite of the tobacco-specific carcinogen NNK -- in their blood than smokers who refrain from smoking a half hour or more after waking, regardless of how many cigarettes they smoke per day," said Steven Branstetter, assistant professor of biobehavioral health.
A team of researchers, led by a University of California, Davis, plant scientist, has identified a lettuce gene and related enzyme that put the brakes on germination during hot weather — a discovery that could lead to lettuces that can sprout year-round, even at high temperatures.
The study also included researchers from Arcadia Biosciences and Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, India.