Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have successfully edited the genome of human- induced pluripotent stem cells, making possible the future development of patient-specific stem cell therapies. Reporting this week in Cell Stem Cell, the team altered a gene responsible for causing the rare blood disease paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, or PNH, establishing for the first time a useful system to learn more about the disease.

New research from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center highlights the critical role a certain gene and its protein play during early embryonic development on formation of a normal heart and skull.

SALT LAKE CITY— It was long believed that conception does not involve a meeting of equals. The egg is a relatively large, impressive biological factory compared with the tiny sperm, which delivers to the egg one copy of the father’s genes.  However, a new study from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah reveals that the father’s sperm delivers much more complex genetic material than previously thought. The findings could lead to a diagnostic test to help couples deal with infertility.

Jumping genes do most of their jumping, not during the development of sperm and egg cells, but during the development of the embryo itself. The research, published this month in Genes and Development, "challenges standard assumptions on the timing of when mobile DNA, so-called jumping genes, insert into the human genome," says senior author Haig H. Kazazian Jr., MD, Seymour Gray Professor of Molecular Medicine in Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

In this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS, Uppsala University scientists describe a new mechanism behind an important process that causes a rapid reduction of DNA in the chromosomes of bacteria. The findings advance our knowledge of how DNA content has been reduced, which is something that has occurred in bacteria that live as parasites inside the cells of other organisms.

As stroma, the supportive framework of the prostate gland, reacts to prostate cancer, changes in the expression of genes occur that induce the formation of new structures such as blood vessels, nerves and parts of nerves, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears in the current issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

New research indicates that natural selection may shape the human genome much more slowly than previously thought. Other factors -- the movements of humans within and among continents, the expansions and contractions of populations, and the vagaries of genetic chance – have heavily influenced the distribution of genetic variations in populations around the world. The study, conducted by a team from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the University of Chicago, the University of California and Stanford University, is published June 5 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have discovered a protein in the lungs that can help in determining progression of the rare lung disease Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF).

Researchers say the protein—Serum surfactant protein A—is superior to other IPF predictors and could lead to better decisions about treatment and timing of lung transplantation.

The study, led by Brent Kinder, MD, is published in the June 4 edition of the journal Chest.

In the quest for new approaches to treating and preventing disease, one appealing route involves turning genes on or off at will, directly intervening in ailments such as cancer and diabetes, which result when genes fail to turn on and off as they should.

The finding, significant because it is a first step toward developing a targeted treatment and a cure, will be published in the June 11, 2009, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.