News by Subject Medicine & Health

Dartmouth-led study of more than 25 million pregnant women reports on rates of smoking cessation at the start of and during pregnancy and also examines the association of quitting cigarette smoking and the risk of preterm birth.

EPFL scientists have discovered how a family of proteins that regulates the activity of transposable elements in the genome allows them to make inheritable changes to the growing fetus.

An international research team led by The University of Tokyo modeled the growth of cerebral tracts. Using neurons derived from stem cells, they grew cortical-like spheroids. In a microdevice, the spheroids extended bundles of axons toward each other, forming a physical and electrical connection. Fascicles grew less efficiently when one spheroid was absent, and when a gene relevant to cerebral tract formation was knocked-down. The study further illuminates brain growth and developmental disorders.

Researchers have discovered a key clue into the development of the pancreas and brain by studying rare patients born without a pancreas. The study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and University of Exeter also identified an unexpected pathway in human pancreas development, and confirmed this in mice. Understanding how the pancreas forms could help develop replacement cells to treat patients with type 1 diabetes in the future.

Based on the analysis of the genomes of more than a dozen flightless birds, including an extinct moa, a team led by Harvard researchers found that while different species show wide variety in the protein-coding portions of their genome, they appear to turn to the same regulatory pathways when evolving flight loss.