Human embryonic stem cells can be used to produce skin grafts for people who have been seriously burned, shows a study published in The Lancet. Though patients have benefited from cell therapy for two decades, the techniques used have had limitations, write Hind Guenou, PhD, of INSERM and the Institute for Stem Cell Therapy and [...]
Genetic engineering
Since traits come from the genes in a cell, putting a new piece of DNA into a cell can produce a new trait. This is how genetic engineering works. For example, crop plants can be given a gene from an Arctic fish, so they produce an antifreeze protein in their leaves. This can help [...]
Genes make proteins
The function of genes is to provide the information needed to make molecules called proteins in cells. Cells are the smallest independent parts of organisms: the human body contains about 100 trillion cells, while very small organisms like bacteria are just a single cell. A cell is like a miniature and very complex [...]
Genes and inheritance
Genes are inherited as units, with parents dividing out their genes to their offspring. You can think of this process like mixing two hands of cards, shuffling them, and then dealing them out again. Humans have two copies of each of their genes (i.e, two alleles ) and when people reproduce they make [...]
INTRODUCTION TO GENETICS
Genetics studies how living organisms inherit features from their ancestors – for example, children often look like their parents. Genetics seeks to identify which features are inherited, and explain how these features are passed from generation to generation. In genetics, a feature of an organism is called a “trait”. Some traits are features [...]
Genes and Disease
The sequence of the human genome is providing us with the first holistic view of our genetic heritage. While not yet complete, continued refinement of the data bring us ever closer to a complete human genome reference sequence. This will be a fundamental resource in future biomedical research. The 46 human chromosomes (22 [...]
