Featured series 
Tag: Department of Genetics
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Health
Seeing double
By comparing the DNA of modern elephants from Africa and Asia to DNA extracted from two extinct species, the woolly mammoth and the mastodon, researchers have concluded that Africa has two — not one — species of elephant. Now that we know the forest and savanna elephants are two very different animals, the forest elephant…
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Health
Natural flu-fighting protein discovered in human cells
Harvard researchers report having discovered a family of naturally occurring antiviral agents in human cells, a finding that may lead to better ways to prevent and treat influenza and other viral infections. In both human and mouse cells the flu-fighting proteins prevented or slowed most virus particles from infecting cells at the earliest stage in…
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Health
Taking a stride toward synthetic life
Harvard scientists have cleared a key hurdle in the creation of synthetic life, assembling a cell’s critical protein-making machinery in an advance with both practical, industrial applications and that advances the basic understanding of life’s workings. George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School and member of Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative, reported the…
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Connie Cepko
In some ways, Connie Cepko’s job has gotten easier. The Harvard Medical School genetics professor is working to uncover the mysteries of the eye, to understand how it develops and what can go wrong. Her work ranges from understanding the genetic roots of diseases like retinitis pigmentosa, which afflicts 100,000 Americans, to basic genetic research…
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Fresh insight into retinitis pigmentosa
Rods and cones coexist peacefully in healthy retinas. Both types of cells occupy the same layer of tissue and send signals when they detect light, which is the first step in vision. The incurable eye disease retinitis pigmentosa, however, reveals a codependent relationship between the two that can be destructive. When flawed rods begin to…
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Campus & Community
Did ancestral humans, chimps interbreed?
New scientific findings indicate that ancestral humans split from chimpanzee forebears more recently than previously thought and raise the possibility that the two nascent species hybridized before making their final separation.
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Health
Lab moves genomic testing into the clinic
The earliest symptom of the inherited heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can be sudden death at a tragically young age. Harvard Medical School researchers discovered the first human gene underlying the disorder 15 years ago, but clinical genetic testing to identify those people at risk just became available last year. About the same time, another genetic…
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Campus & Community
Bulyk searches for DNA on-off switches
Martha Bulyk held what looked like an ordinary glass slide up to the large window that is much of one wall of her Harvard Medical School office. The slide seemed to be blank, but a puff of breath exposed row after row of tiny dots, appearing like the hidden writing of a secret message. But…
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Science & Tech
Genome scanning technique spots disease risk
A new technique, admixture mapping, takes advantage of the higher-risk genetic segments from one population that show up in the other through generations of racial mixing. The presence of higher-risk segments in the otherwise lower-risk DNA makes for more efficient sorting of the genome to zero in on disease genes. The study, led by David…
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Campus & Community
Hearing loss tied to heart disease
Two members of a family who suffered progressive hearing loss and then underwent heart transplants got Christine Seidman, a Harvard professor of medicine, interested in the strange connection. Their hearing loss began early in life. It progressed for at least 10 years before they started to experience shortness of breath, chest pains, and other symptoms…
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Health
RNA-making apparatus seen to uncoil and recoil DNA
Eukaryotic cells like to keep their DNA under wraps, winding the long strands of nucleic acid around millions of little protein complexes. This bead-on-a-string structure, called chromatin, ensures that the DNA is protected and also helps to condense the long strands of nucleic acid so they more easily are accommodated in the nucleus. Chromatin also…
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Health
Researchers identify gene’s role in suppressing longevity
SIRT1 is involved in cellular senescence, or limitation of cells’ reproductive lifespan, a process thought to ensure that aging cells don’t pass on harmful mutations. Frederick W. Alt, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues suppressed SIRT1 activity in cultures of mouse embryonic fibroblasts, or primitive cells…
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Health
Scientists identify hundreds of worm genes that regulate fat storage
Findings by Harvard researchers, published in the Jan. 16, 2003 issue of Nature, represent the first survey of an entire genome for all genes that regulate fat storage. The research team led by Gary Ruvkun, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Molecular Biology, and postdoctoral fellow Kaveh Ashrafi identified about 400 genes encompassing a…
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Health
Formin gene may explain a common cause of female infertility
Harvard Medical School researchers Philip Leder and Benjamin Leader have discovered that oocytes from female mice without the formin gene Fmn2 cannot correctly position the metaphase I DNA-spindle. This produces daughter cells with an abnormal number of chromosomes, the leading cause of female infertility, birth defects, and embryo loss. Genes of the formin family, including…
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Science & Tech
Putting bacteria to work
A nautical group of bacteria known as Prochlorococcus removes carbon dioxide from air and fixes it into the carbon content of their own tiny bodies. The more carbon dioxide they take from the air, the less is available to capture the heat that is causing the warm-up of our planet. That adds up to a…
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Health
Resistance mutation found for Gleevec
The drug Gleevec was stunningly successful in treating patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) at early stages of disease, but quickly stopped working in most patients with more advanced forms of CML. Last year, researchers at UCLA headed by Charles Sawyers found that some resistant patients carried a mutant version of Bcr-Abl. The original mutation,…
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Health
Medical student engineers protein to dissolve blood clots
Heart attacks and strokes are caused by blood clots called thrombi that block blood flow in the arteries of the heart and of the brain. Body tissues become deprived of needed oxygen and nutrients, eventually dying. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of Americans each year — and has been since 1900 with the…
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Health
Technique enables quick accounting of gene function
Now that whole genomes have been sequenced, a group of scientists has geared up for the next phase: identification and classification of newly discovered coding regions. The DNA microchip, developed just a few years ago, has already become a standard tool in the geneticist’s repertoire. With genomic sequence in hand, the researcher can synthesize all…
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Health
Comprehensive set of vision genes discovered
Using a computer program that compares bits of genetic material taken from tissue in the retinas of mice against records in a huge genetic data base from the mouse and human genome project, Harvard Medical School researchers identified approximately 300 photoreceptor genes. That is five times the number of retinal genes that were previously known.…
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Health
Anthrax immunity gene found in mice
Anthrax is an often fatal disease that is caused by a bacterium. It has been considered a prime biological weapon in the arsenal of terrorists since attacks in the United States in October 2001 and reports elsewhere of anthrax spores being sent through the mail. Harvard Medical School researchers have identified a gene in mice…
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Health
Gene initiates joint formation
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have identified a molecule that plays a central role in the initiation of joint formation. Studying limb formation in the developing chick, postdoctoral fellow Christine Hartmann and her adviser, Clifford Tabin, Harvard Medical School professor of genetics, found that a previously uncharacterized member of the Wnt family, Wnt14, was expressed…
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Health
In human genome race, competition spurred better science
The conflicts between the two teams — one publicly funded, one private — that raced to sequence the human genome often drew more attention than the actual completion of the project itself. A team of Harvard researchers found that the rivalry spurred and improved a potentially sluggish public project. And an important consequence of the…