Articles tagged Fundamental Research
(127 results)

For many of the roughly 300 million people around the world with rare diseases, the road to diagnosis can be long, painful, expensive, and disheartening. Around eighty percent of very infrequently seen undiagnosed diseases are estimated to have a genetic basis, but even with modern DNA sequencing techniques, the causes are often unclear. In these…

For people with alcohol dependence, withdrawal symptoms can cause relapse. Some physical symptoms—such as seizures, delirium tremens, and heart rhythm abnormalities—can be fatal, but even non-life-threatening symptoms like anxiety and confusion can trigger relapse. The changes in the nervous system that underlie withdrawal symptoms may involve ion channels in the Slo family. The function of…

In critical situations, communication can mean the difference between life and death. If our house goes up in flames, we don’t need to smell smoke to be alarmed as long as someone yells, “Fire!” This isn’t unique to humans; even creatures with much less sophisticated means of sharing information have ways of telling each other…

Palm fronds crunch under a researcher’s foot as she hikes through a rainforest in Madagascar looking for a spot to release a tiny, omnivorous ball of fur with bulging eyes—a mouse lemur. This creature, the smallest type of primate, is an important research subject: it has just yielded a blood sample, skin cells, and an…

Whether a thunderclap drives your dog to cower behind the couch or leaves it unfazed may be determined in part by genetics. In the June issue of GENETICS, Ilska et al. analyze genetic contributors to canine personality traits—such as fear of loud noises—using owners’ reports of their pets’ behavior. The researchers chose this survey-based method…

Strong muscles aren’t important only for athletes—declining skeletal muscle strength is strongly associated with lower quality of life and even mortality in older adults. As the world’s population ages, understanding why muscle strength decreases over our lifespans is critical to ensuring seniors enjoy a happy, healthy old age. Normally, a muscle contracts when calcium is…

Illuminating the cover of the May issue of G3 is a lake-dwelling filter feeder no more than a couple millimeters long. This microcrustacean—Daphnia pulex, also known as the water flea—is an important model organism, especially in ecological genetics. But despite Daphnia’s status as a model organism, no one had examined its population genomics until now.…

In the ruins of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant—an area deemed unsafe for humans for the next 20,000 years after a catastrophic failure—life thrives. Fungi that reside there, along with other organisms that can survive large radiation doses, must have strategies to cope with the DNA-damaging effects of living at a meltdown site. In the…

In the life of a butterfly, color is crucial. Color helps these flashy insects attract mates, avoid being spotted, or even signal to predators that they would make a bad meal. On the cover of the March issue of GENETICS is a close-up view of Junonia coenia, a butterfly with stunning blue eyespots on its…

Restricting calorie intake seems to promote longer lives in a wide range of organisms, from microbes to mammals. Some determined youth-seekers are already adopting reduced-calorie diets in an attempt to extend their lifespans. But it’s not clear yet that these anti-aging effects apply to humans, and the mechanisms by which they work in other organisms…

The arms race between pathogens and their hosts leaves clear genetic marks: the most quickly evolving parts of host genomes often include immune genes. But are these fast-movers the exception among immune genes, or do most genes in this class bear the genetic signature of strong selection? In the January issue of GENETICS, Early et…