Comparing raw human gene sequences with known puffer-fish genes suggests that the human total is around 30, 000.
Its biologists called up two Incyte databases -- LifeSeq, with 3 million human gene fragments containing 850 million DNA xunits, and PathoSeq, with 30 bacterial genomes containing 75 million units.
One of the researchers Dr Hee Cheol Cho, from Cedars-Sinai, told the BBC he expected the same method to work in the human heart as they used a human gene, Tbx18, to generate the effect.
Ashleigh Griffin ( 2008 FWIS Fellow), Elizabeth Murchison ( 2009 FWIS Fellow), Araxi Urrutia ( 2007 FWIS Fellow) and Patricia Alireza ( 2009 FWIS Fellow) provided fascinating insights into their work on the behaviour of bacteria living in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, transmissible cancers in Tasmanian Devils, human gene and genome evolution and the effects of high pressure at quantum level.
On the side, he took part in an international workshop studying the human leukocyte antigen gene complex, which helps regulate the immune system.
In one documented case where a human baby lacked the gene to make myostatin, he was unusually strong.
He inserted the human form of this gene into hamster ovary cells, which then churned out a genetically engineered version of the hormone.
Millennium Pharmaceuticals (nasdaq: MLNM - news - people ) and Abbott, for instance, are already in the early stages of human testing on a gene-derived medicine that helps control appetite.
Driven by the idea that he might discover something totally new, he labored nights and weekends for months, filtering out thousands of other proteins until he finally separated the right one in 1989 and cloned the human version of the gene that produces it.
GlaxoSmithkline researchers discovered the gene for Lp-PLA2 a decade ago with the help of a gene database licensed from Human Genome Sciences.
It will move the IL-12 drug and other cancer gene therapy approaches through human trials while Intrexon continues to work on basic science.
The discovery that animals in pristine environments have few bacteria with resistance genes makes it likely that much of the antibiotic resistance found in these other species is a result of human influence, rather than natural gene-circulation.
ECONOMIST: Are the bugs in wild animals resistant to antibiotics?
Instead, the story of Sir John's work on the international human genome project is portrayed through his gene structure.
It should help them to find out where sub-sequences of the human genetic code fit into the overall gene map.
Roche has two cancer drugs in early human trials that will come paired with gene tests to spot the subset of patients likely to benefit.
Dr Venter, a veteran of biotechnological scraps ranging from gene patenting to the private human-genome project, has been interested in bioenergy for a long time.
Andrew Prentice, professor of international nutrition at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, reckons that the thrifty gene is widespread among the human race.
She said the judges will likely ask highly technical questions on Monday, to determine how much human ingenuity is required to cleave a gene, and whether the protein sequences named in the Myriad patents are truly works of nature.
FORBES: Big Question For Supreme Court: Can You Patent A Gene?
The first science project earmarked for Blue Gene is to model folding of human proteins.
Then, using gene-location data from the Human Genome Project, they can see which nearby genes are likely, if they malfunction, to lead to the disease.
But rather than using nets and chloroform, their tools are the high-speed gene-sequencing machines developed for the Human Genome Project.
These so-called quantitative traits are under the control of a number of different genes acting in concert as opposed to qualitative traits such as human eye colour, where a difference in a single gene produces a single, sharp distinction.
The researchers, led by Dr George Zubenko, found that a small area of Chromosome 10 of human DNA called D10S1423, when combined with a previously identified gene APOE E4, produced the increased risk of developing the disease.
In 1990, when the human-genome project began, everybody thought they knew what a gene was.
ECONOMIST: Genomics has not yet delivered the drugs, but it will
While GSK's partner Human Genome Sciences invented the drug, Glaxo invested in HGS' gene-hunting technology back in 1993 and stayed the course even after murky early results.
In 2003, Dr. Francis Collins and his team of researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health discovered the gene that causes this fatal disease.
What make better tests possible are gene databases, first developed in the early 1990s by Human Genome Sciences and Incyte Genomics, that categorize thousands of genes by the type of diseased tissue they inhabit.
In all fairness, no one except Tommy Lee Jones or Gene Hackman can say that stuff and sound ... human.
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