In humans, melanin is the primary determinant of skin color. It is also found in hair, the pigmented tissue underlying the iris of the eye, and the stria vascularis of the inner ear. In the brain, tissues with melanin include the medulla and zona reticularis of the adrenal gland, and pigment-bearing neurons within areas of the brainstem, such as the locus coeruleus and the substantia nigr
University of Chicago scientists have discovered a new wrinkle in our understanding of how our genes work.
Biomedical and genetic engineers at Duke University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have designed a small fluorescent protein that emits and absorbs light that penetrates deep into biological tissue.
Researchers from Clemson University have found a genetic variation linked to a potentially fatal esophageal disease common in German shepherd dogs.
Researchers at the National Eye Institute have developed the first patient-derived stem cell model for studying eye conditions related to oculocutaneous albinism (OCA).
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the accumulation of fat in the liver unrelated to alcohol abuse or other liver diseases.
Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a way to selectively turn on gene therapies in target cells, including human cells. Their technology can detect specific messenger RNA sequences in cells, and that detection then triggers production of a specific protein from a transgene, or artificial gene.
Researchers have discovered a psychrophilic bacterial strain, called Rhodonellum psychrophilum GL8, at the high altitude Pangong Tso Lake in the Himalayas.
Melanoma accounts for only about 1% of skin cancers but leads to most of the skin cancer-related deaths.
Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder and melanoma is a type of skin cancer but on the surface, these disorders do not seem to have much in common.
Researchers have quantified the diverse types of genomic DNA variations that take place in skin cells and found that mutations from UV light is common.
Thanks to this work, as the journal Trends in Plant Science recently noted, it is now known that functional amyloids serve biological functions in representatives of almost all large groups of living organisms: bacteria, archaea, animals, fungi, and plants.
Risk for melanoma, the most deadly skin cancer, can be estimated long before detection of any suspicious moles, according to a UC San Francisco scientist who led a new study to detect DNA mutations in individual skin cells.
A global collaboration of scientists has more than doubled the known number of regions on the human genome that influence the risk of developing melanoma.