Large differences in maximum longevity exist between different rodent species. Determination of the spontaneous and mutagen-induced mutation rates in these species by single (somatic) cell sequencing suggests more efficient ...

Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria (acute premature aging) is caused by a de novo point mutation in the lamin A gene. Recently, this mutation has been accurately corrected by base editing in patient cell lines and in a mouse ...

Reports of a mammoth cloning project on-going under George Church’s supervision appear periodically in the press. Close examination of the available evidence indicates that there is indeed such a project (carried out in a ...

The most significant polymorphism associated with dog size occurs in the region of the IGF1 gene and concerns a single base change in a neighbouring lncRNA. The “small” (C) ...

GWAS analysis of severe Covid patients implicates a major locus on chromosome 3. The corresponding 50 kb segment appears to originate from Neanderthal/Sapiens crossings, raising interesting evolutionary questions.

Sophisticated analyses of current human populations compared to a high-coverage Neandertal genome sequence indicate that, contrary to the previous consensus, African genomes carry a small but significant amount of ...

Mutations in the germline are an essential component of evolution. Current DNA sequencing systems allow quantification of these mutations through full genome sequencing of father/mother/child trios. A recent paper reports ...

The availability of an extensive set of vertebrate genome sequences, together with large-scale transcriptome studies, has allowed the discovery of numerous non-canonical ORFs (usually quite short) with evidence of ...

Recent work on bacterial insertion sequences reveals that some of them use an RNA sequence (called Bridge RNA or Seek RNA) to define both donor and target DNA specificity. This opens the way to easy insertion of kilobase ...

In vivo inactivation of a deleterious gene has been achieved in a small trial, with excellent clinical results. Interestingly, the delivery and editing system is the same as in previous work on a different disease, and the ...