Heena Sharma Blog

A new study now finds that the quality of a person's marriage could be affected by their genes. The study was conducted at at Binghamton University, State University of New York. A research team, led by Richard Mattson evaluated whether different genotypes of the Oxytocin Receptor gene (OXTR) influenced how partners support one another, which is a key determinant of overall marital quality. OXTR was targeted because it is related to the regulation and release of oxytocin, which is a hormone associated with feeling love and attachment. Oxytocin also appears to be relevant to social cognition and a wide range of social behaviour. Speaking about the study, Mattson said that while prior research has hinted that marital quality is, at least partially, impacted by genetic factors, and that oxytocin may be relevant to social support -- a critical aspect of intimate partnerships, his study is the first to provide evidence that variation on specific genes related to oxyto...

Chickens that have been genetically modified to produce human proteins in eggs can offer a cost-effective method of producing certain types of drugs. The study which initially focused on producing high quality proteins for use in scientific research, found the drugs work at least as well as the same proteins produced using existing methods. The study was carried out at the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute and Roslin Technologies, a company set up to commercialise research at The Roslin Institute and is published in BMC Biotechnology. High quantities of the proteins can be recovered from each egg using a simple purification system and there are no adverse effects on the chickens themselves, which lay eggs as normal. According to researchers, the findings provide sound evidence for using chickens as a cheap method of producing high quality drugs for use in research studies and, potentially one day, in patients. Notably, eggs are already used for growing vi...

A Chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world's first genetically edited babies twin girls born this month whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life. If true, it would be a profound leap of science and ethics. A US scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes. Many mainstream scientists think it's too unsafe to try, and some denounced the Chinese report as human experimentation. The researcher, He Jiankui of Shenzhen, said he altered embryos for seven couples during fertility treatments, with one pregnancy resulting thus far. He said his goal was not to cure or prevent an inherited disease, but to try to bestow a trait that few people naturally have an ability to resist possible future infection with HIV , the AIDS virus . He...