Thursday, October 29, 2026 Evidence-led medical research news
The First Cohort
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genetics

11 stories tagged "genetics"

Brain & Aging

Pull One Protein Out of a Human Cancer Cell and Its Jumping Genes Wake Up Within Two Hours

Removing either of two CCR4-NOT proteins from a human colorectal cancer cell line raised transcription at about 77 percent of tracked LINE jumping genes within two hours, yet the two removals pushed jumping-gene RNA lifespans in opposite directions.

Cancer

Cancer Wasting Was Hiding in Two Million Routine Weigh-Ins

At Memorial Sloan Kettering, 48.8% of 59,493 tumor-sequenced cancer patients had at least one cachectic weight-loss episode over about five years. No drug is approved for it, and a French hospital coded it in under 1% of its cancer patients.

Cancer

The Inherited Lung Cancer Gene That Rode Out of Appalachia on a Wagon Road

Carriers were about 25 times as likely to develop lung cancer as everyone else, more than 60 times if they never smoked. The variant came over with British and Irish settlers, concentrated in Southern Appalachia after a founder event two centuries ago, and surfaced in a consumer spit-kit database, n

Cancer

A Scientist Chased One Missing Blood Marker for Twenty Years. The Answer Was a Tiny Gene Hiding in Plain Sight.

More than 99.9 percent of people carry a blood marker called AnWj. For most of the few who don't, the absence is acquired, a sign of an underlying blood disorder or cancer rather than something they were born with.

Autoimmune & Inflammation

The 47th Human Blood Group Was Hiding in a Protein Almost Too Small to Find

More than 99.9% of us carry the AnWj antigen without knowing. For the rare few born without it, a routine transfusion can turn dangerous, and until now no genetic test could reliably identify them before the damage was done.

Brain & Aging

Same Genes, Different Fold: A Fly Wing Regrows Only When Distant DNA Touches

Disturb the way the DNA folds after an injury, and the fruit fly still builds a normal wing but loses much of its power to repair one. The instructions to heal weren't only in the genes. They were in the shape.

Autoimmune & Inflammation

Lupus Hits Nine Women for Every Man, and the Reason May Be Hiding in DNA Both Sexes Share

Scientists sequenced more than 1.25 million immune cells and found over 1,000 genetic switches set differently in men and women, with the female side tuned for stronger inflammation. It may help explain why lupus hits nine women for every man.

Autoimmune & Inflammation

A Lung Atlas Found 1,000 Autoimmune-Risk Genes That Blood Studies Missed

For two decades, geneticists mapped thousands of autoimmune-risk variants that sat silent in blood cells. A 1.1-million-cell lung atlas shows the effects switch on only in immune cells lodged in tissue.

Autoimmune & Inflammation

A Map of 1.1 Million Lung Immune Cells Finds the Genetic Risk for Autoimmune Disease in Tissue, Not Blood

Researchers at La Jolla mapped genetic activity in 1.1 million lung immune cells and found about 1,000 genes whose activity is tuned by disease-risk variants only inside tissue, plus 1,700 that read differently in women than in men.

Cancer

The Same Cancer Mutation, Opposite Effects: What 581 Mouse Tumors Say About Who Gets Sick

Cambridge and Yale gave four strains of mice one identical dose of a carcinogen. The tumors converged on the same pathway but took four different genetic routes to get there, and today's screening ignores the reason.

Autoimmune & Inflammation

The Gene That Decides Whether Smoggy Air Wrecks Your Lungs

A University of Pittsburgh study of nearly 1,000 asthma patients pinpoints seven oxidative-stress genes that decide how badly dirty air damages the lungs.