Here First - Science and Technology Blog

Mom is blonde with green eyes, dad is dark-haired and has brown eyes. He has 1, 93m, she, on heels, is barely reaching his shoulder. Will their child inherit Mommy's genetics, or he/she will be a "carbon copy" of his Daddy?  Genetics - a lottery or a cocktail  There are so many possible combinations, that one couple can give birth to 70 billion different children. That, because every cell in the human body has 80,000 genes. In principle, half of these are given by the father, and half-mother.  And yet, these pictures say otherwise. Usually, a son or daughter has features of both parents. This is not the case here. The "dominant" gene was real strong in these cases, and it manifested clearly. Looking at these lookalikes, a single thought comes to mind: we are all copies of our parents.  Children will be smart like their parents?  Without a doubt, genetics acts like that! But if it's not stimulated since childhood, you can lose ...

Harvard Medical School Researchers have used a single compound to increase the lifespan of obese mice, and found that the drug reversed nearly all of the changes in gene expression patterns found in mice on high calorie diets--some of which are associated with diabetes, heart disease, and other significant diseases related to obesity. The research, led by investigators at Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging, is the first time that the small molecule resveratrol has been shown to offer survival benefits in a mammal. "Mice are much closer evolutionarily to humans than any previous model organism treated by this molecule, which offers hope that similar impacts might be seen in humans without negative side-effects," says co-senior author David Sinclair, HMS associate professor of pathology, and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Labs for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging. "After six months, resveratrol essentially prevented most of the negative effects ...