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 ...

I think this can be called breaking news! This is an amazing case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease. The patient is a 42-year-old American living in Berlin. Right now he is still recovering from his leukemia therapy, but he appears to have won his battle with AIDS.  Doctors have not detected the AIDS virus in his blood for more than 600 days, despite his having ceased all conventional AIDS medication. Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days. And we all know where this takes him... Read the whole story here. Dr. Gero Hütter is not an AIDS specialist, but he 'functionally cured' a patient, who shows no sign of the AIDS disease. Doctors can't yet genetically modify all target cells. In theory, HIV would kill off the susceptible ones and, a victim of its ow...