Thursday, May 19, 2011
Scientists at Penn State have achieved a major milestone in the attempt to assemble, in a test tube, entire chromosomes from their component parts. The achievement reveals the process a cell uses to package the basic building blocks of an organism's entire genetic code -- its genome. The evidence provided by early research with the new procedure overturns three previous theories of the genome-packaging process and opens the door to a new era of genome-wide biochemistry research. A paper describing the team's achievement will be published in the journal Science on May 20. (more)
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Scientists long have suspected that the sex chromosome that only males carry, the Y chromosome, is deteriorating, but until now, no one has understood the evolutionary processes that control this chromosome's demise. Now, a pair of Penn State scientists has discovered that the Y chromosome is evolving at a rapid rate, resulting in a dramatic loss of genes that eventually could lead to the chromosome's complete disappearance. (more)
