Research News
BrightFocus 2013-14 grantee Crystal Miller, PhD, and her mentor, Bruce Lamb, PhD, both of the Cleveland Clinic, along with Taylor Jay of Case Western Reserve University, are coauthors on a new report that describes the surprising—even counterintuitive—role that a genetic variant associated with the immune system plays in Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
In his blog posted on March 17, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins asks a provocative question: “What Makes Our Brains Human?” He then provides at least a partial answer to that question with the help of some new science out of Yale.
Last week, researchers in Iceland announced the completion of a large project to sequence the genomes (or complete DNA) of 2,636 of their fellow countrymen. The Icelandic data base is being called a “treasure trove” of information that will further scientists’ understanding of diseases that are not caused by one single genetic mutation, but instead to mutations on several different genes.