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Genetics

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Your lifestyle is an on/off switch for your genes

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Your lifestyle is an on/off switch for your genes

We know that our lifestyle affects our health. We've heard it a million times before. Some of us take it more seriously than others. What we haven't really heard much of is how this relates to the inherited illnesses that people are at-risk of getting. Interestingly, again, it is actually lifestyle that significantly affects our chance of actually getting the illness that we're at risk of. For instance, someone born with a BRCA mutation, isn't necessarily going to get breast cancer. They are more at risk of...

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Detecting the rare, renegade cancer cells

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Detecting the rare, renegade cancer cells

Very early in tumour development, the tumour may send out some extremely sneaky cells into the bloodstream. The cells may circulate in the bloodstream as dormant cancer cells for months or years, and may even survive cancer treatment aimed at treating a primary cancer. The cells are called Circulating Tumour Cells, and are the cause of cancer spread, metastases. It is the metastases, rather than the primary tumour, which is most often responsible for patient fatality. Circulating Tumour Cells have become a hot topic in...

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Survival of the fittest in cancer

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Survival of the fittest in cancer

One cannot write about evolution without referencing Darwin and his evolutionary theory. It's astounding how relevant this over 150-year idea is. Let's first tease out the theory, so that we are all on the same page.

Darwin described how species evolved via descent with modification. This means that...

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Gene expression and the regulation of genes

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Gene expression and the regulation of genes

A gene that is expressed, simply means that it is active. If a gene is a set of instructions, gene expression simply means that the instructions are being read and acted upon by cellular machinery. The result of gene expression is a functional protein, or phenotype.

The cellular machine that 'reads' the...

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Genetics, explained

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Genetics, explained

What is DNA? What is a gene? What is a mutation?

In brief, DNA is a long molecule that stores information. DNA is located in the centre (nucleus) of every cell and contains all the instructions necessary for the organism to function. Similar to pearls on a necklace, along the DNA strand there are millions of basic structural units called nucleotides. Each nucleotide (pearl) is one of four types: A, T, G or C, as determined by the nitrogenous base they contain, i.e., nucleotide 'A' has Adenine, 'T' has Tyrosine, 'C' has Cysteine and 'G' has Guanine. These four types of...