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There Will Be Reveling in Madison Tonight

Feb 29, 2008

Reacting to an appeal from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled this week that one of three patents covering embryonic stem cell research can stand, reports a news article at Yahoo!. Rulings on the other two are pending. UW Madison's James Thomson was the first person to isolate embryonic stem cells, and the ruling upholds his work as patentable due to the "highly complex and unpredictable nature" of the field, as the story quotes examiner Gary Kunz.

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The Scan

LINE-1 Linked to Premature Aging Conditions

Researchers report in Science Translational Medicine that the accumulation of LINE-1 RNA contributes to premature aging conditions and that symptoms can be improved by targeting them.

Team Presents Cattle Genotype-Tissue Expression Atlas

Using RNA sequences representing thousands of cattle samples, researchers looked at relationships between cattle genotype and tissue expression in Nature Genetics.

Researchers Map Recombination in Khoe-San Population

With whole-genome sequences for dozens of individuals from the Nama population, researchers saw in Genome Biology fine-scale recombination patterns that clustered outside of other populations.

Myotonic Dystrophy Repeat Detected in Family Genome Sequencing Analysis

While sequencing individuals from a multi-generation family, researchers identified a myotonic dystrophy type 2-related short tandem repeat in the European Journal of Human Genetics.