Science

• Gene in 60% of people of South Asian ancestry doubles the risk of COVID-19 death

  LONDON – Researchers have pinpointed a little-studied gene as responsible for doubling the risk of respiratory failure in COVID-19 and shown exactly how it exerts its effect. The gene, leucine zipper transcription factor like 1, is activated by a...

• Parkinson’s disease model confirms metabolic, contests anatomic tenets

  Neurology/Psychiatric

  Investigators at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine have used a new mouse model of Parkinson’s disease to confirm a causal role for mitochondrial dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease. More surprisingly, the same model has called...

• Metabolomics study reveals dementia-linked metabolites

  Metabolomics

  A comprehensive nontargeted metabolomics analysis has revealed previously unknown classes of disease-linked metabolites in whole blood samples from dementia patients, which may have significant therapeutic implications for managing the untreatable...

• WHO setting up global framework to guide genome editing research

  Regulatory

  LONDON – The World Health Organization (WHO) is to set up a channel for confidential reporting of illegal, unregistered, unethical or unsafe human genome editing research, as part of a new governance framework it is proposing to develop.

• Host genetics study identified COVID-19 risk factors

  Clinical

  In infectious disease research, most of the research into genetic determinants of susceptibility to infection and disease severity are focused on the host. For COVID-19, for example, the delta variant’s infectivity, and how likely infection is to...

• Back to the basics for new insights, with new technology

  Conferences

  Sometimes, scientific progress comes from conceptual insights that arrive in a flash. More often, however, such progress arrives in a decidedly less glamorous, though no less important, manner.