The United States Supreme Court ruled Thursday (June 13) that naturally occurring human genes could not be patented but that synthetic DNA sequences could. The decision effectively invalidated patents on two genes used as markers for a variety of cancers held by biotech company
The United States Supreme Court ruled Thursday (June 13) that naturally occurring human genes could not be patented but that synthetic DNA sequences could. The decision effectively invalidated patents on two genes used as markers for a variety of cancers held by biotech company Myriad Genetics. Myriad patented the two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, in which mutations often portend breast and other cancers, as the basis of diagnostic tests to predict cancer risk.
The Court’s decision deals a blow to biotech companies hoping to secure monopolies on similar tests that target one or two specific genes. But the verdict benefits researchers and patients, according to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “The decision represents a victory for all those eagerly awaiting more individualized, gene-based approaches to medical care,” he said in a statement. “The right to control exclusively the use of a patient's genes could have made it more difficult to access new tests and treatments.”
WIKIPEDIA, JOSHUA FURMAN
Using brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and learning motor skills activate similar networks of brain regions, according to research published Monday (June 10) in PNAS. By studying patients with epilepsy as they used BCI to move a computer cursor with only their minds, researchers led by Jeremiah Wander of the University of Washington in Seattle discovered that the task activated some of the same brain regions— the primary motor cortex, primary somatosensory cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and premotor cortex—that light up when people learn new motor skills, such as typing.
“This work is very exciting,” Jose Carmena from the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study, told The Scientist. “It shows that, as in motor skill learning, the process of BCI skill learning recruits a widely distributed network of brain areas not directly connected to the BCI.”
Researchers have come one step closer to understanding how mammals can regenerate digit tips but not whole digits or limbs—stem cells at the bases of finger and toenails. The stem cells helped to coordinate signaling between the nail, bone, and nerve tissues necessary to regrow amputated mouse digits.
The molecular program that governed mammalian regeneration resembled that already seen in amphibians—suggesting a conserved regeneration program that could be harnessed in other tissues, Hans-Georg Simon, a developmental biologist at Northwestern University who did not participate in the study, told The