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A team of researchers is using breakthrough gene-editing technology to develop a new screening tool for Parkinson's disease, a debilitating degenerative disorder of the nervous system. The technology allows scientists in the lab to 'light up' and then monitor a brain protein called alpha-synuclein that has been associated with Parkinson's.

A single treatment giving life-long protection from severe allergies such as asthma could be made possible by recent immunology research.

More than 99 percent of your genetic information is exactly the same as every other person on the planet. Your genes determine your skin colour, sex, and hair colour and whether or not you have certain genetic diseases.

A pioneering CRISPR trial in China will be the first to try editing the genomes of cells inside the body, in an effort to eliminate cancer-causing HPV virus

Uh oh... Now researchers have found evidence that the unwanted mutations brought on by CRISPR in living animals could be a more widespread than we thought.

Researchers have identified a new way to potentially slow the fast-growing cells that characterize all types of cancer. By removing a specific protein from cells, they were able to slow the cell cycle, which is out of control in cancer. The findings were made in kidney and cervical cancer cells and are a long way from being applied in people, but could be the basis of a treatment option in the future.

FOR $150, YOU can buy a Crispr kit online and use it to engineer heartier gut bacteria in your kitchen. That’s thrilling, but the technology is giving Jennifer Doudna, an inventor of the gene-­editing method, nightmares. Easy genetic modification could mean cures for cancer (yay!), kitty-sized pigs (squee!), and, yes, designer babies (ack).

THE WORLD’S LARGEST genetics research center isn’t at Harvard or Stanford or even the NIH. It’s a 20-mile drive from Hong Kong International Airport, in the bustling Chinese city of Shenzhen. BGI-–formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute—has sequenced the DNA of organisms big and small: millet, rice, the giant panda, 40 types of silkworm, the SARS virus, even a 4,000-year-old man named Inuk. And soon it will add a new name to its genomic guest book: Dubs, the Alaskan Malamute, and mascot for...

Favorable mutations that went along with increased fruit size and other beneficial traits in tomato plants do not always play well together. A study published in Cell found that natural mutations in two important tomato genes that were selected for different purposes in breeding can cause extreme branching and reduce fruit yield when they occur in the same plant. The researchers used those genes to create a tomato plant that grows more tomatoes.

The loss of the tumor suppressor gene PTEN has been linked to tumor growth and chemotherapy resistance in the almost invariably lethal brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Now, Ludwig researchers have shown that one way to override the growth-promoting effects of PTEN deletion is, surprisingly, to inhibit a separate tumor suppressor gene.