PARIS, May 4, 2008 (AFP) - Researchers in China have pinpointed an elusive gene that plays a linchpin role in determining the harvest potential of rice, according to a study released on Sunday by the journal Nature Genetics.

PARIS, May 4, 2008 (AFP) - New investigations into obesity may identify people with an inherited risk of weight gain, explain why crash diets often fail and address a danger period in childhood that leads to obesity in adult life.

PARIS, March 26, 2008 (AFP) - A US research team on Wednesday urged strong caution over a prototype gene treatment that has generated billions of dollars in investment as a hoped-for cure for cancer, diabetes and other diseases.

PARIS, Nov 28, 2007 (AFP) - Genes that can be pinned to intelligence are proving frustratingly hard to find, the British weekly New Scientist reports in next Saturday's issue.

Researchers led by Robert Plomin of the Institute of Psychiatry in London obtained intelligence scores for 7,000 seven-year-olds based on verbal and non-verbal reasoning tests.

CHICAGO, Nov 15, 2007 (AFP) - A process which leads to some human genes being randomly 'silenced' is more common than thought and could explain why siblings react differently to illnesses, a study showed Thursday.

Most of our genes carry chromosomes from both our mother and father, and both are usually replicated at similar levels.

PARIS, Oct 31, 2007 (AFP) - Investigators in the United States say they have uncovered mechanisms that switch on the ability to hear, according to a study released on Wednesday by Nature, the weekly British science journal.

Cells located in a auditory structure called Koelliker's organ release a rush of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that shuttles energy around to other cells.

The burst of ATP stimulates nearby inner hair cells -- the cells that respond to sound waves -- into releasing an amino acid called glutamate.

PARIS, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - Variations in two key genes help determine how swiftly an individual infected with HIV progresses to AIDS, according to a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Immunology.

The finding challenges quarter-century-old wisdom that what chiefly drives the advance to AIDS is 'viral load,' the amount of HIV in the blood, whose relentless rise bludgeons the immune system, the researchers say.

Instead, they argue, the situation is more complex.

PARIS, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - Scientists on Wednesday released the finest-detailed map yet of variants in the human genetic code, declaring it should help unlock inherited causes of disease and reveal secrets of evolution.

The 'second generation' blueprint of human genetic variation, published in the British journal Nature, unveils minute differences in the genome of 270 people, from Nigeria and Utah to China and Japan.

Individuals are more than 99 percent the same at the genetic level.

WASHINGTON, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - Scientists have sequenced the DNA in the hair of woolly mammoths dating back 50,000 years, paving the way to further research on many extinct species, according to a study published Thursday.

'Hair shafts are a promising source of DNA,' said the authors of the study from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Copenhagen, published in the September 28 edition of Science.

WASHINGTON, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - US researchers have discovered that individual differences in humans may have more to do with rearranged chunks of DNA, rather than specific gene mutations, suggested a study published Thursday.

The findings, which showed as many as 1,300 structural variations between two women of different ethnic descent, could shed light on new ways to combat disease, said researchers at Yale University.