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Start of Life Gene Discovered

Posted by Zonk on from the sign-me-up-for-six dept.

gollum123 writes "The BBC reports that scientists from the UK and France have may found a gene responsible for controlling the fertilization of a new egg." From the article: "The HIRA gene is involved in the events necessary for the fertilisation that take place once a sperm enters an egg. Faults in this gene might explain why some couples struggle to get pregnant despite having healthy sperm ... Although their work in Nature is based on fruit flies, the same genetic processes are present in humans."

6 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Well... by WilliamSChips · · Score: 2, Informative

    Manslaughter, not murder.

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  2. Sorry to disappoint you... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 2, Informative

    But gene therapy using viruses generally doesn't affect the testicles or ovaries - see that's the part that carries the genetic information and spreads it to the offspring - and AFAIK, AIDS targets only white cells.

    Besides, if permanent, inheritable gene therapy had been discovered, there wouldn't be any cases of Down syndrome and other diseases, because people would've been vaccined already!

    heck, we could have vaccined people with the delta-32 gene and get rid of AIDS once and for all!

    But guess what, we aren't there yet.

    1. Re:Sorry to disappoint you... by Achromus · · Score: 1, Informative

      Down Syndrome is not an inherited disease that can be cured by curing carrier parents. Down Syndrome is a mutation, in which the child gets an extra chromosome. The parents don't have the disease to be cured.

  3. Re:Well... by PsychoBrat · · Score: 2, Informative

    From Wikipedia's article on life:

    A conventional definition

    In biology, a lifeform has traditionally been considered to be a member of a population whose members can exhibit all the following phenomena at least once during their existence:

    1. Growth, full development, maturity
    2. Metabolism, consuming, transforming and storing energy/mass; growing by absorbing and reorganizing mass; excreting waste
    3. Motion, either moving itself, or having internal motion
    4. Reproduction, the ability to create entities that are similar to, yet separate from, itself
    5. Response to stimuli - the ability to measure properties of its surrounding environment, and act upon certain conditions. This property is also called homeostasis.
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  4. Re:Well... by 44BSD · · Score: 2, Informative

    Especially mammalian diploid cleavage. Rooooowwwr.

  5. Re:Well... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 2, Informative

    Then what about the anti-implantation drugs? "48 hour" drugs given for rape kits do exactly that, and those pills are being attacked as "abortion pills". Usually these are super-dosages of progestrone and estrogen.

    RU486 class drugs are usually after the 72 hour mark when the inseminated egg is already attached to the wall. RU486 causes de-implantation through inhibiting progestrone buildup in the uterine lining.

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