A father's genetic code influences the weight of a baby at birth, according to a new study.

The study led by the UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH) suggests that genes inherited from the mother and father regulate a baby's growth at different times during the pregnancy, to ensure a successful birth as well as the mother's survival.

Low birth weight is a well-known risk factor for Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems in later life.

One group of growth genes of particular interest are the imprinted genes inherited from one's parents. If the paternal one is expressed, the maternal one is imprinted (silenced) and vice versa.

The 'parental conflict hypothesis' suggests that expression of the father's genes enhances a baby's growth, improving the success of the paternal genome to be passed on.

In contrast, the mother's genome limits foetal growth, distributing equal resources to each of her offspring, whilst ensuring her own survival post-birth allowing her to reproduce again.

The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, looked at the relationship between birth weight and the paternally expressed Insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) early in gestation, where IGF2 is a key hormone regulating growth in the womb.

Professor Gudrun Moore, lead author at the UCL Institute of Child Health, says most of us think of both the mother's and father's genes as having an equal influence on birth weight, but this does not appear to be the case.

"Our study suggests that the two parental genomes may be acting at different times during the pregnancy in order to control the baby's size. Whilst greater foetal growth appears to be promoted by the father's genes early on, it must still require careful regulation by the mother to ensure a successful birth," he said.

He added that understanding the genetic basis of foetal growth is of critical importance in the prevention and monitoring of small and low weight babies.

Researchers claimed to have discovered seven new tumour-suppressor genes for head and neck cancers whose role was previously unknown.

The new technique, which the lab recently applied to a screen for a skin tumour gene, takes a fraction of the resources and much less time than the traditional method for determining gene function.

"Earlier methods can take two years per gene in mice. Our technique can assess about 300 genes in a single mouse in as little as five weeks," claimed Daniel Schramek, a post-doctoral fellow at Rockefeller University's laboratory of mammalian cell biology and development here.



In the study, the researchers used RNA interference, a natural process whereby RNA molecules inhibit gene expression.

The non-invasive method avoids triggering a wound or inflammatory response that is typically associated with conventional methods to knockdown a gene in cultured cells and then en-graft the cells onto a mouse.

When the mice grew, the researchers determined which genes, when turned off, were promoting tumour growth, and what they found was surprising.

Head and neck cancers are the sixth most deadly type of cancer worldwide.

"We have demonstrated that RNA interference method is highly useful in the rapid discovery, validation and characterisation of tumour suppressor genes that might otherwise be missed in a genetic screen."

It can be applied to many kinds of cancers, such as breast and lung, the researchers added.

The group hopes to examine the effect in clinical trials in the future, and plans to look at the function of the other six genes their study identified.

Researchers have developed novel black raspberry-based functional foods that can withstand the rigors of a large-scale cancer prevention trial.

Black raspberries- not to be confused with the more recognizable red variety - have piqued the interest of cancer scientists in the last decade due to research showing they have distinct antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that appear to inhibit tumour growth.

But the berries are only grown in a few places around the US, and like many of their berry cousins, must be refrigerated and eaten within a few days of picking.

"We set out to create a product that had the same level of quality and stability you would find in a pharmaceutical medicine, but that was 100 percent fruit, simple to take and retained high levels of chemopreventive bioactives," said Yael Vodovotz, PhD, a food scientist with The Ohio State University Department of Food Science and Technology, said.

The result was two different formulations - gummy candies and a concentrated fruit juice (nectar) - each roughly equal to a cup of fresh berries. Both formulations were created by freeze drying the berries, which helped preserve the essential nutrients, and then grinding the whole berry - fiber, seeds and fuzz - into a fine powder.

The black raspberry formulations are currently being used in a clinical study of men with prostate cancer undergoing surgery.

The researchers hope to see if the black raspberry preparations, coupled with different types of diets, can improve post-surgery outcomes versus a control group of men with diet interventions only.

The study was published in the journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry.

In a significant breakthrough, the short-term deficit of vitamin A while the lungs are being formed in the baby during pregnancy has been linked to asthma later in life.

A team of Columbia University researchers has found the first direct evidence of a link between prenatal vitamin A deficiency and postnatal airway hyperresponsiveness - a hallmark of asthma.

The vitamin A deficiency can cause profound changes in the smooth muscle that surrounds the airways - causing the adult lungs to respond to environmental or pharmacological stimuli with excessive narrowing of airways, say Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) investigators led by Wellington V. Cardoso.

"Researchers have long wondered what makes some people more susceptible than others to developing asthma symptoms when exposed to the same stimulus," added Cardoso, faculty member in the division of pulmonary allergy clinical care medicine.

Our study suggests that the presence of structural and functional abnormalities in the lungs due to vitamin A deficiency during development is an important and under-appreciated factor in this susceptibility, he stressed.

Previous studies had shown that retinoic acid (RA) - the active metabolite of vitamin A - is essential for normal lung development.

The researchers used a mouse model in which they could control when and in what amount vitamin A would reach the developing foetus through maternal diet.

They timed the vitamin A deficiency to the middle of gestation, coinciding with the period of formation of the airway tree in the foetus.

Foetuses that were deprived of vitamin A were found to have excess smooth muscle in the airways, compared with control groups.

In a subsequent experiment, the mice were again deprived of vitamin A during the same developmental stage, but returned to a normal diet after that stage and until adulthood.

"When the animals reached adulthood, they appeared normal; they had no problems typically associated with vitamin A deficiency," explained Cardoso.

However, pulmonary function tests showed that their lungs were clearly not normal.

When the mice were challenged with methacholine, a chemical that causes the airway to contract, their response was significantly more severe than that of controls.

The findings underscore the importance of sufficient vitamin A in the diet, which remains a significant challenge in developing countries, including India.

A new study suggests that even a moderate weight reduction can prevent the progression of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and even cure it.

The study focused on the effects of weight loss on OSA and demonstrated, for the first time, that a sustained weight loss of just 5 percent was enough to prevent the disease from worsening and even cure it in a long-term follow-up.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has become a major burden for our health care systems over the last years.

Although it is one of the most increasingly prevalent non-communicable diseases, the vast majority of people with OSA still remain undiagnosed.

OSA has also been found to be tightly linked with metabolic abnormalities, particularly type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular morbidity.

OSA is a chronic, progressive disease, and it is well-documented that moderate to severe forms of OSA are associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Obesity is the most important risk factor for OSA.

Based on current knowledge about the evolution of OSA, weight gain represents a high risk for the further progression of the disease towards the more severe forms, particularly in patients who already have a partial obstruction of their upper airways associated with mild OSA.

This study provides first time long-term evidence that even a modest weight reduction can result in marked improvements of OSA and metabolism in overweight patients, and these positive changes are sustained even four years after the cessation of the active intervention, and the progression of the disease is thus prevented.

The study is published in the journal Sleep Medicine.