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  Should You Get Tested for the BRCA Gene Mutations? The BRCA gene, or BReast CAncer gene, plays an essential role in repairing your body’s DNA. When there’s an abnormality in these genes, however, it greatly increases your risk of developing certain cancers – most notably breast and ovarian cancer. With genetic testing, you can find out if you carry this mutation and what that means for you or your family members. What Is the BRCA Gene? There are two types of BRCA genes: BRCA1 and BRCA2. Both genes are responsible for producing proteins involved in repairing DNA damage. Each person has two copies of each BRCA gene – one from each biological parent. “One copy is normal and totally doing its job, and the other copy might be not working because it contains a mutation,” says Dr. Judy E. Garber, the chief of the Division of Cancer Genetics and Prevention at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Genetic mutations occur when there is an error during the cell division process. “Ever...

  By Josh Horwitz and Brenda Goh SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Alibaba Group on Wednesday said it is developing a ChatGPT-style tool that is currently in internal testing, joining a race by tech companies globally to show they are up to speed on generative artificial intelligence (AI) developments. The Chinese e-commerce group's statement came after the 21st Century Herald newspaper reported that Alibaba is developing a ChatGPT-like dialogue robot which is currently open to employees for testing. When asked about the newspaper report, which also said that Alibaba might combine the technology with the group’s communication app DingTalk, Alibaba declined to comment. The company said it had been focused on large language models and generative AI for a number of years. Large language models are natural language processing systems which are trained on massive volumes of text, and are capable of answering and comprehending questions as well as generating new text.