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- Hoogsteen base pairs: An alternate structure in DNA
- Enhancer RNA (eRNA): More powerful than previously thought
- Augmented Reality really goes mobile
- Back to the Future: Cars with hub motors
- Histones: DNA packaging and much more
- Stem cell injection improves aging cells in mice
- Can culture change the genome?
- Common diseases: Rare gene mutations are important
- Apple iPad: And the big deal is…?
- Sci-Fi movie review: Splice
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Tag Archives: DNA
New study: It’s possible life originated in ice
Life (on Earth) had to start somewhere, why not in ice? Why not indeed, except that for many decades it’s been assumed that life started in a – warm – primordial soup of some kind. Perhaps not a ‘soup,’ but somewhere warm or nearly hot (not boiling, of course) such as near an undersea volcanic [...]
Posted in News: Origin of Life Also tagged ice pockets, molecular chemistry, organic chemistry, origin of life, ribozyme, RNA, solar system life Leave a comment
Fighting cancer with targeted therapy for ‘reader’ proteins
There are many kinds of cancer. Not surprisingly there are many ways to treat cancer although three major approaches are familiar to most people: Zap it with radiation. Kill it with toxic chemicals (chemotherapy). Cut it out (surgery). These are generally speaking knuckle-punch approaches – invasive, imprecise, and typically have serious side-effects. However, they work…sometimes [...]
Posted in News: Major Disease Cures Also tagged BRD4, BRD4-NUT, cancer, JQ1, NMC, NUT, NUT midline carcinoma, personalized medicine, reader protein, targeted therapy Leave a comment
Graphene: Diverse advances
Scientists thought they understood carbon, until nanotechnology came along. Working with carbon at the atomic level (the nanoscale) has revealed many surprising properties. In particular, graphene, a sheet of carbon one atom thick with the atoms arranged in a lattice of hexagons like a honeycomb, has proven to be astonishingly versatile. For example, two recent [...]
Posted in News: Nanotechnology Also tagged electronics, electrons, graphene, nanopore, nucleobases, semiconductor, sequencing, transistor Leave a comment
Man and worm: A cortex in common
Human beings and all vertebrates (e.g. animals) have a cerebral cortex, a densely packed part of the brain that, among other things, handles sensory input, makes operative decisions based on the input, and stores the experience in memory. Some invertebrates, a few insects and worms, have a cluster of neurons called a mushroom body that [...]
Posted in News: Neuroscience Also tagged cerebral cortex, convergence, invertebrate, mushroom body, PrImR, ragworm, vertebrate Leave a comment
Transposons and the dynamic genome
Most people know that DNA can mutate – genetic sequences can be altered and carried on by reproduction. Less well known is that DNA also changes, in a sense mutates, during the life cycle of a normal cell – with or without reproduction. There are sequences of DNA that can move about to different positions [...]
Posted in News: DNA Decoding Also tagged genetic insertion, genome, heredity, jumping genes, mutation, transposon Leave a comment
NDM-1: Not a ‘superbug’ but possibly worse
The idea – and reality – that bacteria can develop immunity to a broad spectrum of treatment is not new. Drug resistant strains of tuberculosis have been a problem for decades. Doctors worry that over-treatment with antibiotics is leading to the evolution of the drug resistant strains of many diseases. The worst case is the [...]
A new role for a key cell protein
We know from our experience, intuition, and scads of studies that the body reacts to stress – often negatively. For the most part, long term stress is harmful. There are many muscular, neurological, vascular, and digestive reactions (to name a few) that if not significantly relieved by some point, turn toward physical degeneration and disease [...]
Posted in Impact: Proteomics Also tagged AMPK, histone, kinase, metformin, nucleus, p51, p53, phosphorylation, protein, proteomics Leave a comment
microRNA: A cellular communicator
Discovered only about fifteen years ago, research on the non-coding variant of RNA called microRNA (or miRNA) continues to expand its role. New work by Chen-Yu Zhang and colleagues at five Chinese institutions has identified miRNA as an important cell-to-cell and cell-to-organ communication mechanism, one that is more versatile than the traditional notion of cellular [...]
Posted in News: DNA Decoding Also tagged atherosclerosis, cell communication, epigenetics, microRNA, miR-150, miRNA, RNA Leave a comment
Update: Research on ‘old-age genes’ challenged
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis – is a primary pathway of science. Researchers trot out a hypothesis (hopefully backed up with evidence). Other researchers challenge the hypothesis, often through their own research results. Eventually the original hypothesis is confirmed, rejected, or in some way modified. Science moves on. The process may start with scientists presenting a research [...]
Posted in News: DNA Decoding Also tagged genetic variance, genetics, genome, gerontology, GWAS, old-age genes, SNPs Leave a comment
Gene variants for living to 100 identified
Under the heading, “Research Ripe for Over-interpretation” a team of scientists from the Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine and the Boston Medical Center have published in the July 1, 2010 issue of the journal Science a paper identifying a suite of gene variants that can be used to predict whether people can [...]
Posted in News: Extending Lifespan Also tagged centenarians, genome wide association, gerontology, GWAS, old-age, prediction, SNPs Leave a comment
Quantum entanglement helps keep DNA together
Once in a while science produces theoretical work that has tantalizing possibilities but also raises a strong skeptical response. This is another way of saying that a theory has a certain amount of plausibility but is without experimental evidence. Such is the case with a theory proposed by Elisabeth Rieper and colleagues at the National [...]
Posted in Impact: Quantum Physics Also tagged base pair, classical mechanics, double-helix, nucleotide, phonon, quantum biology, quantum entanglement, quantum mechanics, scientific method, Van der Waals forces 2 Comments
New for epigenetics: Active pseudogenes and RNA as gene regulator
How is it that the human genome, with about 23,000 protein coding genes, can produce such a complicated organism as the human being, when the laboratory flatworm (C. elegans, a relatively simple organism) has about 20,000 coding genes? It seems fairly obvious that there must be something else at work in more complex organisms that [...]
Posted in Impact: Cell Biology Also tagged cancer, cell biology, ceRNA, epigenetics, genome, microRNA, molecular biology, mRNA, proteins, pseudogene, PTEN, PTENP1, RNA Leave a comment
The Human Genome Project: Ten years later
Ten year retrospectives are a popular form of gazing at near history. So it is with looking at the results of the first complete sequencing of the human genome (first draft released June 26, 2000). The Human Genome Project was a three billion dollar multi-year program that finally achieved the long sought genome-wide catalog of [...]
Posted in Impact: DNA Decoding Also tagged genetics, genome, GWAS, Human Genome Project, major disease cures, medicine, RNA, SNP Leave a comment
Update: Synthetic DNA in a bacterium (a.k.a. synthetic life)
The announcement by the J. Craig Venter Institute team of their creation of synthetic DNA (starting with a computer modeled bacterium genome and implanting it in another bacterium that had its DNA removed) has generated a considerable amount of media coverage. However, not as much as the Gulf Oil disaster, not by a long shot. [...]
Posted in Impact: Synthetic Biology Also tagged artificial life, bacterium, PCSBI, synthetic life, Venter, Venter Institute Leave a comment
Extending life with diet or insulin has trade-offs
Over the last decade or so, two of the most promising avenues of research in gerontology (the study of aging) and the search for means of extending human life have been on the effects of restricting diet and the activity of the hormone insulin. Numerous studies have shown that caloric restriction (not starvation, but a [...]
Posted in News: Extending Lifespan Also tagged aging, C. elegans, CREB, diet restriction, flatworm, insulin, lifespan, memory, memory loss, mRNA, protein, RNA, sRNA Leave a comment
Synthetic life, as developed by Craig Venter et al
May 21, 2010: This is one of those days when one story is likely to dominate the science news. It will also be writ large in the world’s news. Craig Venter, the name has to come first, and his research team has claimed creation of the first synthetic life. It should also be a good [...]
Posted in Impact: Synthetic Biology Also tagged artificial life, DNA transplant, genetics, genome, microbiology, Splice, synthetic biology, synthetic life, Venter Leave a comment
Reversing silenced genes improves quality of induced stem cells
As has been the case for more than a decade, the promise of stem cells to create breakthroughs in cell biology and medicine has been hampered by the difficulty in obtaining sufficient quantities of high quality pluripotent stem cells (cells capable of changing into almost any other kind of cell). Human embryonic stem cells are [...]
Posted in News: Stem Cells Also tagged embryonic stem cells, gene, genetic, iPSC, molecular genetics, pluripotent, RNA, stem cells, transcription Leave a comment
Testing your genetics with a drug store kit
Selling genetic testing kits over-the-counter (OTC) in a drug store (apothecary, chemists, pharmacy)…? People might be inclined to say, “Only in America.” Not really. Like it or not, and I suspect most people at this point are more than a little skeptical, this sort of do-it-yourself (which is actually a spit-in-a-bottle-and-mail-it-in) testing is going to [...]
Posted in Spun Also tagged apothecary, drug store, genetics, over-the-counter, personal genome, pharmacy, test kit Leave a comment
Small steps toward understanding the epigenome
“You can think of it this way,” said Ren. “Neurons and skin cells share the identical set of genetic material – DNA – yet their structure and function are very different. The difference can be attributed to differences in their epigenome. This is analogous to computer hardware and software. You can load the same computer [...]
Posted in Impact: Cell Biology Also tagged adult cells, cell biology, chromatin, epigenetics, epigenome, fibroblasts, genetics, histones, mitochondria, nESC, nucleus, organic chemistry, RNA, stem cells 1 Comment
Fascinating: Many of us have genes from Neanderthals
One way or another many human beings carry a percentage of their DNA inherited from Neanderthal man. This has been suspected for some time (not only in comedy routines); now there is genetic data to back it up. An international team of scientists coordinated at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) and [...]
Posted in Impact: DNA Decoding Also tagged epigenetics, gene expression, genes, genome, genome sequencing, Homo neanderthalensis, homo sapiens, modern man, Neandertal, Neanderthal Comments closed
The growing GWAS controversy
There’s nothing like ignorance to fuel a controversy, even if it’s scientific ignorance. A controversy is brewing over the idea of personalized medicine based on the analysis of an individual’s genome through genome-wide association studies, or GWAS. Enabled by the ever decreasing cost of analyzing the human genome, some scientists believe it is possible to [...]
Posted in Impact: DNA Decoding Also tagged BRCA1, gene, genetics, genome, genome-wide association studies, GWAS, molecular genetics, mutation, personalized medicine Comments closed
Epigenetics and introns: Life beyond DNA
The discovery and gradual elucidation of DNA and the genetic code over the last half century was certainly one of the most important achievements in science during that time – or arguably, any time. DNA and genetics also, rightfully, have dominated much of the thinking and interest in the biological sciences. So, without taking away [...]
Genetic pause control
Did you know that the genetic production process (gene expression) can be paused? A few years ago, most geneticists didn’t know either, and now it appears that the ability to pause genetic expression is not limited to a handful of genes (as originally thought) and may be a general capability for cells at all stages [...]
Posted in News: DNA Decoding Also tagged c-Myc, chromosome, DSIF, genes, genetics, mRNA, NELF, nucleus, polymerase enzyme, protein, stem cells, transcription Leave a comment
New technique: DNA transfer to overcome mitochondrial genetic diseases
Most of the time when something refers to genetics, it’s assumed this means the DNA found in the nucleus of cells. However, in one of the three domains of life, Eukarya (all plants and animals), DNA is also found in the mitochondria of cells. One or more mitochondria are found in all eukaryotic cells, where [...]
Posted in Impact: Genetic Modification Also tagged embryo, Eukarya, gene, genetic modification, genetics, mitochondria, mitochondrial myopathy Leave a comment
Stem Cells: Using RNA to reprogram adult cells