Slashdot Mirror
New Class of Genes Discovered
HarryGenes writes "Reuters is reporting that Scientists Find New Type of Gene in Junk DNA. The research from Harvard Medical School describes a discovery in the Yeast Genome of a new class of gene that regulates the neighboring gene through the production of its RNA product. This has much broader implications than the article lets on to. Assuming these same type of genes exist in Humans and other organisms, the whole science behind gene expression and gene mapping will be changed dramatically. This type of mechanism can explain a lot of the 'unexplainable'. This is really exciting. I have been working in gene mapping for years and always felt that the 'junk' was there for a reason."
As usual, the quality of a mainstream news outlet reporting on science news is bad. This really has nothing to do with 'junk DNA' from what I can tell. Also, the term 'junk DNA' is terrible.
There are repeats (sometimes referred to as 'junk DNA') and there are introns and intergenic regions with no *known* function (also referred to as 'junk DNA').
So while it is technically true that the gene was found in 'junk DNA', it's also true that EVERY new gene is found in junk DNA. That is not what is interesting here at all.
Basically, they found a gene that turns another gene on or off via it's RNA product. This is what the intereseting news is.
Human females have a more pronounced season of going into and out of heat.
Get an extra furrowed forehead... [and] large hairy ears
Well, those two should help cancel each other out, no?
This article is about is genomics knowledge which is one of the best understood areas of biotechnology and molecular biology, yet it's always bugged me that PhDs in biology would simply dismiss what didn't fit into their neat little model as "junk DNA". That "junk DNA" was conserved gave serious doubts about it being junk. That it has to be a "control system" component has pretty obvious.
Until recently though, math and systems theory have not been strengths of biologists in general - when I was in school, biology was what people took to be able to do science without a lot of math. Ask a biologist about Laplace, Linvill or Liapunov and you'll get a blank stare - which is truly scary if they're mucking around with living feedback systems being spread into the broader environment. There's still a generation that probably needs to be purged before the profession can be deemed "systems theory aware".
What's scarier: the whole knowledge-base of proteomics and enzyme/metabolic circuitry is far more primitive that genomics, yet this area represents far more of the biology activity in cells than genomics. Which makes plunging head-long into rolling out things like Monsanto safflower extremely dubious and dangerous.
That said, I'd be the last to advocate ceasing this type of genetic research and technology development - only it is different from most every potentially dangerous technology humanity has developed, so considerable caution and process safe-guards are needed.
Reading the article, it was fun to substitute "Junk DNA" with "-1, Troll posts". The concept is similar: troll postings serve no useful purpose, but they do modify the discussions in subtle ways. Referring to any particularly offensive link as "goat-related" is one of the obvious examples.
Since I'm bored today, I'll try my hand at rewriting the Reuters article.
Slashdotters Find New Type of Moderation in Troll Postings
LONDON (Reuters) - Troll posts may not be so useless after all.
Slashdotters coined the term to describe the textual wasteland within the Slashdot database, or book of posts, which consists of long uncharted stretches of text for which there is no known function.
But researchers from Hard Vard Medical School in Jamaica said on Wednesday that within troll postings in the Science database they have discovered a new class of post.
Unlike other posts, the new one does not produce an Insightful or Interesting comment to carry out its function. But when it is browsed at -1, it moderates a neighboring post.
"This doesn't explain all troll posting. It gives a potential use for some troll posting," Professor Red Finster, who headed the research team, said in a made-up Slashdot posting.
"I cannot think of another regulatory post such as this one," he added.
There are about 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 posts in the Slashdot database. Much of the database consists of troll postings which scientists are trying to decipher to determine the causes and potential treatments for boring, inane discussions.
The new troll called GOAT1 blocks the function of the adjacent posting in the Science database. Finster and his team, who reported their finding in the science journal UnNature-al, believe other trolls could work in the same way and in other databases including the main database.
"We found one example of a type of troll posting that hasn't been found before that might alert investigators to look for it in other offtopic discussions," Finster said.
"This type of moderation may occur in other cases throughout the message board kingdom," he added.
The new troll works by making Frustration, a cousin of Interest, which causes down-moderation or turning off the adjacent post.
"When people are looking to understand the regulation of posts from whatever database -- main, games, Apple, science -- they cannot just look for messages that are acting there. It might be that it is simply the act of moderating that is causing regulation," said Finster.
The Moderation alphabet consists of several moderations -- Flamebait and Troll to Insightful and Informative -- which carry instructions for making all databases. The sum of the moderations carries the score. Each set of moderations corresponds to a single comment score, which join up in many different combinations to make discussions.
"We want to understand the psychology behind the regulation (of the postings). It is a previously unidentified type of moderation and if we could understand how it is controlled, we will learn more about Slashdot moderation," said Finster.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Much more information can be found in this article taken from pubmed.
Stealth regulation: biological circuits with small RNA switches
And yet there are people prepared to unleash modified genes on the world saying that they **know** there is no risk.
Every time somebody has a child they "unleash modified genes on the world". When people say that there is no risk, they mean there's no risk above and beyond normal behaviour.
I don't **know** that the meat I am eating is free of mad cow disease. I don't really care though because I live with one a few billion odds.
There is certainly a risk involved with genetically modified things. Hell, we know this for a fact because we have been doing it for hundreds of years through more primitive means, and we have screwed up in the past. That said, there comes a point when you need to go over your fear and dive in. We will never know anything for sure, and pretty sure is good enough most of the time. I am pretty sure I am not going to die in a car accident on the way to work each morning and that is good enough for me.
Now, there are plenty of reasons to be weary of modified plants and animals, but all of them are patenting and legal issues. As to the raw science of it though, such concerns are negligible with enough foresight. I don't know about you, but I would merrily risk two or three people in an entire population dying because genetically modified super corn gives them an allergic reaction then watch a few hundred thousand people die because their refuse to grow in the barren land that they live.
People need to put a careful eye to potential risks and rewards. Humans are horribly crafty bastards. Sure, we screw up for time to time, but we are not all that bad at dealing with the consequences. If you need any proof that we fix things more then we break them, you need only look at the average human life expectancy has changed over time.
If you visit the story at The Scientist, they have a much better article and a link to the PubMed, full text article.