Slashdot Mirror
Morse Code Used by Human Cells?
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from several universities and drug companies in the U.K. have discovered that our cells are using Morse-like signals to switch genes on and off. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) write that this discovery may have major implications for the pharmaceutical industry. Better and more efficient drugs would only deliver the signals to our cells that will activate a desired behavior. Sounds like science fiction? Read more for other details, references and pictures."
The number of 'dots and dashes' being used by each signal could have different purposes, all of which could be modified by a drug.
Alright, I work in a chemical biology lab, and I don't know wtf this is supposed to mean. It's common for proteins to have their localization controlled by phosphorylation (i.e., a transcription factor, which is a protein that turns a gene on when bound to DNA, can only get into the nucleus to do its job depending on whether it's been phosphorylated or not). But what does "signal" mean in this context? The press release doesn't offer any scientific details.
This is really just all hype until they can make a claim beyond vague analogies. So why does this make the front page of Slashdot?
So a geneticist's lame metaphor for any "pattern of signals", Morse code, goes over a journalist's head, and makes it to the Slashdot homepage. If only we cell megacolonies were smart enough to decipher these patterns of signals, we might actually get meaningful insights into the infomechanics of DNA.
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make install -not war
What you call "distilling" others would call "blatent plagarism". Roland is a repeated lying plagarist, and you are aparently an unknowning tool of his. Too bad the Slashdot masters don't have the balls to honestly admit what the real relationship between them and Roland really is.
There's nothing in that press release to convince me that a "major signaling pathway" has been discovered. There was just an overblown analogy; no science was explained.
And maybe you think biology is "oversold" because you don't know anything about it. Does anybody in your family take a statin (for lowering cholesterol levels)? If so, you should know that amazingly little details have been worked out about why those drugs work, down to the proteins that sit on the endoplasmic reticulum that are involved in cholesterol metabolism regulation, and the enzymes that interact with them. We know how that regulatory pathway eventually trickles down to interaction with DNA via transcription factors.
Maybe you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you out of ignorance.
you know how much he is making?
using a hour per day for 1000$ doesn't sound too bad.
the thing is, the guy makes no content of his own, offers no visions of his own, offers no insight of his own. offers no clever linking of information to other types of same kind of information. does stories(CUTS AND PASTES) in 'bulk', submits them to slashdot in bulk. writes boringly. doesn't even focus on any particular area of science, technology or society.
karma be damned, fuck roland - IF THE FUCKING BLOG WOULD BE INTRESTING AS WHOLE ___OTHER___ PEOPLE WOULD FUCKING SUBMIT THE STORIES - JUST MAKE IT INTRESTING, NO NEED TO WHORE YOURSELF.
he could at least have courtesy to submit the stories under fake aliases.
and slashdot: if you pass his stories without blinking - Make him a fucking editor or add custom filtering.
and people with mod points.. mod the grandparent up just for kicks. or me down(it's not like i'd drop from excellent anyways).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
And I suppose our wonderful understanding of statins would allow us to know about and avoid side effects like increased depression due to the suppression of essential lipids in the brain? Oh that's right, we only started to get a fucking clue after the fact. The parent poster is dead on, most people have way too inflated an opinion of modern medicine.
We've come a long way, but we're still ages away from having an engineer's level of understanding of the human body.
The mistake people in medicine make is taking this observation as a criticism or an insult. It's neither of those, it's just a caution to avoid putting to much blind faith in our current level of understanding and being open to progress as it comes.
We also know that statins cause muscle damage, kidney damage, liver damage, heart damage (how ironic - look up statin-induced cardiomyopathy), metabolic damage and brain damage. Leaving people weak, sick, tired, forgetful, confused and dull and sometimes demented or dead.
We know statins interfere with vital steps in producing testosterone, estrogen (good bye sex drive, etc) and other vital hormones, and deplete CoQ10, which is crucial for cellular energy metabolism.
Yet we force these drugs down the throats of many people who either would have never even gotten heart disease from their cholesterol level, or those in which the statin does not prevent the heart disease. In other words, most people would have ended up eith getting heart disease, or not getting it, in spite of the drug. And we ignore inflammation and C-reactive protein levels (though this is changing, just like with ulcers and bacteria, the truth EVENTUALLY comes out) and harp on cholesterol, yet half of heart attack victims have normal levels.
Meanwhile the government is pushng that ridiculous food pyramid, with its over-emphasis on grains and causing carbohydrate overload without being balanced by proteins and fat (the 4 food groups were better - much less diabetes when that was popular - and type 2 was NEVER seen in kids back then, even the fat ones), perhaps THAT is why diabetes and heart disease are killing more people each week than died on September 11, 2001 and maiming countless others. Well, at least the grain industry will be healthy, even if we aren't.
Diabetes, dementia and congestive heart failure are growing extremely fast, much much faster than the Gross National Product.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
And Slashdot should by now be aware (as has been posted many times on their own servers). Remember that by plaigarizing content, a major publication may feel that they are not getting credit for their hard work. We don't condone it when coders do it, so why should it be any different for the editors?
I'd also like to point out the hypocrisy of the Slasdot editors. Should MS be found infringing on OSS code (even if it was done by a contractor), timothy, CmdrTaco and friends are right up there to offer their one-line smackdown with the story submittal. Yet time and time again, they are OK with Roland posting unattributed content on their front page.
For shame, Slashdot. For shame.
Morse code is still used for identifying VOR and NDB beacons in aviation. Being able to ident them just by listening, rather than having to look up the dots & dashes cheat sheet on the aviation sectional can really help to reduce the cockpit workload, especially when you're lost, or can easily get lost if you misidentify one.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.