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Similar DNA Molecules Able to Recognize Each Other

Posted by Soulskill on from the dna-gps dept.

Chroniton brings us a story about research into DNA which has shown that free-floating DNA strands are able to seek out similar strands without the assistance of other chemicals. From Imperial College London: "The researchers observed the behaviour of fluorescently tagged DNA molecules in a pure solution. They found that DNA molecules with identical patterns of chemical bases were approximately twice as likely to gather together than DNA molecules with different sequences. Understanding the precise mechanism of the primary recognition stage of genetic recombination may shed light on how to avoid or minimise recombination errors in evolution, natural selection and DNA repair. This is important because such errors are believed to cause a number of genetically determined diseases including cancers and some forms of Alzheimer's, as well as contributing to ageing."

9 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Don't anthropomorphize chemical compounds. by B3ryllium · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But in this case, the chemical compounds do that to themselves ...

  2. GATTACA by Bananatree3 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I doubt it will get to that, but I really am concerned. If you have not seen the movie Gattaca, check out the trailer.

    With all of its advances, I sure hope a code of conduct is built into societies laws to help contain its tech to good uses. Of course there may be gene doping, etc. But antidiscrimination laws may need to be written at some point.

    1. Re:GATTACA by FooAtWFU · · Score: 4, Insightful
      While I appreciate that there will be all sorts of concerns raised with the rise of biotechnology, do realize that Gattaca's world is a bit... oversimplified. Think about it. There are basically two classes of people: astronauts and janitors.

      The real world is going to be more complicated than that. This is a good thing.

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    2. Re:GATTACA by Beavertank · · Score: 2, Insightful
      If I remember the movie correctly there were anti-discrimination laws, which were technically followed, but when you can extract the genetic information you need from a lost hair or even the epithelial cells contained in a urine sample (for drug testing, of course) you can fairly simply come up with another excuse for not hiring the person and it can never be proved that you did not, in fact, hire them because you knew they'd be dead by 40 of heart disease.


      Which was all pretty clearly spelled out in the movie, I think.

  3. base pairing by mattb112885 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    My guess is they tend to accumulate more with similar DNA molecules because they can base pair with each other [since they have similar base sequences] better than they can with different DNA molecules and therefore interactions between them are more stable...so if they happen to find each other in solution they're more likely to remain together. Why is this surprising again?

  4. Is it just me... by vajaradakini · · Score: 2, Insightful

    or does eliminating certain DNA errors seem like a possibly very bad idea? I mean, let's say that a gene causes Alzheimer's disease later in life, but it gives its carrier immunity to a new virus that appears. Eliminating this gene from the entire species could wind up killing us all off in the end. Just because something appears to be a disadvantage doesn't mean that it's always so.

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  5. Re:Don't anthropomorphize chemical compounds. by Lord+Ender · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This post is either profoundly deep or really dumb.

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  6. Re:Don't anthropomorphize chemical compounds. by B3ryllium · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think you'll find, upon re-reading it, that it is actually profoundly dumb.

  7. Re:Here's another question ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    except that the origin of life is abiogenesis not biological evolution. biological evolution starts the very instant life started to divide and replicate not before that.

    and for that cell to somehow learn to divide for, at the time, no apparent reason and for the DNA to magically divide correctly the first time in order to obtain replication ability
    quit anthropomorphizing biological compounds they *hate* it when you do that... you need to understand that RNA can form under reducing conditions like those that would be found on early Earth, it doesn't need to catalyze its own synthesis but some of them can catalyze their replication once they have formed. experiments with a randomized "soup" of RNA strands produced ribozymes which catalyze their own replication. every replication event introduces "mutations" in the new strands which either confer an advantage [faster/more accurate replication] or lead to a dead end [strand hydrolyzes without replicating its self] that's the first example of a replicating system. it can not yet synthesize its precursors or produce proteins yet but it is an example of a self replicating system. there are other RNA strands which can string amino acids together, together with simple polypeptide chains these can form the first ribosomes and "proteins". membrane phospholipids self assemble into protocell enclosures called micelles which resemble little bubbles of phospholipid. these can protect the RNA and "proteins" from damage and localize any metabolites. each step in the evolution beyond a replicating system does so each time giving the system an advantage. once the system had developed enough, it evolved the ability to synthesize DNA [RNA missing the hydroxyl group at position 2] which took over as the genetic information carrier due to its greater stability. RNA remained a large part of the process that synthesizes proteins even 3.5 billion years later. all of the complexity you see is the result of millions and billions of iterations, each a simple step from the last building up until you get something like the immune system, the eye, flagella, ribosomes, nylonase [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylonase] and everything else that exists in biology.

    I assume what you were suggesting is that intelligent design could better explain life as we know it and frankly there's a reason ID has been dead in any serious scientific resarch for over a hundred years. the reasons being that by definition explains *nothing* in biology. that's the point, to argue that there isn't an explanation for anything in biology by any materialistic [evidence based] explanation therefore God did it... and there's the end of intelligent design, no evidence, no predictions, no explanation, nothing at all. It fails to explain *anything* at all that we already know let alone predict anything which makes it pretty useless other than being a God of the gaps argument.