Slashdot Mirror
No, Space Did Not Permanently Alter 7 Percent of Scott Kelly's DNA (theverge.com)
Several stories this week have proclaimed that the DNA of former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly changed during his year living on the International Space Station. The stories say that 7 percent of his genes did not return back to normal when he came back to Earth. It makes it seem as if the space environment permanently altered his genetic code. The problem? That's not true. From a report: The mistake stems from an inaccurate interpretation of NASA's ongoing Twins Study. When Scott went to space in 2015, his identical twin Mark -- also a former NASA astronaut -- stayed on the ground. The idea was that Mark would serve as a control subject -- a nearly identical genetic copy that NASA could use to figure out how the space environment changed Scott's body. Some fascinating results have come out of the experiment. For one thing, Scott's gut bacteria changed significantly while he was in space. And yes, he did experience genetic changes. The protective caps on the ends of his DNA strands -- known as telomeres -- increased while in space. But space didn't permenantly alter 7 percent of his DNA. [...] NASA also confirmed this in a statement to The Verge: "Scott's DNA did not fundamentally change," a NASA spokesperson said. "What researchers did observe are changes in gene expression, which is how your body reacts to your environment. This likely is within the range for humans under stress, such as mountain climbing or SCUBA diving."
Yep. There is a tradeoff though: longer telomeres means increased susceptibility to cancer. We know how to make telomerase (a natural enzyme that grows telomeres), but there's a reason we've only been doing it to lab rats so far.
As the genome is the collection of genes, the transcriptome is the collection of gene transcripts (expressed genes). As most learn in biology 101, the flow of information (generally) goes DNA -> RNA -> Protein (also called the central dogma of molecular biology). The RNA transcriptome is an exceptionally dynamic entity, changing over time and space normally.
Now if we can get more information on which genes changed the most in transcription while in space, that would be really interesting. Hopefully there is a paper coming up on that, or a data dump that we'll see soon so bioinformaticists can mine it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The nice and constructive feedback would be
Yes, such a process is already discovered and it's called telomerase reverse transcriptase (aka TERT or hTERT in humans), and more information can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The article is requires some intimacy of cell biology, but, as expected, TERT does play a role in the life expectancy of a cell, immortality, cancer and there is some therapeutic potential (with e.g. isoprenoids and curcumin). ... and for the record, I asked Brin & Page if I could install their company on my device, but they said that it came with some hefty system requirements.