It's more likely that the putatative Martian bugs would nail the Earth bugs. The environment on Mars is quite different from the environment on Earth, and the bacteria that are there have already probably spent millions to billions of years adapting to that environment. The bacteria from Earth have spent the same ammount of time specializing for survival on Earth.
Bacteria from Earth wouldn't stand a Darwinian chance.
But this is a new error checking mechanism. I don't really see the point in it, though.... It seems to me that the only way you'd get odd parity is by getting 2 purines or 2 pyrimidines to pair with each other. Because pyrimidines are smaller than purines, you'd get a physical defect anyway. A pur/pyr pair gives you a base pairing of a certain distance. Pyr/pyr would be significantly smaller, leaving a "dip" in the strand; Pur/pur leaves a kink because the 2 purines are too big to fit.
Mutations do not have to occur with division. They can occur as a resut of DNA damage that is incorrectly repaired, or not repaired at all (Damage from radiation, chemicals, etc). This is certainly responsible for cancer. Probably responsible for aging, too, but there are people who disagree with that and have good points.
That's my point.....It's the port for windows remote desktop; it's a remote admin program. If you have an XP system, open remote desktop & type in thier IP. You get a W2K server login screen.
Any guesses on the password? Ah, hell...it's MS. I'm sure there's a buffer overflow in there somewhere......
able to regrow lost arms and legs would outweigh the ability to ward off cancer that doesn't strike until they're 25...
Perhaps the reason our ancestors did not develop cancer until after age 25 is because of the inherent mechanisms of prevention. Loss of these mechanisms would allow regeneration to be possible, but would increase the risk of death due to cancer at a younger age; say, 15 or 20. That would mean you'd die about the time your kids are 2 or 3. Of course, they would die shortly after.
(did you understand my convoluded run-on sentence?).
Maybe.... Loss of a leg and the subsequent regeneration would take, at the very least, several weeks, if not many months. This downtime would probably result in the person's death. Loss of a leg means no walking or running. Loss of an arm means you can't hunt or gather (not effectively, at least). That may reduce the selective advantage
Another interesting note is that of the organisms that can regenerate on a large scale, I don't think any of them have a closed circulatory system. A closed circulatory system could introduce problems from a development standpoint (think about how a closed circ system is made in the embryo), and from the "oh-shit-where's-all-my-blood-going" standpoint.
They normally don't grow back. The holes used in the ears of mice are an inventory mechanism. The holes are pretty big; the tool I use makes little semicircle notches about 1cm in diameter; quite a bit bigger than the holes in peirced ears for us.
Contrary (i think) to what you were asking by this question, there is a school of thought that ties the two together. There was a paper published a short while ago which hypothesised that aging is the result of cancer suppression, and the two are almost inseparable. In other words the body's loss of regenarative ability is due to its control of accumulating genetic defects of stem-cells... i had just skimmed the publication and am not sure about its validity, but an interesting idea nonetheless... draw whatever conclusions from this as you like, but as i said i'm not positive of the validity of this report...
Interesting idea, what journal was it in? I'd like to read it.
Using nuclei from a differentiated cell in the cytoplasm of a stem cell kinda defeats the purpose of using stem cells in the first place.
The primary difference between stem cells and differentiated cells is that in stem cells, no DNA has been "packed off". If you take a nucleus from a host adult cell, you have to unpack it, so to speak, to make it useful in the sense that you describe.
It is more likely that you would make stem cells in that fashion, using unfertillized eggs as anucleate acceptors for the harvested, treated nuclei from the host.
Unfortunately, cloning is illegal in the US. As is the use of human stem cells (except CA).
Inflammation is a result of an immune response in an area. "White blood cells" normally refers to immune cells (T's, B's, PMN's). So how does recruiting MORE inflammatory cells to an already inflammed area help anybody?
OK, I swore I wouldn't get into this...but I came across this post as I was madly scrolling down to find something interesting (like comments on the SCIENCE, maybe....)
But then if you start saying that words in the Bible mean different things than what we normally attribute words for...
"Day" does not always mean 24 hrs. "In the day of the dinosaurs" does not mean dinos only exsisted for 24 hours. "In my grandfather's day" does not mean he had an incredibly short lifespan. The word "day", in both English and its equivilent in Hebrew, can mean an exact period of time or an amorphous period of time.
At the risk of being overdramatic, Remember the quote?
"They first came for the communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up."
Martin Niemöller, talking about the Nazis.
You should care now, because you *will* care eventually. It's always better to fix something from the start than later down the road. If MS didn't *have* to release security patches every day (i.e., if they made a secure/functional system to start with, if they cared from the start), there would be a lot less griping about them.
Fix it now, while the problem is still small. It's easier that way.
In population genetics, a strong selection event is a bottleneck event (but not always v/v). A bottleneck is any drastic decrease in genetic diversity, normally represented by a culling or colonization. A strong selection event will reduce genetic variability by removing the "weak" genes. Still a bottleneck. It's a selection event that was so strong, it resulted in a bottleneck. The restriction to one cluster implies the significance of that cluster.
What I want to know is what is in that cluster....
Life expectancy is normally given as x years because it's easier to communicate that way. The real data is a death curve. It's a population curve that follows a cohort from birth. The y is the percentage of pregnancies from a certain timeframe that are still alive. The x is time. If you look at ones from cohorts born in, say, 1650, you will see a large number of "dropoffs" (areas in the curve with high slope), with the last dropoff around 110-115 years of age. What we have done with medical tech is eliminate certain dropoffs. (The last one hasn't moved).
Each major killer is represented by a dropoff. The "new" disease is realized by the populace when the dropoffs before it are reduced enough for it to represent a significant number of deaths. Cancer became a significant dropoff about 60 years ago, with the advent of sulfa drugs. One of the last dropoffs eliminated wasn't a childhood disease, but infections in highly active (i.e., frequently injured) people, those in their 20s and 30s.
Most of the upsurge in cancer is due to increases in longevity. If you leave out the cancers that affect mostly children, the average age at death for a cancer patient is around 60 (with a lot of variation between types). In 1900, the average life expectancy in the US was 47; the number was pretty close to that worldwide. Most people didn't live long enough to get cancer, regardless of what was in the environment.
As for the all girls thing, I've seen that, too. I used to know a lot of Navy pilots, and there were a few guys that flew EA6B's (electronic warfare planes, they jam radar). Between the 10 guys in their squadron that had kids, there were 24 kids. One was a boy. They always used to kid him that his son looked a lot like his next door neighbor.
Brings up an interesting consipracy theory...Ever read The Stand by Stephen King? In it, a bio weapon accidentally gets spilled & it starts to take out the US. To make sure the rest of the world doesn't take advantage of the US while incapacitated, the feds send out agents to every corner of the globe with little test tubes full of the stuff.
The point is sound, though. HIV is an almost perfect virus, it kills, but only evetually. Moreover, during some of the most contagious states, you can't even tell the carrier has it.
It's the immune genes, the effect they are talking about doesn't directly depend on mutation, but existing diversity.
There are 3 gene clusters, MHC-I, -II, and -III, that play an important role in the immune system. There are several genes in each cluster, with several alleles at each gene locus, with a large number (1000s-10000s) of permutations. Each permutation of these clusters is thought to provide an individual with a varying response to varying pathogens. So dudeX with permutation 123 doesn't get wussitis very easily. DudeY with permutation 754 gets wussitis really easily, but doesn't ever get schlongenza.
The large number of permutations at these clusters lends a degree of protection from pandemics. Any disease that ravages a population that has enough diversity in the MHC's will leave a number of individuals, all with the same permutation (or at least something close).
That's the bottleneck event they think they see in the chimps.
Slashdot Mirror
I have always pronounced it with the "p" silent. I don't know why, but hearing people pronounce the "p" irritates the crap out of me.....
"We now can cure every known type of cancer, with minimal side effects to the patient." pause...."In mice."
So, you're saying the desire to make money is equivilent to one's right to live?
The mission to Mars that dashed hopes of life there was Viking. 1976 is only recent if you're a Sequoia redwood.
Bacteria from Earth wouldn't stand a Darwinian chance.
Thanks...I have a subscription to Nature...How'd I miss that?
Mutations do not have to occur with division. They can occur as a resut of DNA damage that is incorrectly repaired, or not repaired at all (Damage from radiation, chemicals, etc). This is certainly responsible for cancer. Probably responsible for aging, too, but there are people who disagree with that and have good points.
That's my point.....It's the port for windows remote desktop; it's a remote admin program. If you have an XP system, open remote desktop & type in thier IP. You get a W2K server login screen.
Any guesses on the password? Ah, hell...it's MS. I'm sure there's a buffer overflow in there somewhere......
3389???
And the service typically associated with that port IS behind that port
OK, I have never admin'd a web site, so I may just be showing my ignorance.... But isn't that a little stupid? Or maybe a LOT stupid?
Or am I just the idiot pointing and gawking at the obvious?
Perhaps the reason our ancestors did not develop cancer until after age 25 is because of the inherent mechanisms of prevention. Loss of these mechanisms would allow regeneration to be possible, but would increase the risk of death due to cancer at a younger age; say, 15 or 20. That would mean you'd die about the time your kids are 2 or 3. Of course, they would die shortly after.
(did you understand my convoluded run-on sentence?).
Maybe.... Loss of a leg and the subsequent regeneration would take, at the very least, several weeks, if not many months. This downtime would probably result in the person's death. Loss of a leg means no walking or running. Loss of an arm means you can't hunt or gather (not effectively, at least). That may reduce the selective advantage
Another interesting note is that of the organisms that can regenerate on a large scale, I don't think any of them have a closed circulatory system. A closed circulatory system could introduce problems from a development standpoint (think about how a closed circ system is made in the embryo), and from the "oh-shit-where's-all-my-blood-going" standpoint.
They normally don't grow back. The holes used in the ears of mice are an inventory mechanism. The holes are pretty big; the tool I use makes little semicircle notches about 1cm in diameter; quite a bit bigger than the holes in peirced ears for us.
Interesting idea, what journal was it in? I'd like to read it.
The primary difference between stem cells and differentiated cells is that in stem cells, no DNA has been "packed off". If you take a nucleus from a host adult cell, you have to unpack it, so to speak, to make it useful in the sense that you describe.
It is more likely that you would make stem cells in that fashion, using unfertillized eggs as anucleate acceptors for the harvested, treated nuclei from the host.
Unfortunately, cloning is illegal in the US. As is the use of human stem cells (except CA).
Inflammation is a result of an immune response in an area. "White blood cells" normally refers to immune cells (T's, B's, PMN's). So how does recruiting MORE inflammatory cells to an already inflammed area help anybody?
But then if you start saying that words in the Bible mean different things than what we normally attribute words for...
"Day" does not always mean 24 hrs. "In the day of the dinosaurs" does not mean dinos only exsisted for 24 hours. "In my grandfather's day" does not mean he had an incredibly short lifespan. The word "day", in both English and its equivilent in Hebrew, can mean an exact period of time or an amorphous period of time.
Good God I wish I had mod points....
"They first came for the communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up."
Martin Niemöller, talking about the Nazis.
You should care now, because you *will* care eventually. It's always better to fix something from the start than later down the road. If MS didn't *have* to release security patches every day (i.e., if they made a secure/functional system to start with, if they cared from the start), there would be a lot less griping about them.
Fix it now, while the problem is still small. It's easier that way.
After, he met his wife while in the service.
How much you wanna bet CCR5 is in the cluster they found?
What this really tells us, though, is that HIV arose in Africa.
What I want to know is what is in that cluster....
Life expectancy is normally given as x years because it's easier to communicate that way. The real data is a death curve. It's a population curve that follows a cohort from birth. The y is the percentage of pregnancies from a certain timeframe that are still alive. The x is time. If you look at ones from cohorts born in, say, 1650, you will see a large number of "dropoffs" (areas in the curve with high slope), with the last dropoff around 110-115 years of age. What we have done with medical tech is eliminate certain dropoffs. (The last one hasn't moved).
Each major killer is represented by a dropoff. The "new" disease is realized by the populace when the dropoffs before it are reduced enough for it to represent a significant number of deaths. Cancer became a significant dropoff about 60 years ago, with the advent of sulfa drugs. One of the last dropoffs eliminated wasn't a childhood disease, but infections in highly active (i.e., frequently injured) people, those in their 20s and 30s.
As for the all girls thing, I've seen that, too. I used to know a lot of Navy pilots, and there were a few guys that flew EA6B's (electronic warfare planes, they jam radar). Between the 10 guys in their squadron that had kids, there were 24 kids. One was a boy. They always used to kid him that his son looked a lot like his next door neighbor.
If it's only CD4, then the people can't lack it. Without CD4, T-cells are killed during development. These people would have no immune system.
Perhaps a slightly altered CD4 would lend some immunity...interesting though though.
The point is sound, though. HIV is an almost perfect virus, it kills, but only evetually. Moreover, during some of the most contagious states, you can't even tell the carrier has it.
There are 3 gene clusters, MHC-I, -II, and -III, that play an important role in the immune system. There are several genes in each cluster, with several alleles at each gene locus, with a large number (1000s-10000s) of permutations. Each permutation of these clusters is thought to provide an individual with a varying response to varying pathogens. So dudeX with permutation 123 doesn't get wussitis very easily. DudeY with permutation 754 gets wussitis really easily, but doesn't ever get schlongenza.
The large number of permutations at these clusters lends a degree of protection from pandemics. Any disease that ravages a population that has enough diversity in the MHC's will leave a number of individuals, all with the same permutation (or at least something close).
That's the bottleneck event they think they see in the chimps.