while butyrate orchestrates the expression of genes responsible for halting the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.
Cancer cells mutate at extremely high rates. That's why tumors come back after chemotherapy shrinks them. This approach, if it works (a bigger if than the article made it out to be), isn't going to be immune from that.
From the article: "The double attack triggers cellular suicide, also called apoptosis, in the cancer cells."
Sure, but many cancer cells have already mutated and lost some number of the many genes that cells use to undergo apoptosis. And those cells are the ones that kill a patient.
I couldn't access the mentioned paper, but I found another paper that I assume that review cited (Lindquist worked on both of them). The summary "CPEB prions might function in the formation of long-term memory" is probably though not certainly taken from:
which talks about CPEB in Aplysia californica, the California sea slug. The results are pretty interesting, but it's unclear whether they apply to higher organisms. I haven't yet found anything where they test this in mice, but that doesn't mean the paper doesn't exist.
found that: "Whereas the Zurich I Prnp null mice, as well as mice from a later PrP knockout line designated Edinburgh Prnp -/- (Manson et al., 1994) were clinically healthy, mice of other knockout lines, for example Nagasaki Prnp-/- (Sakaguchi et al., 1996) came down with ataxia and less of cerebellar Purkinje cells at 6-12 months of age. In the Zurich I and Edinburgh mice only the PrP open reading frame (ORF) was ablated or interrupted, while the lines developing ataxia had deletions extending from within the second Prnp intron to the 3' non-coding region [which runs into another gene called Doppel]."
To summarize: at this moment it doesn't seem that taking out only the coding region of PrP wrecks anything blatantly obvious in mice (though other papers I haven't cited show some other effects, not all of them neuro).
The "simplicity" (which, granted, does not always exist - I haven't read that series you mention) is also the reason a lot of people dislike fantasy/SF. Readers often feel that it's not as complicated as the real world, therefore they cannot relate to the characters who just need to fry the Ultimate Evil or solve some engineering scheme.
Moreover, half the effort of writing those books goes into worldbuilding, and that's less effort that can go into building characters, developing plot, etc. Perhaps that's also why some people complain that SF/fantasy seems to read the same way every time. Or that SF/fantasy reads shallow to them.
Humans aren't rats/mice - nothing against them; my fellow biology majors love them. But if you shove novel genes into a body, kooky things happen - depending on the species and the method. Protocols that work in one animal will not work in another... for example, RNAi is a wondrous genetic manipulation tool in some animals, but triggers massive interferon response in others (the ultimate results is that your genes crap out).
Also, there are years and years of experience in manipulating mouse genes, and they have a much shorter generation time than humans. There are few precedents for manipulating human genes (while they're still in humans, of course), and one shouldn't just breed human babies to test for methods that will work. The methods I can name offhand for manipulating genes in vertebrates just haven't been done in humans, and probably shouldn't be (mosaicism, knockouts, FRT-mediated recombination...). A lot of genetic testing is screwing over the organism to figure out how the method works or doesn't work. Just because you know how to enhance a gene in a mouse does not mean you know how to enhance it in a human. I think it will be extremely difficult to play with this new development.
But don't think of it as "thinking" the individual cells act on instinct and survival
Cells act on their genetic coding. Always. To modify that, you have to override the code either by adding new DNA, taking out DNA, or inserting chemicals that will act on DNA. You can program cells to force them to do things that are counter to their "natural" duties, or to damage themselves. Cells will commit suicide (apoptosis) if they're ordered to die by other cells, or if it's programmed into them from the very beginning.
This sort of communication isn't new. For example, blastula/gastrula (embryonic) cells constantly communicate with each other in order to differentiate into many types of cells. There are all sorts of signaling patterns.
Also, just because there's no central system, doesn't mean there can't be a relatively concentrated area of control. Certain parts of plants (and animals) produce the chemical signals to be distributed, or are sending the signals themselves. Often there is a general organization center, even if there's not a visible "node" from where everything is being controlled.
What concerns me is the neuropsychological reactions this will induce in human brains. For example: if a person is without sight for a very long time - say, from early childhood until adulthood - then when that person regains vision, it can be extremely disconcerting, and he/she may actually be unable, either biologically or mentally (both, most likely) to deal with it.
Just because you can connect the circuitry or add new parts, doesn't mean that the signals will be processed well, or that the machinery for using the signals will be able to handle the new load. How well it works will depend a lot on the individual with the implants. And it may take a whole lot of work and training the affected individual in order to make the implants effective.
While I agree that more care should be taken in the environment and regulations, I would consider this...
Back then people died from a huge number of infectious diseases... mostly. Injuries too, I presume, but those happen today as well, and are less relevant.
Now a lot people die from conditions that arise within the body tissues - heart disease, cancer, etc.
It's something of a tradeoff. You use pesticides to kill off mosquitoes that transmit various diseases, but the pesticides come and get you. Or you do nothing and die of some mosquito-borne disease. You can't get it perfect.
Also, especially with respect to cancer: remember that (most) people (in the more developed countries) live longer now. The longer you live, the more likely it is that you'll gather up mutations, your organs accumulate problems, your body breaks down, you pick up chemicals. If most people died earlier, you wouldn't see so many of those. And remember - in the past, I imagine that misdiagnoses were more common than today.
(All this is being written by a biologist who uses ethidium bromide, UV light, phenol, and acrylamide... with gloves on, of course.)
This isn't completely new. Remember the Impressionists? They were quite into their "japonaise" (I forgot the exact term...). There are quite a few paintings of European women dressed in kimono, and collecting trinkets from Japan was all the rage, not just among the artsy crowd. I think the reasons are still similar.
Now, however, I think a lot of their exports (anime/manga/video esp) have loads of Western influence anyway. Aside from Inu-Yasha and Rurouni Kenshin (the latter of which is set in the Meiji - a major Westernizing period - anyway), I can't think of very many mainstream titles that involve something purely Japanese. But it's blended with their own culture, which is still different enough to be new and interesting for others.
Re:Virus are on Border of living and Dead Matter .
on
Smallpox From The Past
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
First, I think if they can get any DNA out of it, that would be nice. If they mostly (at least supposedly) want to study the evolution of the virus, I'm sure they can garner some information just by comparing the DNA sequence of whatever they pull out, vs. the "current" stock.
Of course it's always best to get the whole genome, but there will almost always be highly conserved (having a very low mutation rate) DNA regions. In organisms with large genomes, you can often compare those against each other to study the amount of divergence.
Second...
"This could lead to a greater evolutionary understanding of the smallpox vaccine we're using in the U.S.,"
Hm... I'm slightly confused. If the latest vaccine used was cowpox-based, are they trying to study the similarities between now-cowpox and then-smallpox? I can see them wanting to understand how a virus has evolved, but I don't see what exactly comparing it to cowpox would do. Perhaps they want to study how the two have diverged. Any thoughts?
Slashdot Mirror
while butyrate orchestrates the expression of genes responsible for halting the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.
Cancer cells mutate at extremely high rates. That's why tumors come back after chemotherapy shrinks them. This approach, if it works (a bigger if than the article made it out to be), isn't going to be immune from that.
From the article: "The double attack triggers cellular suicide, also called apoptosis, in the cancer cells."
Sure, but many cancer cells have already mutated and lost some number of the many genes that cells use to undergo apoptosis. And those cells are the ones that kill a patient.
I couldn't access the mentioned paper, but I found another paper that I assume that review cited (Lindquist worked on both of them). The summary "CPEB prions might function in the formation of long-term memory" is probably though not certainly taken from:
R L&_udi=B6WSN-4C5RJXX-C&_coverDate=12%2F26%2F2003&_ alid=516758008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_c di=7051&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000051401&_version=1 &_urlVersion=0&_userid=1082852&md5=817b088d824d789 e3c68039a6e013561
i ?itool=AbstractPlus-def&PrId=3580&uid=12058449&db= pubmed&url=http://joi.jlc.jst.go.jp/JST.JSTAGE/jts /27.69?from=PubMed
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleU
which talks about CPEB in Aplysia californica, the California sea slug. The results are pretty interesting, but it's unclear whether they apply to higher organisms. I haven't yet found anything where they test this in mice, but that doesn't mean the paper doesn't exist.
Another paper at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/utils/fref.fcg
found that: "Whereas the Zurich I Prnp null mice, as well as mice from a later PrP knockout line designated Edinburgh Prnp -/- (Manson et al., 1994) were clinically healthy, mice of other knockout lines, for example Nagasaki Prnp-/- (Sakaguchi et al., 1996) came down with ataxia and less of cerebellar Purkinje cells at 6-12 months of age. In the Zurich I and Edinburgh mice only the PrP open reading frame (ORF) was ablated or interrupted, while the lines developing ataxia had deletions extending from within the second Prnp intron to the 3' non-coding region [which runs into another gene called Doppel]."
To summarize: at this moment it doesn't seem that taking out only the coding region of PrP wrecks anything blatantly obvious in mice (though other papers I haven't cited show some other effects, not all of them neuro).
Hey, speaking as someone on the Caltech campus, we're waiting for something cool to show up, courtesy of MIT folks.
The "simplicity" (which, granted, does not always exist - I haven't read that series you mention) is also the reason a lot of people dislike fantasy/SF. Readers often feel that it's not as complicated as the real world, therefore they cannot relate to the characters who just need to fry the Ultimate Evil or solve some engineering scheme.
Moreover, half the effort of writing those books goes into worldbuilding, and that's less effort that can go into building characters, developing plot, etc. Perhaps that's also why some people complain that SF/fantasy seems to read the same way every time. Or that SF/fantasy reads shallow to them.
Humans aren't rats/mice - nothing against them; my fellow biology majors love them. But if you shove novel genes into a body, kooky things happen - depending on the species and the method. Protocols that work in one animal will not work in another
Also, there are years and years of experience in manipulating mouse genes, and they have a much shorter generation time than humans. There are few precedents for manipulating human genes (while they're still in humans, of course), and one shouldn't just breed human babies to test for methods that will work. The methods I can name offhand for manipulating genes in vertebrates just haven't been done in humans, and probably shouldn't be (mosaicism, knockouts, FRT-mediated recombination...). A lot of genetic testing is screwing over the organism to figure out how the method works or doesn't work. Just because you know how to enhance a gene in a mouse does not mean you know how to enhance it in a human. I think it will be extremely difficult to play with this new development.
But don't think of it as "thinking" the individual cells act on instinct and survival
Cells act on their genetic coding. Always. To modify that, you have to override the code either by adding new DNA, taking out DNA, or inserting chemicals that will act on DNA. You can program cells to force them to do things that are counter to their "natural" duties, or to damage themselves. Cells will commit suicide (apoptosis) if they're ordered to die by other cells, or if it's programmed into them from the very beginning.
This sort of communication isn't new. For example, blastula/gastrula (embryonic) cells constantly communicate with each other in order to differentiate into many types of cells. There are all sorts of signaling patterns.
Also, just because there's no central system, doesn't mean there can't be a relatively concentrated area of control. Certain parts of plants (and animals) produce the chemical signals to be distributed, or are sending the signals themselves. Often there is a general organization center, even if there's not a visible "node" from where everything is being controlled.
What concerns me is the neuropsychological reactions this will induce in human brains. For example: if a person is without sight for a very long time - say, from early childhood until adulthood - then when that person regains vision, it can be extremely disconcerting, and he/she may actually be unable, either biologically or mentally (both, most likely) to deal with it.
Just because you can connect the circuitry or add new parts, doesn't mean that the signals will be processed well, or that the machinery for using the signals will be able to handle the new load. How well it works will depend a lot on the individual with the implants. And it may take a whole lot of work and training the affected individual in order to make the implants effective.
While I agree that more care should be taken in the environment and regulations, I would consider this ...
... mostly. Injuries too, I presume, but those happen today as well, and are less relevant.
... with gloves on, of course.)
Back then people died from a huge number of infectious diseases
Now a lot people die from conditions that arise within the body tissues - heart disease, cancer, etc.
It's something of a tradeoff. You use pesticides to kill off mosquitoes that transmit various diseases, but the pesticides come and get you. Or you do nothing and die of some mosquito-borne disease. You can't get it perfect.
Also, especially with respect to cancer: remember that (most) people (in the more developed countries) live longer now. The longer you live, the more likely it is that you'll gather up mutations, your organs accumulate problems, your body breaks down, you pick up chemicals. If most people died earlier, you wouldn't see so many of those. And remember - in the past, I imagine that misdiagnoses were more common than today.
(All this is being written by a biologist who uses ethidium bromide, UV light, phenol, and acrylamide
This isn't completely new. Remember the Impressionists? They were quite into their "japonaise" (I forgot the exact term...). There are quite a few paintings of European women dressed in kimono, and collecting trinkets from Japan was all the rage, not just among the artsy crowd. I think the reasons are still similar.
Now, however, I think a lot of their exports (anime/manga/video esp) have loads of Western influence anyway. Aside from Inu-Yasha and Rurouni Kenshin (the latter of which is set in the Meiji - a major Westernizing period - anyway), I can't think of very many mainstream titles that involve something purely Japanese. But it's blended with their own culture, which is still different enough to be new and interesting for others.
First, I think if they can get any DNA out of it, that would be nice. If they mostly (at least supposedly) want to study the evolution of the virus, I'm sure they can garner some information just by comparing the DNA sequence of whatever they pull out, vs. the "current" stock. Of course it's always best to get the whole genome, but there will almost always be highly conserved (having a very low mutation rate) DNA regions. In organisms with large genomes, you can often compare those against each other to study the amount of divergence.
...
... I'm slightly confused. If the latest vaccine used was cowpox-based, are they trying to study the similarities between now-cowpox and then-smallpox? I can see them wanting to understand how a virus has evolved, but I don't see what exactly comparing it to cowpox would do. Perhaps they want to study how the two have diverged. Any thoughts?
Second
"This could lead to a greater evolutionary understanding of the smallpox vaccine we're using in the U.S.,"
Hm
... a male friend of mine, who has a rather elderly grandmother, received a dress.