Everything I've read indicates that every source of adult stem cells are at least partially differentiated. This means that they could be useful for a subset of the tissues within the body. Think of it in terms of a tree (in the computational sense). Embryonic stem cells are the root of the tree. They are pleuripotent, meaning that any cell type can be generated from them. At successively lower levels of the tree, more differentiation has taken place.
So, these adult stem cells from marrow could be useful for generating a subset of tissues. Most likely these are bone and marrow related. As an earlier poster pointed out, this could be VERY beneficial for leukemia. But the differentiation process does not appear to be reversible. At least yet!
FWIW, I have gotten my DWL-650 to work under Linux. Kernel version is 2.2.18, but the important point is to get the latest PCMCIA release. It has support for the DWL-650 under the wvlan_cs driver (maybe the wvlan driver, I'm not on my laptop just now).
I'd have to say, I'm pretty skeptical of the whole thing. After all, using the whole genome, it is still difficult to amass sufficient evidence to convict. The only use for genetic forensics that I can see is to rule out people as suspects. Even that is fraught with technical difficulties. For example, although you have found some traces of DNA at the crime scene, it is almost impossible (IMHO) to determine _when_ it was deposited, unless fortune is smiling on you.
In addition, the fact that the Y chromosome is relatively the same across generations (much more than 50%!!) is no big surprise. The only chance for recombination is with the paternal X at/near the pseudoautosomal region during meioses. In other words, only a portion of the Y can actually be exchanged between generations. A large part of it should _never_ change, except due to mutations which occur at a very low rate.
To me, this seems like it would be great for paternity suits involving male babies. But for little else. After all, you first need informative (polymorphic) markers in the non-pseudoautosomal region to even begin addressing this issue. And the Y is the least studied chromosome out there, in genomic term at least.
I have to totally agree with Jon on this one. I've been in graduate school since 1993 (MS ECE, working on PhD in genetics), and anyone who's going to work "only" 20 hours a week will never graduate, although that's what they pay you.
For myself, I end up working between 35 hours (on my vacation weeks) to 80+ hours a week, averaging around 55-60. But then again, from the perspective of the Genetics Program I'm breaking all of the speed records.
If you calculate out the amount I get paid hourly, it would come to about $5.50-$6.00 per hour. I'd be better off working at McDonalds (not that I'd want to).
Junk DNA is one of the worst misnomers possible, coined back when researchers honestly believed that non-coding DNA had no purpose. I believe what they mean is junk = introns + intergenic space, i.e., all non-coding sequence on chromosome 22. This is a bad misnomer because the junk DNA is required for the proper expression of all of our genes. We have on the order of a trillion cells, so 100,000 proteins (all combinations of 2, representing gene A regulating gene B) can only differentiate, at best, 10 billion. The complexity, and where a lot of the interesting research will be in a few years, is in how these genes are regulated to properly create all of our cells, each of which "knows" what it is, and what it is supposed to do.
I must also say that I am surprised at their estimate of only 42% non-coding. The usual estimates are of ~3% (at most 10%) coding sequence in the genome as a whole, which gives a greater than 90% non-coding estimate.
So... the interesting question, maybe I should send this to Ask Slashdot, is... "How will what we're learning about our genes today affect medicine X years down the road?" where X = 10, 20, 50, 100.
The part that bugs me the most is that they don't even know what the genes do. All they've done is say "Hey! We found some genes that haven't been discovered yet. Let's patent them." I don't know how something can be called a non-trivial extension if it will show up in the public databases within 6 months to a year. Because that's what it comes down to, they got several gene sequences first, and they want to make a fast buck (make that a fast $100,000,000). Meanwhile, everyone else and their brother releases the sequences they discover to the public, usually by submitting to NCBI (in the US).
Of course the other aspect that _really_ drives me nuts is that the US Patent Office will probably grant this. They really are becoming more and more useless every day.
He must have been talking about a short ethical step. The difference between assembling a bacteria such that the proper genes are added to previously "killed" cell and building a bacteria de novo is itself a huge technical challenge that we're not capable of (yet). We're a long way from understanding what the basic role of most genes are, even in such simple organisms as yeast. The problems in that understanding come both from the increasing number of genes and from their interactions. It always blows my mind when I see a pathway drawn where A->B->C->D, because that's ignoring so much of the detail it's laughable. Those genes are interacting with a couple other dozen pathways each! (As with anything in biology, there are no absolutes. Likely there are genes that only work in one pathway, but those are few and far between.)
The other point that this article mentions in an off-handed manner is the use of "parts salvaged from dead bacteria". Before you can "make" the bacteria, you have to start with a dead one. My understanding is that they remove the DNA from the bacteria, and throw in their own. (Which, by the way, is essentially what was done to make Dolly.) You have to have the necessary pieces pre-assembled for any of this to work. The best analogy I've ever heard is to that of boot-strapping a computer. You need the hardware, but you have to have the BIOS (in this case the RNA and proteins already present in the "killed" bacteria) in order to _do_ anything.
And as a last note, I'll add my agreement to one of the previous posters. Craig Ventor is a HUGE publicity hound. He may or may not be in it for the money, but he is definitely in it for the glory. I understand that at one point he was actually lobbying the Nobel people on behalf of himself! Sheesh!
OK, admittedly it's been a few years since my last computer architecture class, but isn't 8 MB drastic overkill? Most performance boost is achieved with the first few KB. The old "knee" in the curve was 8 KB. We're way beyond that now, but what kind of application would get much benefit from an 8 MB cache over one of 1 MB?
Slashdot Mirror
Everything I've read indicates that every source of adult stem cells are at least partially differentiated. This means that they could be useful for a subset of the tissues within the body. Think of it in terms of a tree (in the computational sense). Embryonic stem cells are the root of the tree. They are pleuripotent, meaning that any cell type can be generated from them. At successively lower levels of the tree, more differentiation has taken place.
So, these adult stem cells from marrow could be useful for generating a subset of tissues. Most likely these are bone and marrow related. As an earlier poster pointed out, this could be VERY beneficial for leukemia. But the differentiation process does not appear to be reversible. At least yet!
-Todd
FWIW, I have gotten my DWL-650 to work under Linux. Kernel version is 2.2.18, but the important point is to get the latest PCMCIA release. It has support for the DWL-650 under the wvlan_cs driver (maybe the wvlan driver, I'm not on my laptop just now).
-Todd
I'd have to say, I'm pretty skeptical of the whole thing. After all, using the whole genome, it is still difficult to amass sufficient evidence to convict. The only use for genetic forensics that I can see is to rule out people as suspects. Even that is fraught with technical difficulties. For example, although you have found some traces of DNA at the crime scene, it is almost impossible (IMHO) to determine _when_ it was deposited, unless fortune is smiling on you.
In addition, the fact that the Y chromosome is relatively the same across generations (much more than 50%!!) is no big surprise. The only chance for recombination is with the paternal X at/near the pseudoautosomal region during meioses. In other words, only a portion of the Y can actually be exchanged between generations. A large part of it should _never_ change, except due to mutations which occur at a very low rate.
To me, this seems like it would be great for paternity suits involving male babies. But for little else. After all, you first need informative (polymorphic) markers in the non-pseudoautosomal region to even begin addressing this issue. And the Y is the least studied chromosome out there, in genomic term at least.
-Todd
I have to totally agree with Jon on this one. I've been in graduate school since 1993 (MS ECE, working on PhD in genetics), and anyone who's going to work "only" 20 hours a week will never graduate, although that's what they pay you.
For myself, I end up working between 35 hours (on my vacation weeks) to 80+ hours a week, averaging around 55-60. But then again, from the perspective of the Genetics Program I'm breaking all of the speed records.
If you calculate out the amount I get paid hourly, it would come to about $5.50-$6.00 per hour. I'd be better off working at McDonalds (not that I'd want to).
Junk DNA is one of the worst misnomers possible, coined back when researchers honestly believed that non-coding DNA had no purpose. I believe what they mean is junk = introns + intergenic space, i.e., all non-coding sequence on chromosome 22.
... "How will what we're learning about our genes today affect medicine X years down the road?" where X = 10, 20, 50, 100.
This is a bad misnomer because the junk DNA is required for the proper expression of all of our genes. We have on the order of a trillion cells, so 100,000 proteins (all combinations of 2, representing gene A regulating gene B) can only differentiate, at best, 10 billion. The complexity, and where a lot of the interesting research will be in a few years, is in how these genes are regulated to properly create all of our cells, each of which "knows" what it is, and what it is supposed to do.
I must also say that I am surprised at their estimate of only 42% non-coding. The usual estimates are of ~3% (at most 10%) coding sequence in the genome as a whole, which gives a greater than 90% non-coding estimate.
So... the interesting question, maybe I should send this to Ask Slashdot, is
-Todd
"I'm almost done with classes! Again!" (me)
The part that bugs me the most is that they don't even know what the genes do. All they've done is say "Hey! We found some genes that haven't been discovered yet. Let's patent them." I don't know how something can be called a non-trivial extension if it will show up in the public databases within 6 months to a year. Because that's what it comes down to, they got several gene sequences first, and they want to make a fast buck (make that a fast $100,000,000). Meanwhile, everyone else and their brother releases the sequences they discover to the public, usually by submitting to NCBI (in the US).
Of course the other aspect that _really_ drives me nuts is that the US Patent Office will probably grant this. They really are becoming more and more useless every day.
Oh, and before I forget. Craig Venter sucks!
He must have been talking about a short ethical step. The difference between assembling a bacteria such that the proper genes are added to previously "killed" cell and building a bacteria de novo is itself a huge technical challenge that we're not capable of (yet). We're a long way from understanding what the basic role of most genes are, even in such simple organisms as yeast. The problems in that understanding come both from the increasing number of genes and from their interactions. It always blows my mind when I see a pathway drawn where A->B->C->D, because that's ignoring so much of the detail it's laughable. Those genes are interacting with a couple other dozen pathways each! (As with anything in biology, there are no absolutes. Likely there are genes that only work in one pathway, but those are few and far between.)
The other point that this article mentions in an off-handed manner is the use of "parts salvaged from dead bacteria". Before you can "make" the bacteria, you have to start with a dead one. My understanding is that they remove the DNA from the bacteria, and throw in their own. (Which, by the way, is essentially what was done to make Dolly.) You have to have the necessary pieces pre-assembled for any of this to work. The best analogy I've ever heard is to that of boot-strapping a computer. You need the hardware, but you have to have the BIOS (in this case the RNA and proteins already present in the "killed" bacteria) in order to _do_ anything.
And as a last note, I'll add my agreement to one of the previous posters. Craig Ventor is a HUGE publicity hound. He may or may not be in it for the money, but he is definitely in it for the glory. I understand that at one point he was actually lobbying the Nobel people on behalf of himself! Sheesh!
OK, admittedly it's been a few years since my last computer architecture class, but isn't 8 MB drastic overkill? Most performance boost is achieved with the first few KB. The old "knee" in the curve was 8 KB. We're way beyond that now, but what kind of application would get much benefit from an 8 MB cache over one of 1 MB?
This happened to me too. But i upgraded to a new version of sysklogd at about the same time. I think it was the sysklogd that did it.
-Todd