Slanted Science

Archive for the ‘DNA’ Category

A large collaborative effort has sequenced the entire genomes of two of the most common cancer types: skin (’melanoma‘) and lung (’small-cell lung cancer)’. The scientists involved report tens of thousands of mutations in the tumors’ genomes, and speculate that their work may expedite the development of specific drugs to treat these diseases.

Hoorah!

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“I’ve got thyroid problems.”
“I’m just big boned.”
“I eat way more calories than I need, even if I were to run two marathons every single day of my life. That is why rolls of my abdominal fat are spilling over the armrest onto your seat.”

People use all sorts of excuses to justify their weight problems (though admittedly, the third example above – honesty – is a rare one). Well, scientists are now reporting that they have found a gene whose loss is associated with compulsive eating an obesity. Expect to hear it used some time very soon. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the secret to living to be 100? Vegetarianism? Lots of exercise? Making sure you never watch a Sandra Bullock movie, thus ensuring your blood pressure isn’t raised by contemplating the unfairness of a world in which so little talent can take a person so far?

Well sure, all of those things can help. But a new study shows that it may be our genes, more than our actions, which give us the chance of seeing out a century. Read the rest of this entry »

Great news for skinny guys! Scientists have used gene therapy to successfully increase the size and strength of lab monkeys’ muscles.

But calm down, stickboys: the intended use of this research is in treating degenerative muscular diseases. Better keep paying that gym subscription for a while longer yet. Read the rest of this entry »

ALD, or Adrenoleukodystrophy, is an inherited neurodegenerative disease. Patients’ bodies are unable to break down certain types of fat molecules, and these accumulate to toxic levels in cells of the brain and spinal cord. Those cells gradually die. Thus far, there is no cure.

But scientists have just released details of an apparently successful trial of a new approach in the treatment of ALD: gene therapy. Read the rest of this entry »

What turns a normal cell into a cancer-causing cell? Well, the cell must lose control over its replication machinery, and this almost always happens in one or both of two ways: the genes which tell a cell to divide can develop mutations and become permanently switched on; or the genes which stop a cell from dividing develop mutations and become permanently switched off.
Genes in the first group – those which drive a cell to divide inappropriately – are called oncogenes, and scientists are reporting that they have discovered an oncogene which causes a nasty form of head/neck glandular cancer.

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There is no greater prize in science. Keep your Albert Einstein World Award of Science. Pfft to your National Medal of Science. And spfff to your Arkansas State Fair Best Cow (Milkers Class). The one they’re all out there to win is The Nobel Prize. And this year’s winners in the field of medicine have just been announced: Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak. Congrats to them all, and let’s have a look at what got them there. Read the rest of this entry »

I like it when my brain explodes.

Not literally, I am neither a suicidalist nor a dandelion. No, I mean that I like it – I love it – when scientists do something so fantastically beyond what I had thought of as possible that I can feel the big grey boy up there rattling the bars of his bony cage. Something like making gear wheels out of DNA.

I judge this sort of thing by applying a scientific method I have developed called The Grandad Test. Simply imagine (or actually do it, if yours is still with us) dropping the news into a normal conversation with the old fella.

Hydrogen-powered cars? Pfft, he’s seen the world move from horse to Hummer, hydrogen’s nothing. Incredible advances in increasing male fertility? Tsst, they called that stopping at five pints in his day. Try this one then, big guy: someone’s just made a cogwheel out of DNA. Yeah? That one got you? Choking on your weak tea, eh? What’s that? You’ve no idea what DNA is, and would I mind getting you a couple of HobNobs? Dammit.

The folks responsible for this phenomenal creation are Hendrik Dietz, Shawn Douglas and William Shih, working out of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard University. Through directing the base pair sequence during assembly, they have shown that it is possible to introduce specific angles of twisting and bending into a chain of engineered DNA. The work is published in Science.

The excitement created in the field of nanomachinery comes from the extraordinarily tight twists these guys introduce into their chains: they have managed to get the radius of molecular curvature down to 6 nanometres. This has allowed them to produce the geared wheel shown above.

We can’t yet know where this type of research will lead us, but the ability to produce cogwheels smaller than Simon Cowell’s modesty guarantees one thing: within a year, a Japanese company will be producing wristwatches for mice.