Human embryos, genetically modified for the first time ever

Isn't this how Khan Noonien Singh came about?

"Superior ability breeds superior ambition."

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Bipolar Disorder: Research proves that... it wasn't a choice

Note:  This blog hasn't been the same lately.  I don't know if I should keep going or not.  What do you think?

The night before...

The recent state of this blog is reflecting my personal life, and it has nothing to do with just turning 40.

40 is the biblical number of completion.  Moses was 40 when he fled Egypt and it was 40 years later when he returned to lead his people to freedom.  It was 40 years after that when the children of Israel arose to take the land promised them.

Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days, fasting and being tempted by Satan.  Only after that did He begin His ministry.  Noah and his family endured rain for 40 days and 40 nights.  No doubt there are other examples.

(I haven't seen the Noah movie.  I don't plan to either.  When I heard there were Ents in it, and Noah tries to kill his granddaughter, I knew it wouldn't get my hard-earned money.)

Many people would turn 40 with dread.  It didn't even register with me.  I guess one of the reasons is that I'm just happy to have survived my 30s: a decade that very nearly killed me.  I'm not kidding.  It certainly did see my life almost destroyed in too many other ways.

For the past few months things have gone very horrible in my personal life and I'm struggling to understand the whys and the hows of it.  I'm no closer to understanding.  God isn't providing any wisdom, but I guess He doesn't have to to begin with, does He?

Last week though, He did provide something that, well... it has come as both a great relief and a saddening understanding.

It was a friend with a far more brilliant mind than most who passed along the news to me.  I'm glad she did.  In the week since I've studied everything I can about these findings and more than I can express in words, I have felt a tremendous burden lifted from my heart and soul.

Last week new research was published by a team at the University of Michigan, having to do with bipolar disorder.  Which has been the biggest bane of my existence, for far longer than I initially realized.  My bipolar intensified severely beginning more than ten years ago and if it hadn't been for counseling and coming across the right combination of medication, I would probably be dead.

The researchers at University of Michigan took skin samples from volunteers who did not have bipolar, and an equal number from those who are afflicted with bipolar.  Those skin cells were induced to become stem cells and with further coaxing, made to develop into neural tissue (something that never ceases to amaze me).  For the first time, the behavior and function of bipolar disorder neural cells could be examined at length.

Neurons of Bipolar Disorder individual
(photo credit: Univesity of Michigan)

The findings were extraordinary.  The neurons of those with bipolar disorder were found to function radically different from those of "normal" people.  For one thing, they communicate with each other drastically different from mainstream neurons: at times uncontrollably.  Signals can often spin out of control.  There are more genes which express themselves into receptors for calcium ions, needed by cells to send signals to each other.  There are far more synapses and dentrites present than those of non-bipolar individuals.  It is now believed that bipolar neurons are already activated at the embryonic stage and continue to affect brain development throughout an individual's life, manifesting especially in the early years and young adult phase.  Additionally, the researchers discovered how lithium "calms" the neural activity down, though its effectiveness can differ from individual to individual.

Another group of researchers a few weeks earlier announced that 3 genes have been found which are associated with bipolar disorder.  Between that and the study of bipolar neurons, it is truly an exciting time for bipolar disorder research.

It's stuff like this that makes me thankful for modern medical research.  And this is only the beginning.  At last, science is starting to have an understanding of bipolar disorder and how it may be treated.  In the future, treatment may be possible for those with bipolar on an individual basis, instead of trying one drug cocktail after another attempting to control it.

But even so... I have a mixed reaction to all of this.

Because now I know that there wasn't a choice. There was never a choice.  None at all.

I was going to have bipolar disorder.  I was going to have bipolar disorder.

For those in the future, there may well be effective treatment for bipolar disorder.  But for me, it is too late.

From before I was ever born, the chromosomes were poisoning the well.  The neurons were working their mischief.  Subtly altering how my brain was developing.  Making seemingly inconsequential shifts in my brain's structure.  Setting up a time bomb set to explode years down the road.

It was going to happen no matter what.  We know without any doubt now.

My grandmother, we are now certain, had bipolar disorder.  Her father before her suffered mental illness and we also now believe it was bipolar.  My grandmother had two children and each of those have two children.  Neither my father or aunt have bipolar.  Nor do my sister or my two cousins have bipolar.  Instead the genetic roulette wheel landed on your friend and humble narrator, Robert Christopher Knight.

I guess if it had to be someone, I should be glad that it was on me.  Bipolar disorder is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.  If somebody had to lose the dice roll, I would volunteer myself rather than see anyone else suffer.

I have bipolar disorder and from the earliest possible point, it was something I was doomed to be hit with.  There is a sense of relief and vindication (as one commenter on this blog put it) in knowing at last that this wasn't a "character flaw".  One of the things that being bipolar has taught me is that the mind and soul are two VERY separate things.  There is the flesh, there is the mind, and there is the soul.

My heart and soul are untouchable by bipolar.  But this fallen world can - and has - done plenty of damage to my body and mind.

It was a disability that was poised to strike without my having a say in the matter.  Another thing that bipolar disorder has taught me is to have a much deeper humility and appreciation for those things that I do have, because there are many people who are worse off than I will probably ever be.  You can't understand a disability until you yourself have one... and I pray that nobody else would have to suffer a disability.  Especially this one.

I am relieved.  I am thankful for the new research.  And at the same time I have a sense of grief.

Bipolar disorder, I see now, has always been there and making me "different" from others.  Bipolar disorder has destroyed opportunities which I regret were missed.  It has cost me friendships.  It cost me my marriage.  And lately it has come very close to completely derailing my freelance writing career.

And apart from a regimen of medication (which sometimes is not completely effective) and regular counseling, I never stood a chance to not lose all of those things.  Things that were very precious and dear to me.  And still are.

But again, if a person, especially a person in my family, had to be hit with bipolar and suffer the consequences of everything associated with it, I would rather it have been me and not them.

And yet, I can't bring myself to rail against God for any of that.

Have I cried out to Him before because of this?  Absolutely.  But this is something that I just can't find a reason to charge Him with anything.

Because if He knows that I have this and was always going to have bipolar disorder, then I have to trust that He understands completely, and even better than I possibly could.

I have to trust that God didn't allow this to happen without some purpose.  What that purpose is, I have no idea.  I may never have any understanding of it.

I trust that God knows all of this, and that in His own time He brings healing.  He brings restoration.  He brings wisdom.

And He brings hope.

I have a hope now that those yet to come will never have to go through what I have because of bipolar disorder.  If I can play any part in that, however small, then I will consider that to be the greatest honor that one can have in this life.  I may have had no choice in being hit with bipolar disorder, but I can and do choose to do what I can to help others who have this devastating mental illness.

Actually, come to think of it... that isn't really a choice at all, either.

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Crazy new data storage: DNA and quartz crystals (for 300 million years)

Because I don't want to go to bed with two consecutive posts pertaining to Star Wars staring me in the face (no matter how good, or how nutty)...

A strand of DNA containing the digital data of all of Shakespeare's sonnets, a half-minute sound clip of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, a photo and a science paper was announced a few days ago in an article from the journal Nature. So you could pretty much take everything information-wise accumulated during the course of your entire life - photos, videos, music, writings, financial information, medical files, an entire Blu-ray collection of movies and TV shows, computer games and porno - and put it inside a test tube. The DNA used in the research took two weeks to extract data from, but the read times are supposed to get shorter as the tech develops.

And earlier this month a group of researchers in Japan announced they've turned quartz crystal into a storage medium that will last 300 million years. Currently it has the capacity of a standard CD, but it's thought that it can be expanded with more layers of crystal. It probably won't have the size-to-data ration of the DNA gimmick but in time it'll still hold a lot of your videos, finances, movies, porno TV shows and other stuff.

If the technology ever produces practical quantum computing and nano-scale laser diodes, there could be some wildly cool applications with this. Never mind that iPhone silliness: gimme a real Mother Box!

(Can't recall if I've ever used a Fourth World/New Gods reference on this blog before, but I have now :-)

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First photo of DNA in all its twisted glory!

Nearly sixty years ago, James Watson and Francis Crick figured out what DNA - that mega-long molecule containing the blueprints of organic life - looked like. All they had at the time was deduction through observation and x-ray crystallography (don't worry, it took me awhile to learn how that worked, too!) to figure out the double-helix arrangement. But they had no way of actually seeing the darned thing.

Now for the first time, scientists have been able to visually image DNA using a novel technique with electron microscopy and a teeny tiny "bed of nails". Hit the above link for more about how Enzo di Fabrizio and his fellow boffins at Italian Institute of Technology pulled it off.

As for the first real picture of DNA, behold:

Photo credit: Enzo di Fabrizio/Italian Institute of Technology

WOW! It's the double-helix determined by Watson and Crick... but look at how tightly packed that thing is!! Doesn't look as spacious as those colorful twisty ladders we all saw in our high school biology labs, does it?

Amazing, that that much information about the design of you, me, every person on the planet and all other known forms of life on Earth, takes up so tiny an amount of space within the nucleus of a cell. I heard years ago that if you took all the DNA of your body and strung the individual molecules end-on-end, that it would reach from the Earth to the Sun.

Looking at that picture, I'm finally believing it.

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Genes found with links to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

For those wondering about this blog's Being Bipolar series, I haven't stopped it at all. Just been trying to figure out what to write about next: something that I've changed my mind about something around 18 or 19 times now. 'Course, having bipolar disorder can sometimes be the worst impediment to writing about it, ironically. Hoping to write the next installment sometime this week or next.

In the meantime though, new research has been published about a possible cause of bipolar disorder, as well as schizophrenia...

Broad sweeps of the human genome have exposed genetic mutations that boost the risk of the devastating yet baffling diseases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to two studies published Sunday.

The independent studies, each conducted by a consortium of about 200 scientists, also found significant genetic overlap between the debilitating mental disorders.

Schizophrenia patients typically hear voices that are not real, tend toward paranoia and suffer from disorganized speech and thinking. The condition is thought to affect about one percent of adults worldwide.

Previously known as manic depression, bipolar disorder is characterised by hard-to-control mood swings that veer back-and-forth between depression and euphoria, and afflicts a similar percentage of the population.

The biological profile of both conditions remain almost entirely unknown. Doctors seek to hold them in check with powerful drugs.

Scientists have long observed that each syndromes tends to run in families, suggesting a powerful inherited component.

(snip)

For the study on bipolar disorder, also appearing in Nature Genetics, a team led by Pamela Sklar of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York first looked at the genomes of 7,481 patients and 9,250 healthy individuals.

A second sweep focusing on 34 DNA suspects involved some 2,500 other patients and 42,500 controls.

The study confirmed a significant link with a gene, CACNA1C, that also has been previously associated with schizophrenia.

It also uncovered a new gene variant at another location, known as ODZ4, that suggests neurochemical channels in the brain activated by calcium play a role in boosting the risk of developing the disease.

For both studies, scientists hope that learning more about pathways in the brain affected by the diseases can lead to a better understanding of the causes and drugs to ease or block the symptoms.

I would seriously like to have somebody put the genes of my own family under the microscope. As I've said before on this blog, the symptoms of bipolar disorder run in my family, even though so far as I know I'm the first to be medically diagnosed with the condition. I've got it and my grandmother and her father probably had it (though my own Dad has never exhibited the symptoms, thankfully).

The optimistic part of me really wants this to lead to more effective medication for bipolar and schizophrenia. It might take decades. In fact, it most likely will. But I'd love to within my lifetime be able to see that nobody would ever again have to endure the hell that this particular brand of mental illness has put me and my loved one through.

Reading about this research, I can't but feel excited :-)

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Aurochs: It's what's for dinner! (Maybe...)

The aurochs - a species of wild cattle a little less than the size of an elephant and the ancestor of modern breeding cattle - has been extinct since 1624.

And now a group of Italian scientists are planning to "breed back" the aurochs.

I wonder how well-done aurochs tastes with A1 Steak Sauce.

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DNA not the same throughout body, study finds

For all these years it's been assumed that every cell of an organism shared the same DNA. The differentiation between cells only arising from the synthesis and properties of the associated proteins that were expressed by the DNA... but otherwise, a cell is the same as every other cell in the body.

Funny how quickly old assumptions can easily get tossed aside, ain't it?

Now comes word that DNA is NOT the same throughout all cells of an organism... or throughout a human organism anyway. That's the finding of a study in Montreal regarding the genetic causes of abdominal aortic aneurysms.

It's both a fascinating read and a rather scary one, when you begin to consider all the medicine that has been based on the notion that our genes are uniform throughout our cells. And then, you have to wonder what the implications are regarding something like DNA evidence in a court case. Technically, I don't think it will matter much... but just wait and see how long it takes before a legal challenge comes up in a paternity suit or murder trial on grounds that all genetic testing is now suspect.

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Down syndrome and how it fights cancer

This is why I love the Internet so much: you get to learn stuff you otherwise might never have known. And this is why I love blogging so much: it gives me the opportunity to share stuff like this with others who also might never have known it :-)

Apparently it's been recognized for awhile among those in the field that people with Down syndrome (a genetic affliction marked by an extra chromosome) very rarely get cancer. According to an article at Science News about a newly published study in the journal Nature, it may be because of extra production of a cancer-fighting protein in people with Down...

People born with Down syndrome have an extra copy of chromosome 21, instead of the usual two copies — one from each parent. The third chromosome causes genetic aberrations that result in the mental retardation and telltale physical traits that define the condition.

But chromosome 21 carries 231 genes, including some that may well suppress cancer. In the new study, researchers provide evidence that the protein encoded by the RCAN1 gene reins in the rampant blood vessel growth that a tumor needs to thrive. Scientists theorized that having an extra copy of the gene would result in more protein being made and add to an anticancer effect.

Scientists have long suspected that such genetic benefits might accrue from having an extra chromosome 21. A recent study found that people with Down syndrome are only about one-tenth as likely to get a solid-tumor cancer as are people without the syndrome.

There's plenty more of this intriguing study at the link above.

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Man apparently rid of HIV following radical stem cell transplant

Extremely exciting medical news coming out today: a 42-year old man who had previously been infected with HIV is now, apparently, completely free of the virus and is displaying no symptoms of further infection. This following a stem cell transplant from a person carrying a unique mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS.

The patient has now been without detectable HIV for two years now, and is not currently on any antiretroviral medication. However, researchers warn that the therapy is "too extreme and too dangerous to be used as a routine treatment", and that a third of those who undergo it die from complications.

I'd still chalk it up as a victory for this kind of medical research, though. Who knows what kind of refinement might eventually come from such a development. And gene therapy is still a very new field: during the next ten or twenty years, we're likely to see even more powerful advances.

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State of Washington considers swabbing DNA from EVERYONE who gets arrested

It's like Barney Fife gone zealous with a genetics lab: legislators in the state of Washington are mulling the idea of getting DNA samples from everyone who is stopped by law enforcement for anything at all, even something so minor as a traffic infraction. And no, they don't wanna wait until a conviction in court either: everybody arrested would have to yield over their personal deoxyribonucleic acid. Although supposedly the DNA would be destroyed if there is no conviction (yeah right).

Y'all in Washington, you need to fight this as hard as you can. This is a huge intrusion of personal rights and screw what the "bigger government" types are saying about how this is "needed" to be "safe". It's not a question of "will this be abused?" because history has proven that if a thing such as this is tolerated, it will be abused!

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Garage-based amateurs now playing with genetic engineering

It's not likely that anyone will clone-up a velociraptor, but the Associated Press reports about the growing trend of "do it yourself genetic engineering" that a lot of people are experimenting with in the spare rooms and garages of their homes. Using equipment found on Craigslist and eBay, these burgeoning biotechnologists are involved with everything from working on melamine-sensitive bacteria, to implementing squid genes for phosphorescence to create glow-in-the-dark tattoos. Some say that these folks could eventually hit on a cure for cancer. Others are afraid that they'll cook up something like "Captain Trips" a'la The Stand.

Hey, this blog has already reported on folks experimenting with their own nuclear reactors. Gene splicing was the obvious next step, yah? :-)

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Tomb of Copernicus found after 200 year search

It's turning out to be quite a week for the science of genetics. First the DNA of the woolly mammoth has been mostly reconstructed.

And now comes word that the final resting place of Nicolas Copernicus has been positively identified.

Copernicus was the sixteenth-century astronomer who turned human understanding of the heavens upside-down (and would later on invite the wrath of religious officials especially after it was championed by Galileo Galilei) with his treatise "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies". Copernicus contended that in spite of the unquestioned assumptions of Ptolemy fourteen hundred years earlier, the Earth was not at the center of the universe! That in fact the Earth and all the other planets revolved around the sun, which was just another star among countless others. The heliocentric theory was of course correct and for this, Copernicus is widely regarded as the father of modern astronomy. The one snag in Copernicus's theory was that he believed that the planets went around the sun in perfect circles (the idea of elliptical orbits was still waiting for Kepler, Newton and Halley to discover).

Anyhoo, Copernicus passed away in 1543 and for two centuries there has been a search for his burial place. In 2005 remains were discovered at Frombork Cathedral in north Poland. Working from two strands of hair found in a book owned by Copernicus and a tooth from the grave, geneticists and archaeologists today announced that there was a perfect match.

Incidentally, church officials are already happily mentioning doing something that "...will be able to pay homage to Copernicus with a tomb worthy of this illustrious historic personality," according to Jacek Jezierski, the Bishop of Frombork.

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Scientists reconstitute most of woolly mammoth's DNA

Working from balls of hair recovered from Siberia, scientists have reconstructed two-thirds of the woolly mammoth's DNA sequence. The mammoth, a close relative of the modern-day elephant, has been extinct for ten thousand years (although there is some evidence that they lived as late as 1,700 B.C. and possibly survived into even more recent times).

There has been discussion for several years about possibly "resurrecting" the mammoth, by using its DNA and fertilizing the egg cells of modern elephants. There is also said to be potential to bring back the quagga and the Bali tiger, and a few have even suggested using genetic technology to restore the passenger pigeon, which was once the most numerous bird in North America. Admittedly there's a long way to go still, but it wouldn't surprise me if within a decade we might yet hear news of a baby mammoth being born.

Just as long as these scientists don't start messin' around with velociraptor DNA...

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WARNING: This post about the government contains the mother of all swear words... and it's about time

The federal government will soon be taking DNA samples from EVERYONE that it arrests.

It took almost five years, but the dam has finally burst on this blog.

If you have any small children reading this blog, now would be a good time to escort them away from the monitor. Because I'm about to use a word that until now, I've never, ever used of my own volition here. Why am I going to do this? Because I know of no other way to express the anger that I'm feeling right now at how out of control this government has become, and I really don't give a damn any more about "polite society". If I use this word, God won't hold it against me. But He might have something to say if I stand before Him someday, unable to tell Him that I did whatever I could in the time that was given me.

So here it goes...

Lisa and I have been watching HBO's John Adams miniseries. We watched the episode where the Founders negotiated and signed the Declaration of Independence. Afterward I went back and read the Declaration, as I have many times before, and not for the first time found myself wondering: "Why don't people ever think and speak this way anymore?"

I've hoped and prayed, for a long time, that this country might return to the vision of the Founding Fathers. But I don't see it happening. Instead I see a government that is so wildly removed from anything the Founders intended, seizing more power unto itself and running roughshod over the people it's supposed to be serving. Is supposed to be an extension of, even. But it's not. This is now government for sake of government, and I know of nothing else throughout history that has had more potential for great evil.

And now this government has brazenly declared that it will violate our privacy to the utmost, by seizing without due process not only our rights but the tangible material endowed to us by our Creator.

Not surprisingly, the Bush Administration and the Department of Homeland Security are eager to do this.

Perhaps less surprisingly, there are too few good men and women left who seem able to stand and resist.

So let me be succinct: America, is fucked.

This is no longer the country that John Adams, George Washington and too many other good people fought and sacrificed for and even died for.

The idea of that America, warts and all, I'm still going to be loyal to until the day I leave this world. But I will not be loyal to this current government, which is founded in no virtue apart from its willingness to bear might against its own people.

In a sane world, any agent of the federal government that tries to swab the mouth of a citizen under such frivolous circumstances would be shot dead before they can reach for the Q-tip.

You want to know what I really think about what this country is turning into, and about damned too many of the politicians that are destroying her?

Here's what I think:

God bless the Constitution of the United States of America and the people for whom it was intended to serve, and GOD DAMN the enemies of the Constitution either foreign or DOMESTIC!

And anyone who believes this government is right to violate those principles, can kiss my ass and go to Hell.

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Britain to allow human-animal hybrids

Ever heard of the Book of Enoch? It's not widely accepted as Christian "canon" (although some Coptic Christians consider it to be inspired scripture) but it was mentioned in the Book of Jude (that's the next-to-last one in the Bible just before Revelation). I've read it a couple of times since first hearing about it several years ago. And it's quite an interesting read. Among other things according to the Book of Enoch, the Flood was sent by God to cleanse the Earth because fallen angels - who had originally been charged with taking care of creation - started having sex with human females. The result was a monstrous race of human/angel half-breeds and it got so bad, that the only people left who it could only be said were pure genetically human were Noah and his family: whole new meaning to Noah being "perfect in his generation". So God protected the one pure human remnant left and wiped out the genetic abominations that were befouling the Earth. So according to the Book of Enoch, that is what the great sin was that demanded the Flood.

Even if you don't hold to that story, I think it can be universally accepted that there are some lines that aren't meant to be crossed.

Except now comes word that Great Britain is now going to allow human-animal cross-breeding.

I don't know where to even begin to talk about how this is an insanely bad idea.

Moral issues aside, this just opens up the Pandora's Box of Lord only knows what kind of diseases that could come to afflict man. You know, things that are supposed to be restricted to species not our own. There is serious speculation that some of the prion-form contagions were unintended consequences of genetic experimentation. Is playing with this kind of "science" really worth that risk?

I have to wonder if there is going to be anything left on this Earth that's purely natural in another hundred years, what with how mega-corporations are playing with biology. They're already well on the way to making sure that farmers can only plant the corn and other crops that they have engineered.

Bad stuff coming from this, no doubt about it. It's just a question of who is going to be most responsible for sending the fire next time: God, or man's own folly.

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