Human embryos, genetically modified for the first time ever
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?
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| 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 ...
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 ...
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:
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| 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...
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,
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....
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 ...
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
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 ...
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!...