Early Arrival
07/11/12 13:27 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
In Lancet Neurology, a team of researchers reported a high prevelance of mutations in the presenilin 1, or PSEN1, gene linked to Alzheimer's that were apparent in 20 of 44 young adults from Colombia at least 20 years before the onset of symptoms. Apart from differences in brain structure and function between the two groups, the researchers also detected increased cerebrospinal fluid levels of amyloid beta. S. Pelech notes that in many clinical studies with Alzheimer's patients, there is actually usually a DECREASE in the level of the pathogenic 42 kDa beta-amyloid (A-beta42) protein in their CSF relative to healthy controls and patients with Parkinson's disease and progressive supra nuclear palsy. He further describes research at Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation using antibody microarrays that uncovered 36 proteins that displayed abnormal phosphorylation or expression in peripheral blood lymphocytes from Alzheimer's patients as compared to controls that were only mildly cognitively impaired or had other neurological disorders. Read More...
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Mapping the Brain's 'Symphony'
06/11/12 13:25 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Francis Collins at the NIH in his new blog discussed the Human Connectome Project, an NIH-funded effort to map all the neural connections in the human brain. He noted that whereas before only an isolated region of the brain might have been analyzed, recent advances in computer science, math, imaging, and data visualization can now allow researchers to study the human brain as an entire organ. S. Pelech is astonished that "the Human Connectome Project, has set out to map the brain’s neural connections in their ENTIRETY." He questions whether the project proponents truly appreciate the scale of such as proposal and whether the knowledge gained from such an undertaking is really worth the costs. Read More...
Science Philanthropy for the 99 Percent
12/10/12 13:23 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Bitesize Bio highlighted a new website, called Flintwave, that combines social networking and crowdfunding to support specific projects. Scientists can use the site to share videos, posts, and presentations that "science enthusiasts" can follow and fund. It joins a host of other science crowdsourcing sites that have popped up recently, including Open Genius, the SciFund Challenge (hosted by RocketHub), IAMscientist, Microryza, and Petridish. Eva Amsen at the Occam's Typewriter Irregulars questions whether the model can be as fruitful for scientific research projects as it is for other disciplines as much higher levels of fundraising are required and a direct return on investment is much less likely. S. Pelech calculates that the research behind the average NIH-funded scientific paper with a 5.5 impact costs at least US$ 128,000 to fund, and figures that in view of this cost, the number of biomedical research projects that are likely to be funded by crowdsourcing online is probably much too small to be of real significance in the progress of scientific research as a whole. Read More...
The Alien Genome
18/09/12 13:20 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Craig Venter, speaking at the Wired Health Conference in New York, said that his company Synthetic Genomics and the J. Craig Venter Institute plan to develop a machine capable of sequencing and beaming back DNA data from Mars to support a search for extra-terrestrial genomes. S. Pelech argues that this proposition may not be so audacious as there are many biochemical observations that support the concept that life on Earth may have originated from Mars. Read More...
Giant Viruses Are Ancient Living Organisms
14/09/12 13:17 Filed in: Laboratory Equipment
Gustavo Caetano-Anollés at the Univ. of Illinois Crop Sciences and Institute for Genomic Biology and his colleagues completed a study of giant viruses that supports the idea that viruses are ancient living organisms that may have arisen from a fourth branch of life, alongside bacteria, archaea and eukarya. The researchers conducted a census of all the protein folds occurring in more than 1,000 organisms representing bacteria, viruses, the microbes known as archaea and all other living things, and found that the genomes of some giant viruses exceeded the genetic endowments of the simplest bacteria. S. Pelech envisions that giant viruses evolved from invasive bacteria that eventually become mobile parasites that utilized the proteins encoded by their hosts to facilitate their own replication. Consequently, it is not necessary to invoke the existence of a fourth branch of life that predated or co-existed with the three known superkingdoms to explain their ubiquitous presence. Read More...