RNA recreated in the laboratory from inorganic compounds

RNA recreated in the laboratory from inorganic compounds


Researchers at the University of Manchester, lead by John Sutherland, illustrated in an article published in Nature, the process which created ribonucleotides (units of RNA, the molecule basis of all life processes) starting from simple elements, such as those that were presumably the primordial soup, the aqueous solution from which have formed the first organic molecules four billion years ago.

So far, in experiments of this type are started immediately by adding a phosphate sugars and nitrogen bases. In this study, scientists started by the most simple and have played the environmental conditions by heating the solution. BY the solution is obtained a residue of hybrid molecules, which were re-hydrated and heated, allowed to evaporate and irradiated with UV light in order to reproduce the cycle of the ecosystem primordial environment.

At each step the resulting molecules seemed increasingly complex and the addition of phosphate end, which has functioned as a catalyst and regulator of acidity "Surprisingly it was a ribonucleotide format!" as reported by Sutherland and continues "We suspect that there is something out there good, but it took 12 years to discover.

In twenty years of attempts had shown no concrete evidence of the formation of RNA from the reaction of simple molecules and chemicals while known for some time.

Now because of this research is another step to demonstrate the validity of the theory that places the RNA as the starting point of the life on Earth, although still not shown that this method can create molecules of RNA complete.

Sutherland, however, hopes to further develop his research to solve the doubts remained.

THE FUNCTION OF GENES

THE FUNCTION OF GENES

The DNA consists of a long combination of four different nucleotide bases (chemicals). The four chemicals are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine (A, T, C, and G). These chemicals can form many possible combinations. Different combinations of the letter ATCG will give people different characteristics. The DNA patterns are also the codes for manufacturing proteins.

Proteins are the building blocks for everything in your body. Proteins made up bones, teeth, hair, earlobes, muscles and blood. Those proteins help our bodies grow, work properly, and stay healthy. Scientists today estimate that each gene in the body may make as many as 10 different proteins. That's over 300,000 proteins!
Genes also come in pairs like chromosomes. Each living organism has two copies of each of genes, and each parent passes along just one copy to make up the genes an offspring have. Genes that are passed on to offspring determine many of its traits, such as hair color and skin color.

For example, Kelly’s mother has one gene for black hair and one for brown hair, and she passed the brown hair gene on to Kelly. If her father has two genes for brown hair, that could explain her brown hair. Kelly ended up with two genes for brown hair, one from each of her parents.

GENE THERAPY

GENE THERAPY

Gene therapy uses the technology of genetic engineering to cure or treat a disease caused by a gene that has changed in some way. One method they are trying is inserting healthy genes to replace the sick genes. Viruses are often used to carry the healthy genes into the targeted cells because many viruses can insert their own DNA into targeted cells.This science is still in its early stages. However, there has been some success. Gene therapy also studied by scientists to use to treat cancer. One of the methods is to try to enhance a healthy cell's ability to fight cancer. Another is to target the cancer cells themselves to destroy them or prevent their growth.

However, Scientists haven't yet identified every gene in the human body or what each one does. A map of the entire human genome (all of the genetic material on a living thing's chromosomes) was recently completed by the Human Genome Project and related projects but it will take many more years to find out what each gene does and how they interact with one another. Scientists don't know if and how genes play a role for most diseases. Besides, there are major difficulties inserting the normal genes into the proper cells without causing problems for the rest of the body.
Ethically troubling reasons, such as changing genes to make smarter or more athletic children are also concern because no one knows what are the long-term effects of that kind of change would be.
Still, gene therapy holds the hope for many people who have generic disease that they or their children will be able to live better, healthier lives.

Are Genes And Germs Really The Main Cause Of Illness ?

Are Genes And Germs Really The Main Cause Of Illness ?

Genes and germs.

There are two aspects that modern Western Medicine projects as the cause of many diseases; these are genes and germs. In this article we will examine how credible this viewpoint is.


Genes.

Genes are blueprints of how cells should perform. They can contain predisposing elements which may lead to disease. When scientists initially discovered them, they believed whatever genes you inherited at birth would manifest your future health or illness. Nowadays thanks to epigenetics we are starting to see a very different picture.




Epigenetics show how the environment is really controlling our genes. The environment that we are in can switch them on or off. Anything that you do which weakens or aggravates your body can turn on the DNA inside your cells to produce disease.

The big picture here is that for most of us, you have to still lead an unhealthy lifestyle to become sick.

There is a small percentage of people, about two per cent, who Western scientists suggest have certain unavoidable traits in their genetic makeup. But for most of us it comes down to what we all knew before; if we smoke, if we eat the wrong foods, if we don’t learn how to deal with stress and so forth, then we are likely to become ill. If we do live healthy lives, we are far less likely to suffer illness.

Many studies have shown that after a period of time, immigrants to the US who come from a healthy gene pool such as Japan, still become unhealthy and get the same incidence of disease as regular US citizens, regardless of the good genetic makeup they have. The Japanese are credited to have the longest life span in the industrialized world, they suffer from considerably lower levels of cancer, heart disease and other ills than those in the US, so are considered to have better genes than them. However, when they live in the US and adopt their lifestyle they get just as sick as everyone else there.

We can also look at obesity to see that genes are not responsible for it. The obesity epidemic has only really come into existence in the last ten to twenty years. However, we have been on the planet in this form for well over 80,000 years. So our genes certainly haven’t suddenly changed in this generation to make most of us overweight. We are becoming overweight from eating too much of the wrong types of foods. From the many indigestible chemicals and substances that now infiltrate them and our environment. Not from our genes. The current children being born to overweight adults will most likely inherit these altered genes but the vast majority of adults alive today certainly didn’t.

Occasionally you will come across an adult who has weak digestive genes that they were born with. I was one of them. I was born weighing about ten pounds, which was quite a big baby for that time. I grew up fat as a toddler and child. I ate roughly the same foods as my brother, but whereas he remained a normal weight I was much heavier. Up until the age of thirteen, when I started exercising vigorously every day, I was considerably overweight. I was the fattest kid in my class and indeed in most of my school for many, many years. After learning Chinese Medicine I was able to use their techniques to alter and enhance my digestive system and whereas many adults in Ireland (where I live) are now overweight or obese, I maintain a normal healthy weight.

A study by Chris Murgatroyd and others at the Max Planck Institute Of Psychiatry, reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience, found that exposure to early life trauma in mice, changed their DNA. Stress hormones released in them, actually tweaked the DNA codes of a set of genes in these mice, leaving them more susceptible to long term behavioral problems.

Research by scientists at the Patiala University in India, suggested that background exposure to pesticides has altered and damaged the DNA of people in farming communities, which has led to higher rates of cancer amongst them.

A study by Dean Ornish and colleagues at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute and the University Of California, published in the Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences, found that good nutrition, emotional support, moderate exercise and stress management, changed the expression of the genes in over 500 men with prostate cancer, within a three month period. With these good healthy lifestyle changes, it was found that many disease promoting genes were down regulated or turned off and many protective disease preventing genes had been up regulated and turned on in these men.

So what does all this mean ? It means that even if you are born with weak genes, you certainly don’t have to be stuck with them. What you do in your lifestyle after you are born is far more important and has far more of an impact on your health and your life than what you have inherited.


Are Genes And Germs Really The Main Cause Of Illness ? .

Western Medicine often looks for bacteria and viruses to be the sole sources of human illnesses. This way of thinking originated way back in the 1800’s from Louis Pasteur who is recognized as the father of The Germ Theory. The Germ Theory states that when we are exposed to bacteria and viruses they make us sick.

Since then Western Medicine has spent vast amounts of time and money trying to create drugs that will kill these bacteria and viruses. Unfortunately many of these same drugs often weaken the rest of us too, often depleting our energy and resources, and even weakening our bodies’ natural defense, our immune system.


The Chinese and Eastern approach is quite different. They would respect that germs can certainly make you ill, but whether you get sick or not has more to do with the strength and power of certain elements in your body; in particular your energy system.

If you have abundant energy and your immune system is fully powered, then it can easily produce white cells, the bodies’ defenders. If this is the case, it is difficult even when exposed to germs to become sick.

It’s quite clear to see that there is much more to the causes of illness than just germs, otherwise everyone exposed to an illness would develop it and this is clearly not the case. Doctors, nurses and health care workers are constantly around patients with infections all the time, yet most of the time they don’t get anything. They simply don’t become sick from this exposure.

Everybody usually knows someone in their circle who never seems to get colds or flu during winter but must also have been exposed regularly to these bugs. In fact we are constantly surrounded by thousands and thousands of germs on a daily basis. They are everywhere, our bathrooms, kitchens, computers, beds and nearly all other places. Even our cars have registered to have more than 15,000 different types of bugs in them.

So it is more than obvious that germs are only one side of the equation and for that matter the smaller side.

Signatures Of Human Migrations And Marriage Practices Where Chromosomes Agree, Found Bystanford Researchers

Signatures Of Human Migrations And Marriage Practices Where Chromosomes Agree, Found Bystanford Researchers

Examining shared stretches of genome from dozens of world populations, Stanford biologists have found a new way, not only to trace human history, but to help find hidden disease genes.

Stanford researchers have helped find a way to tease out the stretches of genome that are shared among affected individuals due to a recent common ancestor.

Your genome is a window onto your heritage – or, more precisely, several windows. There are the marks left by human evolution, the traces of ancient human migrations out of Africa and, scattered throughout, clues to your immediate ancestors' marriage habits.

This last detail is particularly interesting to medical geneticists. They're looking for the genes underlying rare, recessive diseases that mainly crop up in populations with a high number of marriages among close relatives, known as consanguineous marriages.

But this can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Teasing out the stretches of genome that are shared among affected individuals due to a recent common ancestor, rather than from vestiges of deep population history, would significantly reduce the amount of hay.

A group of researchers, led by Stanford biology research associate Trevor Pemberton and biology Associate Professor Noah Rosenberg, has developed a way to attempt to do just that, laying bare worldwide genome patterns in the process.

The research paper, authored with Stanford biology Professor Marcus Feldman, Devin Absher and Richard Myers of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, and Jun Li of the University of Michigan, appeared Thursday in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Chromosomal geography

Runs of homozygosity, or ROH, are segments of the genome where both chromosomes are identical. Homozygosity is what allows recessive traits, like blue eyes or cystic fibrosis, to appear at all – otherwise, the presence of a single dominant counterpart for a gene would mask the recessive characteristic.

Researchers have considered ROH before, but this comprehensive study of nearly 2,000 individuals from 64 populations across the world took a different approach. Using a new statistical model, the researchers "can disentangle ROH that are due to ancient population history from those that are due to recent consanguineous marriages," said Pemberton.

There are three flavors of ROH, separated by length. These all "follow different patterns," Pemberton explained, "which is what you'd expect when there are different processes underlying each of them."

Short- and middling-length ROH both vary with geography. Not only do they show distinct patterns on different continents, they increase in number as you move farther away from East Africa. It's a clear artifact of ancient waves of human migration.

"It's something novel, to see the signature of the distance from Africa in the ROH by separating them into classes of different size," Rosenberg said.

Africa, accordingly, also has the most diverse array of these short and intermediate ROH, while more recently populated regions such as Oceania and the Americas have the fewest.

These runs hearken back to events that are tens of thousands of years old. And many of the short runs – the more ancient of the two – appear to be fragments of even older ROH.

Gene hunting

The longest ROH, however, follow a different pattern. Younger and rarer, these runs don't obey a simple out-of-Africa progression. Instead, they appear most often in societies that have a history of marriage between relatives – in the Middle East and Central and South Asia, in particular. Adherence to the caste system in certain Indian towns, for instance, can severely limit spouse options.

These newer runs are also the ones that may help researchers narrow in on the chromosomal regions harboring the genes behind rare, recessive conditions –typically a side effect of relatively recent consanguineous marriage.

Researchers should be able to compare the ROH of an individual with a disease to those same chromosomal stretches in unaffected members of the same population group. "If it's frequently homozygous in the general population, you can largely discount the chromosomal region as a candidate," said Pemberton. "If it's rarely homozygous in the general population, it becomes a stronger candidate."

The group has already begun tentative collaborations with medical geneticists and has released a genomic map of the ROH locations.

"The idea is, the resource will be there and available for anyone who wants to come in and answer a question," Rosenberg said.