In discussions of nature vs. nurture a common assumption is that if it is in the genes then we can’t fix it. Or we can only change it by eugenics or bioengineering babies. I wish to suggest a different approach. The following links provide background:Bioengineered Stem Cells Rejuvenate Muscles In Mice Stem Cell Review Series: […]

‘Smart’ mice teach scientists about learning process, brain disorders Mice genetically engineered to lack a single enzyme in their brains are more adept at learning than their normal cousins, and are quicker to figure out that their environment has changed, a team led by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center has found.…The group is also […]

Engineering Bacteria to Harvest Light …Some bacteria, such as cyanobacteria, use photosynthesis to make sugars, just as plants do. But others have a newly discovered ability to harvest light through a different mechanism: using light-activated proteins known as proteorhodopsins, which are similar to proteins found in our retinas. When the protein is bound to a […]

Genetic studies endow mice with new color vision Although mice, like most mammals, typically view the world with a limited color palette – similar to what some people with red-green color blindness see – scientists have now transformed their vision by introducing a single human gene into a mouse chromosome. The human gene codes for […]

Sleep Disorders Can Impair Children’s IQs As Much As Lead Exposure UVa researchers have been studying sleep disturbances in children with enlarged tonsils and adenoids for the past seven years. In a recent study, they discovered that youngsters who snore nightly scored significantly lower on vocabulary tests than those who snore less often.…According to Dr. […]

CHRM2 Gene Variants Associated with Intelligence “Some of the participants in the study also took the Wechsler AdultIntelligence Scale-Revised, a traditional IQ test. In all, members of 200families, including more than 2,150 individuals, took the Wechsler test, and those results were matched to differences in individuals’ DNA. By comparing individual differences embedded in DNA, the […]

Eurekalert: “What we found was that, in certain cases, edited versions of these microRNAs are being produced that differ from the unedited versions by only a single nucleotide change,” says Kazuko Nishikura, Ph.D., a professor in the Gene Expression and Regulation Program at Wistar and senior author on the study. “These edited microRNAs are not […]

DNA no-no’s Elements can be detected in the solar energy spectrum because elements absorb specific wavelengths creating dark lines in the hot body radiation spectrum. By analogy “forbidden” DNA sequences would form “dark lines” in the expected DNA sequence frequency spectrum. Find interesting stuff by what is missing. Neat. “COULD there be forbidden sequences in […]

Productive Nanosystems First molecular biology and now nanotechnology.

Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell This animation demo shows how biology may be taught in the near future. Caveats: “In some instances, that meant sacrificing literal accuracy for visual effect. What we did in some cases, with the full support of the Harvard team, was subtly change the way things work,” Liebler […]

Human bodies maintain an optimal environment for cellular function. Cold-blooded animals function sluggishly when cold. I’ve wondered how bacteria manage to function at different temperatures. I’d assumed that bacteria are highly adapted to either high or low temperatures and that homeostatic feedback maintains biological systems in a viable range over modest daily temperature changes. But […]

This article relates to the nature of belief. When science explanations are beyond the comprehension of intelligent adults, science becomes unsatisfying dogma. “In my own field of complex systems theory, Stephen Wolfram has emphasized that there are simple computer programs, known as cellular automata, whose dynamics can be so inscrutable that there’s no way to […]

HOW E. COLI BACTERIUM GENERATES SIMPLICITY FROM COMPLEXITY “In a surprise about E. coli that may offer clues about how human cells operate, the PNAS paper reports that only a handful of dominant metabolic states are found in E. coli when it is “grown” in 15,580 different environments in computer simulations.” “When it comes to […]

UCLA scientists use statins to overcome learning disabilities in mice “In a surprise twist that recalls the film classic “Flowers for Algernon,” but adds a happy ending, UCLA scientists used statins, a popular class of cholesterol drugs, to reverse the attention deficits linked to the leading genetic cause of learning disabilities. The Nov. 8 issue […]

From “The Genius” blog. (From a link by Jason Malloy.) “If you have academic access to Nature magazine you should totally check out this awesome movie thing about RNA interference and silencing. Watching stuff like this, I think, gives you good little models to play with in your head when you are trying to think […]

Scientists Crack Code for Motor Neuron Wiring “Dasen’s functional analysis revealed a Hox coding hierarchy. “He found that the Hox proteins involved in pool identity are different from those involved in column identity,” said Jessell. “So from these data, the idea began to emerge that within the chromosomal Hox clusters, some Hox proteins are dedicated […]

Based on Body Size, Bacteria and Elephants Have Similar Metabolism, Ecologists FindUCR-led research team shows that organisms use their biochemical characteristics to overcome limitations arising from their body size “The researchers’ analysis also shows that the rate of energy consumption per unit body mass declines with growing body size in groups of evolutionarily close organisms, […]

(Jason Malloy provided this interesting link in the GNXP Forum) Smarter on Drugs “Just as Ritalin can improve the academic performance of hyperactive children, it can do the same for normal children. It is commonly thought to boost SAT scores by more than 100 points, for both the hyperactive and the normal user. Many healthy […]

NOISE AND DELAYS EXPLAIN WHY SOME GENES OSCILLATE IN ACTIVITY“unscripted biochemical variations, or noise, combined with time delays in certain biochemical reactions may lead to oscillations in gene regulation that couldn’t otherwise be predicted. Such noise is routinely described by cell biologists who record large phenotypic differences between supposedly identical cells in a single flask […]

If prediction of anti-social behavior becomes sufficiently accurate, will society adjust by mandating treatment, monitoring, or incarceration BEFORE a crime has been committed? If a person’s behavior is largely a result of an innate, abnormal brain structure, is he morally responsible for his actions. How would our legal and moral systems adapt? First evidence of […]