Molecular Genetics

Researchers say “countless” lives could be saved with a blood test to quickly and easily determine if breast cancer survivors were suffering another bout of the disease.

Experts in the cutting-edge sciences of nanotechnology and the new field of epigenetics are teaming up to develop a test with the aim of diagnosing cancer while it is still tiny, instead of waiting for a lump to appear.

The same test could be used to determine if cancer had spread from the breast to other parts of the body, and the researchers hope it could ultimately be used to screen all women for breast cancer.

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“See what will happen if you don’t stop biting your fingernails?” — Will Rogers, to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo

So you can just stop freaking about exams in this class. They aren’t so bad. All materialial will be entirely from lecture notes and handouts. However, none of this is a state secret (yet, see: DHS), so there will be many more references on the website. Since there will be more complicated issues as the course progresses, I will try to keep you updated with my “summary notes”, if they seem helpful.

This is a fascinating story of a gene fusion event. Last year, in a paper published in PNAS in collaboration with Richard Cordaux (now at the University of Poitiers, France) and Mark Batzer (LSU), the authors reconstructed the evolutionary history of a primate fusion gene called SETMAR. It serves as a good introduction to the kind of questions that arise from molecular genomics and the study of mobile DNA It will also provide an example of how transposons and other forms of so-called ‘junk DNA’ can, on occasions, make themselves useful in the genome. Finally this is a story that generated quite a bit of discussion on the web including theology, GM foods, and evolution.

1) Have a friend get this tattoo on their back.
2) Sit behind them.
3) Make sure that they don’t wear a shirt that day.

I expect no less dedication to the studmuffin of all molecules from each of you.

Scientists are extracting DNA from the dense coats of woolly mammoths in an effort to learn more about them.

Mammoths are extinct, of course. No one knows if the cause was climate change, hungry Neanderthals or something else — but they left behind remains, often frozen in the tundra. Attempts have been made to sequence their DNA from frozen animals, but that can be complicated by contamination. Researchers report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, however, that mammoth hair seems to be an excellent source of well-preserved DNA.

“It is important to understand the genetic makeup of an organism before it went extinct,” explained lead researcher Stephan C. Schuster of Penn State University. “We want to use this to sequence (the DNA from) museum specimens and therefore help to understand the evolution of species by using museum collections that date back several hundred years,” Schuster said.

Indeed, the technique could be used to measure the DNA from specimens collected by such naturalists as Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Linnaeus.