BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Author: marsupialniche

Crispr-Cas9: Coming to a Theater Near You

By

On April 13, 2016

In Student Post

This sequel to GATTACA is to be released shortly, and this time, they’re transcending the movie screen and bringing the experience to reality!

Crispr-Cas9 is a fairly recent DNA-editing technique that has been developed, and allows for extremely easy and precise gene editing, a development said to be at least on par with PCR for bio engineering. In many ways, this is great. Now biologists won’t have to spend the time nor undergo the difficulty of creating variant DNA through old methods, meaning that all these cool genetic breakthroughs should be happening at an unprecedented pace! The problem is, it may be going too fast for humans to wrap their head around.

Similar to the ethical questions raised by the film GATTACA, countries and scientists are debating what regulations should be put on this new and powerful tool. With Crispr-Cas9, the possibility to genetically modify humans becomes a very real option to consider. Scientists could remove DNA sequences which lead to defects and diseases such as albinism and Huntington’s Disease. Or anything else, really.

(The miracle protein)

The main point of Crispr-Cas9 is not necessarily the ability it gives to scientists to easily modify DNA, but the increased rate at which we can understand what specific sequences of DNA do by altering them. Not only are we more able to modify DNA, we are now able to figure it out at breakneck speed.

 

Where it gets complex is, as always, how humans deal with it. Some people, such as Mark Leach, whose daughter has down-syndrome, believes that children with disabilities not only are still able to live rich lives, but also teach others to be more compassionate. Although debating if I would choose to let my child have down-syndrome or not for that reason seems like an absurd consideration, and most likely a coping mechanism, the point still stands that some people are uneasy with fixing genetic-related problems because “they wouldn’t be the same person.” (That’s the point!)

People are really afraid of change, aren’t they?

 

However, for those on the more lethal/completely disabling part of the genetic spectrum, the answer is more than clear.  Charles Sabine, the brother of the renown British lawyer John Sabine, who both have Huntington’s Disease at varying stages, says “If there was a room somewhere where someone said, ‘Look, you can go in there and have your DNA changed,’ I would be there breaking the door down.” Similarly, Matt Wilsey, a parent of a child with a terminal genetic illness, is awestruck at the ridiculousness of the situation: “As a parent with an incredibly sick child, what are we supposed to do — sit by on the sidelines while my child dies?” The oddity of the situation is, we have the capability to start figuring out how to solve these genetic issues with a very effective and efficient technique, it’s just that humans are riding the brakes, trying to slow down the almost inexorable progress of the freight train that is Crispr-Cas9. The irony is that many are afraid with tampering with the “sanctity” of human embryos. I would agree, except that humans defile it all the time. Birth defects, genetic diseases, miscarriages, etc. Of course, this is not intentional, but the parents have the largest hand in these outcomes, as they provide all the material,genetic and otherwise, to create the embryo, fetus, and eventually child. We are already making horrible mistakes with human embryo’s that cripple or kill the resulting child through the natural birth process. Personally, I would go off of this to say we should at least learn from this, so we could eventually progress far enough to prevent these things from ever happening, but I only ask all of the readers to keep this in mind: Nature (very badly) screws up too.

File:Crispr.png

(The process Cas9 facilitates)

I’m not saying that we should be careless with this new and potentially dangerous or aberrant-spawning technology, but I think it’s time that humans come to terms with the fact that their world, and their lives, are entering a new era of existence. For millennia, structured humans have lived in a world where the outside world is the only thing we can manipulate, but now the very structure and formation of ourselves as well. I understand that such a change from a thousands-year-running viewpoint can be hard to make. We’ve never had to think about these things before as a species, because it wasn’t understood and out of our reach. It is daunting. It is terrifying. Only because it is unknown. But how are we to learn, to benefit, from this great potential, if we are too afraid to explore it? I understand that like any form of potential, it can go either way, but this is a great new time of possibilities that simply won’t go away, but reemerge constantly.

I think it’s time we gathered the courage to face it.

All Organs are Sexual!

By

On February 29, 2016

In Student Post

Well, in the sense that female non-sexual organs and male non-sexual organs aren’t the same, as they’ve been commonly considered to be. According to a team at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (CSC), at Imperial College London, the stem cells that make up your organs do have a sexual identity attached to them, and thus behave differently than their sexual counterparts. In this study, a female fruit fly’s gut was observed to have enlarged after mating, likely due to the increased nutritional intake to rear healthy offspring. The reason this isn’t done all the time is that this makes it more likely for tumors to develop in the gut, so this is only done when the sake of their progeny is at stake.

(This fruit fly may be female, but her intestines were made to identify as male. There’s potentially some conflicted gender identity.)

What’s interesting is that when the female fruit fly was given male gut stem cells, the gut no longer enlarged after mating, and retained the smaller gut size of males. It turns out that the sex organs are not the only organs that have a sexual identity. At least, in fruit flies. No tests have been done on human organs yet, although it is believed that the principle will hold true, albeit in potentially different ways.

(Artist rendition of stem cells)

Medically this is significant since it may lead to explanations or understandings of how and why male and female patients may need different medical treatments since their organs function somewhat differently. Furthermore, it continues to advance our understanding of how males and females are different based on the nuances of the physical workings of their body. Overall, it’s very confusing when you apply this to gender theory.

But humans have had a poor understanding of their own bodies and inner workings for thousands of years. Is it possible that this is on the path to a deeper understanding of our physiology as a gendered species, or that these differences are conditional and minute, as I so far believe?

 

 

Junk Food Encourages Disease

By

On January 9, 2016

In Student Post

According to a recent discovery posted in Science News, a typical American diet, consisting of poorly nutritional foods, leaves one prone to getting sick by weakening their immune system. Interestingly enough, this issue is rooted in cells that are not your own. In your gut microbiome, there are countless varieties and numbers of bacteria, all working away at the food that passes through your gut. Now, these bacteria are actually quite manipulative, and besides from feeding off of the food that you eat, teach your immune system what to attack, like an instructor or tutor for your immune system, albeit a biased one. These bacteria have colonized your body. They’re not just going to let some pathogen get in the way of their free meal ticket.

(What it looks like in there)

What happens when you eat certain foods, like junk foods, is that your gut microbiome changes. Different bacteria thrive on the fatty or sugary foods while other bacteria that survive off of more complex starches and carbs fade away, changing the demographic of your gut microbiome. This limited variety also limits the amount of invaders your immune system knows as hostile, or understands how to deal with, and therefore, you are more susceptible to disease, or medical complications.

(Actual photo of a biofilm found in the gut)

This was proven by taking samples from fit and obese humans and inserting them in otherwise sterile mice. Their resulting microbiomes grew, and the mice with the obese implant suffered more medical problems than the mice with the fit implant. This is because there were not enough “trainer” bacteria in the first mice’s gut to help train it to fend off disease, and thus it got sick more easily. So don’t go blaming your immune system the next time you get sick. It may be your fault for avoiding real, nutritional food (not just salad), and not taking care of it.

The moral of the story is to eat your vegetables and serve the bacterial overlords that have taken host in your body.

They’re good for you.

Trust me.

 

The solution to hearing loss: listening to things?

By

On December 4, 2015

In Student Post

When we think of hearing loss, we typically think that it’s because the person listens to too many loud things, and that they should try to give their ears a break by hearing as little as possible. However, according to researchers as Case Western Reserve, the solution to preventing deafness might be to use your ears.

Let me explain. There are tiny hairs in your ear (stereocilia) which allow you to hear by vibrating. When overly loud noise hits these hair bundles, they whip back and forth, damaging them. However, if they are constantly stimulated with gentle sound, the movement of the hair bundles actually allows them to readjust, repair, and maintain the health of the hairs of the inner ear. The researchers looked at zebrafish, whose hair bundles move back and forth constantly at amazing speeds, which reinforced the idea. In more detail, the proteins that constitute the hair bundles have a higher turnover rate when under stimulation, meaning that the proteins in your ear hairs are replaced more often, allowing the hair to repair itself. Ears not used much retain the useless broken proteins, leading to poor hearing. Ear hairs used a lot are like muscles when working out: yeah, they’re a bit torn, but they’ll be stronger when they grow back.

 

The research team says they haven’t proven stereocilia repair themselves, and that they still need to look into more detail for that process (link for the more academically inclined). However, the theory looks very promising.

I find it interesting that biological organisms have a tendency to heal through usage, as it almost seems counterproductive to me. I typically think of rest and recuperation when I think of healing, but apparently biology wants you to just keep on chuggin’. What other systems or things do you think we have that heal with use?

(But.

Quite simply.

To heal your hearing,

One needs to whip their hair back and forth.)

If There Were a Printer for Organic Molecules

By

On October 12, 2015

In Student Post

This would be the closest thing we have so far. Over at the University of Illinois, Chemistry professor Martin Burke has created a machine that assembles small organic molecules, group-by-group. This rather straightforward way of synthesizing molecules is likened to building with legos: By assembling simple molecular groups, countless shapes (in this case, molecules) can be made. Going even further than that, Burke has designed the machine in such a way that it can take 3-D models of the molecule to create it, taking both technological and hyperbolic advantage of the “3-D printer craze” that just rolled over.

(The University at which the research took place)

The unprecedented advantage such a device would provide to the fields of science is that it would allow practically any non-specialist with an understanding of chemistry to synthesize molecules. Currently, synthesis of certain molecules is something akin to arcane research: incomprehensible and prolonged. Chemists who specialize in chemical synthesis can spend many years trying to figure out how to produce an organic chemical, especially at the more complex level where the specificity of molecular shape and composition can be baffling to produce. Keep in mind, this is all done by humans on a macroscopic scale, whereas what matters in producing the desired substance lies on the atomic scale. This is why such a device could potentially be such a breakthrough! Not only would synthesizers be able to create molecules on the fly, but even non-specialists could dabble with very good chances of success, opening the field of molecular biology to research at a truly profound level of development.

(Molecules like this could be potentially a lot simpler to synthesize in the future)

I doubt, however, that such a device will live up to its miraculous standards. Often, there are many complications with such things, which can lead it to quickly encounter limitations. It is even admitted that the device can only synthesize relatively small, but still complex, molecules. This device operates on a clever, but still not fundamental, scale. The true breakthrough will be when we can manipulate individual atoms to produce anything that is theoretically possible. Nevertheless, congratulations to Martin Burke and his team for developing such a device, which lies on the path of “work smarter, not harder”.

I’m probably quite cynical about this, so I’d like to ask, what are your thoughts on this development?

 

Source Article:

http://will.illinois.edu/news/story/u-of-i-chemists-machine-simplifies-building-of-molecules

Further Reading:

http://www.macroevolution.net/molecule-making-machine.html#.VhGLRDZdE0Q

http://www.technology.org/2015/03/12/molecule-making-machine-simplifies-complex-chemistry/

 

 

Archives

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén

Skip to toolbar