Musings of a BIOL463 Student

This article from Nature describes an advancement in CRISPR technology! Currently, Cas9 enzyme (the one that does the cutting) is a little too large for clinical use. Ran et al. found a Cas9 enzyme used by Staphylococcus aureus that is 75% smaller than the one normally used. This allows for more efficient shuttling of this enzyme in cells. Perhaps with more and more research on this technology, we may actually be able to use in for treatment of some diseases. I am very interested in engineering proteins to be more efficient or more functional. I hope in the future I can contribute to society with a protein I have engineered.

This article is about a study which turned female rats into rats with male reproductive behaviour. They injected dmnts inhibitors to reduce the amount of DNA silencing through methylation and saw that newborn treated females would later develop to have male sexual behaviours. This is quite interesting as we talked about how in class we learned about Xist and how Fukuda et al. showed that removing H3K9me3 would make the Xm chromosome act like an Xp chromosome. In this study, they removed DNA methylation through reduction of dmnt activity. Likewise, male behaviour was observed. Epigenetics seems to play a big role in gender determination. This may lead to an explanation of why some people feel trapped inside the wrong body.

The biggest biotech discovery of the century is about to change medicine forever

This article talks about CRISPR, its origin and mechanism, and also how it may potentially be used. I enjoy seeing articles like this that is published for the general audience to hype up what science has been doing recently. Most advances that are often in the media are technological advances. However, it is rare to see some Biotechnology talked about in the media. Usually, people have a bad connotation with Biotechnology due to genetically modified foods. However, I believe with enough education, we can show the world that genetically modified foods can be controlled and used safely. It is just another tool that humans can use to improve their lives.

http://rt.com/news/243097-dna-mammoth-cloning-progress/

This article talks about using CRISPR to insert mammoth DNA into elephant cells! It is interesting to see how CRISPR is used in science now after learning about how it works! I hope to see more application of CRISPR in the future.

Animals in research has always been very important in the advancements in science. There is a large amount of research conducted in embryo development; however, there are major ethical issues with studying using human fetuses. Using animals is the closest model to humans that scientists can study without raising major ethical issues. There is a continual drive for scientists to understand more about the world in order to better our society. With our intellect, it is a way of evolution. We have a competitive advantage over other living organisms because our intellect allows us to improve our living conditions to foster a better society. The use of animals in developmental biology allows us to study a similar system to human embryonic development. Allowing us to understand the mechanism of development, scientists would be able to predict malformations and perhaps find ways to prevent these malformations from happening. In the end, scientist strive to pass on this information to the next generation to aid in their survival. This is almost the basis of any cell in the world. Changes in the genetic material of the cell get passed on to the next generation. If this change helps the next generation survive better, the information is then passed on. In the end, you would get information that is highly optimize to survive in that particular environment.

With the growing of technology, we may perhaps be able to reduce the number of animals sacrificed for our progression in science. There is a starting trend in using computers to model these animal systems. We may be able to use computer simulations to conduct experiments instead. However, we will only be able to model what we have already observed from the real animal model systems. This method may reduce the number of animals sacrificed; however, the continual use of animals in research will be important to explore more of the unknowns of the world in developmental biology.

Limb malformation is an important model of gene expression control during the development of an embryo. These diseases are generally a result of a mutation in the DNA which causes some genes to be expressed too much or too little. For an example, if there is too much expression of a certain gene, you may end up with more than five fingers on one hand. Limb development is a good model system to study because it is easy to identify what went wrong during development. For instance, each finger on our hand is different from one another. These differences are due to the different genes being expressed at different locations and time when the baby is developing inside their mother. If we compare the DNA of a patient without thumbs to a normal person, we may be able to find the genes responsible for developing thumbs through the differences in their DNA. It is important to study these diseases to understand how normal limb development works. This allows us to understand what mutations are causing these diseases and by looking for these mutations in a person’s DNA, you may be able to inform potential parents about having children with these deformities. Studying limb development can help researchers find what elements in the DNA are responsible for malformations and can improve methods to identify these elements.

Note: It was difficult to identify what is truly important for the general public to know. There needs to be a balance between being detailed enough to be able to explain my points and not going too in depth which you would need a biology background to understand.