The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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How Genes Hide Their Function
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100818090018.htm
ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2010) — Researchers at the RIKEN Plant Science
Center have illuminated mechanisms underlying the genetic robustness
of metabolic effects in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Their
findings, reported in Molecular Biology and Evolution, reveal a key
balance between the roles played by duplicate genes and metabolic
network connectivity in functional compensation.
Despite many decades of research, the relationship between genes and
their phenotypic effects remains poorly understood. The standard
approach of knocking out individual genes to assess their role runs
into the problem of genetic robustness: cells compensate for gene loss
by reproducing the gene's function via other means, concealing its
actual phenotypic effect.
Narrowing this effect to metabolic products, two functional
compensation mechanisms enable cells to do this: gene duplication and
alternate metabolic pathways. To explore the relative contribution of
each, the researchers analyzed 35 metabolic products -- 17 primary
metabolites and 18 secondary metabolites -- from 1976 genes in mutants
of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Using liquid
chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), an analytical chemistry
technique, they compared what happens to production of these
metabolites when genes with and without duplicates are knocked out.
Results reveal that only duplicate genes with very high similarity
play a significant role in functional compensation, mainly in the
production of secondary metabolites and in functions associated with
multiple metabolic products. Alternative pathways, in contrast, were
found to compensate for the production of primary metabolites, which
are more highly-connected in metabolic networks.
Together, the results uncover a complementary relationship between
compensation mechanisms in A. thaliana, indicating that duplicate
genes play an important role only when the number of alternative
pathways is low. By exposing the mechanisms separating genes from
their phenotypic effects, the findings thus shed valuable new light on
the gene-phenotype relationship, laying the groundwork for new
theoretical models in systems biology.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by
ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by RIKEN, via
AlphaGalileo.
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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