Science Magazine's Highlight Of 2002 102
gingerTabs writes "BBC News is reporting that the 2002 Science Magazine highlight of 2002 is the discovery of the small RNA molecule. Whould've thunk it, eh?"
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Science Magazine's Highlight Of 2002
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Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'.
AIDS (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:AIDS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why would we want to? (Score:2)
Beyond being racist and elistist, and pro industrialist, it's just false too: AIDS doesn't kill fast enough that populations are being decimated or even kept under control.
Re:Why would we want to? (Score:3, Interesting)
In South Africa, roughly 25% of the population
has HIV. Barring a (cheap) cure, that's likely
to result in substantially more than decimation.
You've got to love those Romans. They're the
only people in history who actually needed a
special word to refer to the process of killing
every tenth person.
Decimate means large numbers (Score:2)
To kill 1 in 10 is only one of the possible meanings of decimate. Dictionary.com [reference.com]
For example, decimate can be used to describe the 'decimation' of the Jews in Europe in WWII, despite the percentage genocide being over 90%. And the Romans aren't the only ones who needed the 'special' word, variants of decimate and decimation appear in other languages.
Re:AIDS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AIDS (Score:5, Informative)
First of all AIDS is not the disease, HIV is the disease, AIDS is the final and most often fatal stage of an HIV infection.
The rRNA and the mRNA transcript the DNA and send it to another cell to be replicated
Um, no. DNA is replicated in the cell's own nucleus it doesn't get transfered to another cell to get replicated and sent back.
Sure, it has obviously, but almost every damn cell has RNA in it.
That maybe true but HIV is not a bacteria, which are cells, it is a virus and being a virus is not a cell, though they do have a lipid bi-layer envelope they don't make it themselves but rather steal it from a host cell.
So of course HIV has RNA to carry the message, everything does
well not exactly, HIV is a virus, most viruses only have DNA in them in broken bits because viruses contrary to popular oppinion are not actually alive (they can't reproduce on their own so they don't officially count as being alive). HIV is somewhat special in that it is a retrovirus which means that once it enters your cells it releses its RNA into your cells, the RNA reverse transcribes itself into DNA and integrates its newly created DNA segments into the DNA of your cell turning your cell into a factory for making more HIV and inhibiting the function of the infected cell, HIV has a particullar affinity for the cells of the immune system like macrophages and CD4 cells whcih is why people eventually get AIDS though anit-retroviral drugs and protease inhibitors have prolonged the period before AIDS develops.
Re:AIDS (Score:1, Interesting)
Let me put it another way - it's a bit like suggesting that possessing a copy of the Bible in English will help someone decipher a novel written in Italian. Sure, both books use the western alphabet and have been created in the same way with the same materials. But that's where the similarity ends.
Re:AIDS (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:AIDS (Score:2)
AIDS, Windows, Life, and Linux (Score:4, Funny)
Anyone else notice a theme? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Anyone else notice a theme? (Score:1)
Re:Anyone else notice a theme? (Score:1)
Re:Anyone else notice a theme? (Score:5, Informative)
Most drugs on the market today were discovered either fortuitously or through maticulous screening of candidate compounds.
Over the past two decades, pogress in biotechnology and chemistry have begun an industry wide evolution from drug dicovery to rational design of pharmaceuticals.
On experimental front, our maturing ability to decode and manipulate genetic information and proteins structures have given us powerful new ways of investigating the mechanisms governing agents or processes that cause disease. At the same time, new robotic screening tools have given us the ability to assay thousands of chemicals simultaneously while MEMS and nanotechnology such as biofunctionalized cantilevers are beginning to allow us to peer into the complex chemistry at work inside cells.
However, up to now, these new experimental methods have not produced significant gains in the output of pharmaceuticals because we are still not able to efficiently process the tremendous amount of information necessary to design new drugs. For example, while automated compound screening systems could screen thousands of chemicals in a short period, the search for a chemical that binds specifically to a drug target will typically involve millions of compounds. In other words, though our experimental methods are impressive int their speed, power, and efficiency, they still fall far short of our requirements. What we need are ways to filter through tremendously large amounts of information to arrive at the few pertinent that we can uses to conduct experiments.
What is exciting is that these methods are coming online as a result of the increase in computational power and the development of sophisticated bioinformatics and computational chemistry software. Over the next five to ten years, we will begin to truly reap the rewards of rational drug design as a new generation of software tools that search and organize genetic information, predict protein structures and functions, and automatically screen for ligand specific binding agents begin cranking out thousands of good experimental candidates to be used as input by our improved experimental methods. Only then, when we have relieved the problem of information glut, will we see the true power of rational drug design.
Rational drug design runs on Linux (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Anyone else notice a theme? (Score:3, Funny)
Or bio-chemistry maybe?
Re:Anyone else notice a theme? (Score:1)
drugs like LSD? (Score:2)
Re:drugs like LSD? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:drugs like LSD? (Score:1)
when albert hoffman discovered lsd, he was working on ergot derivitaves to create a more potent drug to induce contractions during labour. (ergot is a type of fungus, and a number of ergot-derived drugs are used in obstetrics). he did not intend for the drug to have any psychological effects, the only thing he was looking for was its action on the uteral muscles. in the late 1930's, he created a number of similar compounds, derivatives of lysergic acid; most of which showed no medicinal promise. he noted (as related in his book "My Problem Child") however, that one of them, d-lysergic acid diethylamide-25, caused "the experimental animals [to become] restless during the narcosis". but since this showed nothing as to the effects he was hoping for, he put lsd on the back burner, so to speak.
in 1943,hoffman gave some more thought to the substance he created. "A peculiar presentiment - the feeling that this substance could possess properties other than those established in the first investigations - induced me, five years after the first synthesis, to produce LSD-25 once again so that a sample could be given to the pharmacological department for further tests." then, on April 19th 1943, Hoffman became the first human test subject, as he relates in the following passage:
"17:00: Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh.
Here the notes in my laboratory journal cease. I was able to write the last words only with great effort. By now it was already clear to me that LSD had been the cause of the remarkable experience of the previous Friday, for the altered perceptions were of the same type as before, only much more intense. I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. I asked my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the self-experiment, to escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile being available because of wartime restrictions on their use. On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had traveled very rapidly. Finally, we arrived at home safe and sound, and I was just barely capable of asking my companion to summon our family doctor and request milk from the neighbors.
The dizziness and sensation of fainting became so strong at times that I could no longer hold myself erect, and had to lie down on a sofa. My surroundings had now transformed themselves in more terrifying ways. Everything in the room spun around, and the familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms. They were in continuous motion, animated, as if driven by an inner restlessness. The lady next door, whom I scarcely recognized, brought me milk - in the course of the evening I drank more than two liters. She was no longer Mrs. R., but rather a malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask."
--
Re:Anyone else notice a theme? (Score:1)
Well, sure, you don't have all these bioligical, gene decrypting, DNA patenting companies dying left and right the way you do tech companies. Sure IBM, Intel, and AMD have been discovering neat things this year, but we've really pretty much got to wait for the demand from high tech to catch up with what it can do today. There's disks and processors and memory and graphics cards that are so unbelievably kick-ass, yet, I just got a GeForce 2 MX200 (just to tide me over a couple months, broke from Christmas shopping and building my dream system) and I'm pretty amazed what $39 card can do. It'll take some temptation for me to part with $$$ for the latest and greatest when the most demanding thing I play is Scorch3d (www.scorch3d.co.uk) which does just peachy.
Heath care needs to catch up and it's been identified by venture capital as the Next Big Thing, some time back, which is likely to deliver to them the return on investment that some technology never came close to -- or it's time would never come. We all get sick, we all need medications, we all fork out the big bucks for health care. It's a natural.
The sad thing is, with the profit squeezing and tricks by private managed health care, it's getting worse all the time. I've noticed local clinics now usually have one or two doctors and the rest are PA's (Physicians Assistants) Nothing wrong with them most of the time, but when I'm sick I expect to see a doctor, after all, that's what my health insurance and I are paying for.
Re:Anyone else notice a theme? (Score:1)
Re:Anyone else notice a theme? (Score:1, Interesting)
These guys sell drugs at maximum profit; with very few exceptions, we sell ours for Free or on a bargain table at CompUSA. They often can only prove mostly insignificant efficacy; ours works most of the time.
I do not feel this way, but I know more than a few (in positions of control) who do.
it's actually an "average" RNA molecule (Score:5, Funny)
"Small" RNA? (Score:2)
Isn't "small" RNA properly called "transport" RNA? Or are these not the same thing? If they're both the same thing, then the discovery was about a couple of years ago, IIRC.
Re:"Small" RNA? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it was first discovered in 1993. But back then it was considered as anomaly. Now, the scientists figured out about what it is.
Here's a more detailed info [orst.edu].
Re:"Small" RNA? (Score:5, Informative)
You're thinking of tRNAs - transfer RNAs, which are in the 70-100 nucleotide range [cmu.edu]. Small RNAs are generally below this - right down to a dozen or so nucleotides or less in some cases. I work in a lab that does a fair bit of small RNA work, and the tRNAs are right up at the top of all our gels as the "big" RNAs in the population.
Re:"Small" RNA? (Score:2)
Which, btw, is about the same size as the genes in Ecoli (which _are_ responsible for protein transcription). Sounds to me like the name "small RNA" is pretty lame. Non-translation RNA or control RNA would probably have been better.
Re:"Small" RNA? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the source of your confusion on this is the way Science chose to title the story. By "Small RNAs" they didn't actually mean snoRNA-sized things (for instance, go here [umass.edu] and click on "Overview of snoRNAs"). They're talking about what have been referred to as "tiny RNAs" or most commonly "small interfering RNAs" (siRNAs) in the literature (for instance see here [nih.gov] about siRNAs, and there's also a very good discussion of them here [devbio.com] as well as a couple of other classes of really small RNA molecules. The sizes of all these things tend to intergrade a bit, so there's a little terminological confusion sometimes. The primary differences tend to be by definition of function.
Here's a quote from the Science article which illustrates their point:
Another crucial step came last year, when Gregory Hannon of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and his colleagues identified an enzyme, appropriately dubbed Dicer, that generates the small RNA molecules by chopping double-stranded RNA into little pieces. These bits belong to one of two small RNA classes produced by different types of genes: microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). SiRNAs are considered to be the main players in RNAi, although miRNAs, which inhibit translation of RNA into protein, were recently implicated in this machinery as well.
The exciting part in all of this is that function is now being assigned to what people previously tended to refer to as "all that gunk at the bottom of the gel".
Re:"Small" RNA? (Score:1, Interesting)
These are just ~20 bp double stranded RNA fragments that will bind to a full length messenger RNA (mRNA) and cause the mRNA to be chopped up by a protein called dicer.
These siRNA can be artifically introduced into cultured cells (human, mouse, etc) using plasmids to express the siRNA or just using RNA itself. Then you get to see what happens to the cells when a gene is nearly shut off.
It's a very quick way to create knockouts of genes, and much will be learned from these techniques.
tRNA? (Score:2)
The progress is staggering, and appears exponential. When HIV was idscovered, they said that a dozen or so years earlier the technology to identify the virus didn't even exist. HIV gets the unwitting assistance of host tRNA [nature.com] and other cellular machinery.
Of the RNA family, let's not forget about mRNA. Any other alpha-RNA's I should know about? Here [arizona.edu] is a quiz if you'd like to show off your acronymial brilliancce!
SNO, PDSF, and neutrinos... (Score:5, Interesting)
It ought to be noted that the SNO guys that did all the hardwork to find out what was going on with the neutrinos used PDSF [nersc.gov], a large linux cluster used in a batch farm configuration. The Japanese observatory that verified the work also used PDSF, as I understand.
The PDSF guys got a lot of thank yous and praise for the help they gave in building, running, and growing their cluster. PDSF as a result has been getting a lot of kudos from the NERSC [nersc.gov] management. With any luck that will translate into better backing.
At any rate, I thought I'd include them since /. readers like to hear how Linux is used IRL science.
Re:RNA? (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article will ya:
They don't say they discovered RNA, they say they found out that RNA does something we didn't know it did.
Re:RNA? (Score:4, Informative)
However, the new picture, which Science says came into focus this year, shows small RNAs at the heart of many of the cell's genetic workings.
This is an oversimplification, probably intended for a lay audience. For the past 20 years or so, RNA has been known to have enzymatic functions [nobel.se]. At first this catalytic property of RNA had been thought to be limited to primitive organisms. However, recent research [yale.edu] has shown that rRNA, which is the RNA component of ribosomes, is in fact the catalytic component of the peptidyltransferase reaction that creates polypeptides, which in turn make up proteins. Moreover, although there is no direct proof yet, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that indicates mRNA splicing in eukaryotes is also catalyzed by RNA (in the form of "small nuclear RNAs" or snRNAs). To state that RNAs are only part of the information chain from DNAs to proteins is a misjustice to the complexity of RNA biology.
The small RNAs that are described in this article are not even catalytic; in fact, to your average RNA biochemist these small RNAs are not all that interesting. They are, however, very interesting to people who study gene regulation, because that appears to be the normal role of these small RNAs. Biotech companies are also interested because they are a way to target specific genes for inactivation.
RTFA!!! (Score:2)
Re:RNA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhh... Yeah, we've known about computers for a while too... so is linux kernel 2.5 is old news?
How bout ASCII files. They've been around forever. Has XML been around forever?
Stem Cell Research ... (Score:3, Interesting)
A valid cause indeed, just think about it, all the things people are "born with" that they can't control could simply be replaced by a stem cell with a new set of DNA and you don't have to "live" with it anymore. Kidneys not working right (diabetes etc.) grow some new ones, the possibilities of stem cell research are virtually at this time endless. Genetics can be used to heal people, it doesn't have to be used to "clone" people or "play God", if anything stem cell research is there to clean up what God screwed up (if you want to view it that way).
I would say that while the RNA molecules themselves aren't a huge breakthrough the discoveries that come next certainly are. In my previous posts I've mentioned research the government has pissed money away on, this is one that I do believe fully in and support wholeheartedly. A world free from disease will indeed be a better world, think about the boost it would have on the basic level of living, no AIDS, no Cancer, no ANYTHING bad ...
This is in itself actually an amazing step forward in helping us all out as a society and moreso as a species.
Re:Stem Cell Research ... (Score:1)
~S
Re:Stem Cell Research ... (Score:2)
However, I wouldn't count on a "world free from disease". First of all, we can't even deliver many medical advances to the people of the US, despite spending enormous amounts of money on medical care (and even with a more efficient medical insurance system, there would have to be limits). But the use of stem cells and manipulations of RNA are likely to remain labor intensive and require careful personal attention by skilled labor (we haven't even been able to automate much simpler body-related services like cutting hair, at least not well).
Second, even if we get complete control over biological processes, we aren't built to last. After how many brain stem cell transplants and regenerations has your personality changed dramatically? How many times can you carry out gene therapy until you spend more time patching up its errors than actual disease? Think of it this way: even software projects, where we have complete control over everything, eventually fall apart.
So, these techniques will give more medical options to the reasonably well-off (which I won't complain about), and they may have some spin-offs for the poor. They may increase out life span significantly. But I wouldn't get my hopes up that they will eliminate disease, even for people able to pay for them.
Spicy/Chilly (Score:5, Funny)
Now that's science I like!
Re:Spicy/Chilly (Score:1)
There's a direct connection in here, A correlates with B, I'm sure of it.
How about garlic? Onions? Yum, now I'm hungry.
A small intro to small RNA. From 2 month old news (Score:3, Informative)
The findings will be reported Friday in the journal Science.
They reveal for the first time a new mechanism by which micro-RNA can stop the function of messenger-RNA by literally cutting it in half, interfering with the normal function of specific messenger RNAs in gene expression.
This "expression" of genes that code for essential proteins is ultimately what controls whether a cell turns into a lung, liver, brain or other cell. Understanding what activates this process - or stops it - is a key to understanding the biological process of life itself, and forms the foundation for advances in medicine, agriculture and other fields.
On this frontier of biology, experts say, the most intriguing new component is micro-RNA, a minuscule type of regulatory molecule that had seemed insignificant even in the extraordinarily tiny, microscopic world of cell biology.
The first micro-RNA, in fact, was only discovered in 1993 and at the time was thought to be a biological oddity in worms. A couple hundred have since been discovered in both plants and animals. But it has only been in just the past few months that scientists working in this area have come to understand the potentially profound importance of micro-RNA.
"For a long time, people really did not know that these micro-RNAs were even there," said James Carrington, a professor and director of the OSU Center for Gene Research and Biotechnology. "They were under the radar, and observations of them were limited by our technology. But as we learn more about these regulatory molecules, we're beginning to understand the scope of their biological importance. In molecular biology, micro-RNAs are clearly one of the top two or three discoveries of the past decade."
Every normal cell in complex organisms, such as plants, flies and humans, has a complete copy of the DNA for the entire organism, some 15,000 to 35,000 genes that collectively are thought of as the genetic blueprint for life. But to serve as certain types of cells, such as brain in humans or roots in plants, only a much smaller number of genes within each cell are actually "expressed," or allowed to create the proteins that perform these separate life functions.
"A key focus in biology for a long time has been what controls gene expression," Carrington said.
It is well understood, Carrington said, that two of the key steps between DNA and a functional cell are the processes of transcription and translation. In transcription, single-stranded "messenger RNA" molecules that correspond to each expressed gene are produced. And in translation, the messenger RNA is decoded, resulting in the production of a protein made from some combination of 20 amino acids.
"This is a very complex series of biological processes that requires hundreds of proteins and other factors," Carrington said. "And we're now also learning the role of micro-RNA in controlling expression of some important genes."
Micro-RNAs are actually produced by the transcription of tiny genes, in regions of the genome that were previously thought to be vacant or useless DNA. However, unlike messenger RNAs, micro-RNAs are not translated to produce proteins. Instead, researchers are finding that these micro-RNAs have critical functions in controlling the process of gene expression.
In some recent studies, other scientists found that micro-RNAs can bind to specific messenger RNAs to block the translation or decoding process. In the latest advance made by the OSU researchers, micro-RNAs in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana were found to destroy messenger RNAs instead of blocking its function, by literally cutting it in half.
"Much of our understanding of cell biology is related to this area we call negative regulation, or the processes that stops genes from being expressed," Carrington said. "Anything that improves our knowledge of this process could be quite significant."
For one thing, Carrington said, micro-RNAs might be intimately involved in the normal function of stem cells, those biologically unique cells that, when reproducing, can produce either more stem cells or begin a line of cells that is differentiated into something else, a brain, lung or liver cell.
"It's very important that we learn how cells differentiate and grow normally," Carrington said. "Just about everything in the human body has a genetic component. Genetic abnormalities relate to birth and developmental defects, susceptibility to disease, misregulation of genes. And these same processes are also at work in all other life forms, including plants, and new findings could be applied to crop biotechnology or even traditional plant breeding."
Continued research, Carrington said, will almost undoubtedly find human genetic defects that can be traced to dysfunction of micro-RNAs.
This broad area of research, officials say, has such promise that major new studies are being developed across the nation.
OSU was recently the recipient of a four-year, $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study micro-RNAs in Arabidopsis, a plant that works well as a model for genetic research, and the researchers will try to identify the functional messenger RNA targets of different micro-RNAs.
Scientists expect that some of the life processes controlled by micro-RNAs in plants will have been conserved across millions of years of evolution and operate the same way in animals, including humans.
Protein production control... (Score:3, Informative)
This is an important discovery because most scientists ignored the existence of this 'junk', without acknowleging that everything in a cell has a purpose. Researchers have known that these non-protein producing DNA segments have existed for many years, only recently did someone ask why they existed. That is why this is an important discovery.
Re:Protein production control... (Score:1)
As stated above there is a reason for all of it, we just haven't asked the right question to yeild the answer to what the rest of it does.
Re:Protein production control... (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone else points out:
Not all the junk DNA does this, just the introns near the centrosome.
Ah, yes. Presume that because not "all" of the "junk DNA" "does this", it must still be junk. Don't consider that perhaps the real effects of the "junk DNA" might simply be beyond your understanding. That might lead to discovery.
I get the feeling cell/protien/gene/DNA research is going to continue something like this; every now and then the people who leave the blinders at home next to the TV remote are going to question the presumption that some of the remaining mysterious "junk" has no value. Each time they discover the real meaning of the unknown sequences, our knowledge of how life really works will leap forward. In the end, we'll find that very little or none of DNA is actually junk. We'll look back on our predecessor's unimaginable ignorance and wonder how they could have every been so willfully naive. We'll apologize for them, and then proceed to commit exactly the same error in another field.
Re:Protein production control... (Score:2)
seem to recall that some proportion of the base
pairs are essentially a form of ECC.
Any professionals or more competent amateurs
care to comment?
Re:Protein production control... (Score:2)
tRNA also has a regex-style recognition sequence which it uses to transcribe rna into dna.
To be honest, I'm struggling to recall what you're thinking of precisely, but the mechanisms the cells use to transcribe dna are full of sequence checking.
Maybe, maybe not... (Score:3, Informative)
However, it would be wrong to assume that *everything* in the body is there because it serves some purpose. There are clear cases in biology of remnant structures which don't serve any purpose in the animal's (or plant, for that matter) current environment.
Re:Protein production control... (Score:2)
It's been said a million times by biologists but is so rarely understood by the common populace: evolution is not the process whereby nature whittles down one stick until it makes the perfect tool. It is a bunch of forks and branches and we are being acted on by forces from the microscopic (bacteria, virii) to the highly macroscopic (sabre-toothed cats, wolves). how on earth is it you think that a piece of string 9billion units long will get away without a few knots and a few useless loops?
Natural Selection is not the process of building a better mousetrap. It is a desperate fight to survive and make it out of the genetic swamp with enough mates to ensure your children do the same. Evolution, unlike what Richard Dawkins proposes, is not at the level of the gene. It's not entirely at the level of the individual, either. It's all over the place.
Stop looking for God and go read a stage 1 biology text book.
One interesting point is that alot of 'Junk DNA' may be useful just because it's there, not because it really does anything. What do you think happens if you try to splice your dna with your wife's and they're different lengths? Think that's gonna work real well? Probably not. We've all gotta stay in the race together, so even if it does nothing, it will apply a selective force.
High speed film of electrons? (Score:1)
However, it IS commonly accepted that an electron moves so fast you'd never see it. (I guess you can stare at a blank piece of paper and call it a high-speed film of an atom without the nucleus.)
There's also a little something called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which tells us that we tell the velocity and position of an electron stimulentaneously.
Kind of hard to make a film of anything without being able to express the velocity and position, eh?
Re:High speed film of electrons? (Score:1)
I bet you that these scientists know a wee tad more about the subject than you do. Graduate and postdoc training trump your university education anyday.
Read the article before "trashing" the work; it's quite elegant: http://www.nature.com/nature/links/021024/021024-1 .html [nature.com]
Re:High speed film of electrons? (Score:2)
Whenever one hears of a scientific discovery that runs counter to preconceived notions, it's a good idea to RTFA before saying "that's impossible." Science's notion of what is and isn't possible changes all the time; that is one of its two greatest strengths (the other being that it demands rigorous proof before changing) and pretty much what distinguishes it from those areas of human thought, such as religion, which rely solely on received wisdom.
So you can see subatomic particles? (Score:1)
SUPERMAN!
Da-da-daaa-da-da-da-daa-da-daaaa!
Re:High speed film of electrons? (Score:2, Informative)
--
Re:High speed film of electrons? (Score:1)
I can take a photograph of a cat just fine, but you still can't know the velocity and position of the cat with complete accuracy.
To be specific, Heisenberg Uncertainty says that the more accurately you know the momentum, the less accurately you know the position. For any object. You can know both the position and velocity, just not to arbitrary accuracy.
Dude, what a cosmic background... (Score:3, Funny)
I thought that the highlight in the Science mag (Score:1)
Sch, Sch. Hehehehe.
Well, what this country needs is a 2 cent nano laser.
Always interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Only a fraction of the DNA encodes proteins. That other stuff is "junk DNA", we have a complete map of the relevant stuff.
Oh, that small RNA? It's just building blocks for - or fragments of - the real stuff.
Even well educated people are too quick to dismiss something they don't understand. This has recently be most evident in cell biology. The mouse can sense the elephants foot, let's just hope he doesn't get himself stepped on.
Paul
You don't know what you don't know.