From Life comes Art- So what about DNA

everyone is talking about DNA 11 a Canadian company that turns your DNA into high design.It’s as easy as taking a cotton swab sample from the inside of your cheek and selecting a color scheme and print size. In just a few weeks you’ll have a one-of-a-kind DNA portrait from DNA11.com

Store Digital data with live bacteria

A research team said this week it had developed a technology for storing digital data in the DNA of bacteria, which unlike most living organisms can survive for millennia in the right conditions.

Japanese researchers have successfully stored messages in the DNA of bacteria. The hardiness of the hay bacillus bacteria ensures the digital data encoded into them can last for millenia.

Generally found in soil or decaying matter, hay bacillus are exceptionally resistant to extreme weather conditions. Two megabits (data equivalent to 1.6 million Roman letters) can be stored in each bacterium of hay bacillus in the form of implants. These tiny implants can be extracted in a lab and read like ordinary text at a later date.

Each hay bacillus bacterium can store two megabits — the equivalent of 1.6 million Roman letters. The scientists can take out the microscopic implants in a laboratory and read them so they appear as ordinary text.

The team at Keio University’s Institute for Advanced Biosciences said the technology needs to be perfected but that it was optimistic about its future uses.

“If I wanted to store my personal diary in these live bacteria and take it with me to my grave, then my story can live for thousands and thousands of years,” head researcher Yoshiaki Ohashi said with a laugh.

In practical terms, the technology could eventually benefit companies such as pharmaceutical makers which want to “stamp” their brand.

“In doing so, the company can detect piracy and protect its patent. They can also store information at one specific area of the gene and retrieve it from there,” Ohashi said.

The researchers insert the data at four different places so even if one is disrupted, there would be backup.

But the team said they still needed to work before the technology could go on the market. In particular, the scientists need to ensure that the DNA will not be altered as live bacteria naturally evolve.

Hay bacillus bacteria are generally found in soil or decaying matter and are especially resistant to extreme weather.

One of the practical applications of this technology lies in the area of pharmaceuticals. Fraudulent drugs are a major problem but if pharmaceutical companies could “stamp” their signature into the drugs, it would prevent piracy and at the same time protect their patents. To prevent corruption of the message encoding, the data would be inserted into 4 different places as multiple backups.
The bacteria’s hardiness and ability to preserve data for future generations would also be extremely useful in storing vast amounts of data which would not be suspectible to the types of damage that wipe out computer hard drives. Information stored on DNA lasts for more than one hundred million years.

The researchers project being able to develop a type of living memory for a new breed of organic computers which would use strands of DNA to perform calculations and would have the ability to heal themselves if damaged.

Though the promise of this technology is very high, the scientists caution more work is needed before it can be marketed. One of the hurdles to overcome is ensuring very slow mutation rates in the DNA as the bacteria evolve, otherwise the messages encoded will be rendered unreadable.

New non-parametric analyis algorithm for Detecting Differentially Expressed Genes with Replicated Microarray Data

Previous nonparametric statistical methods on constructing the test and null statistics require having at least 4 arrays under each condition. In this paper, we provide an improved method of constructing the test and null statistics which only requires 2 arrays under one condition if the number of arrays under the other condition is at least 3. The conventional testing method defines the rejection region by controlling the probability of Type I error. In this paper, we propose to determine the critical values (or the cut-off points) of the rejection region by directly controlling the false discovery rate. Simulations were carried out to compare the performance of our proposed method with several existing methods. Finally, our proposed method is applied to the rat data of Pan et al. (2003). It is seen from both simulations and the rat data that our method has lower false discovery rates than those from the significance analysis of microarray (SAM) method of Tusher et al. (2001) and the mixture model method (MMM)of Pan et al. (2003).

study published by

Shunpu Zhang (2006) “An Improved Nonparametric Approach for Detecting Differentially Expressed Genes with Replicated Microarray Data,” Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1, Article 30.
Available at: http://www.bepress.com/sagmb/vol5/iss1/art30

Even the hopeful US president jumps on Web2.0 bandwagon

 Barack Obama looks to be diving into this whole “Web 2.0” thing head first, what with his own Facebook profile, Flickr account, and YouTube account. In addition to all this stuff, he also has my.barackobama.com, a social networking type site for his supporters to create profiles, network, and make blogs all about how great Barack Obama is. Meanwhile Former Senator John Edwards is also facing setback in his blogs when two of his former bloggers bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan are asked to step down for posting blogs that upset the Christian community and Bush supporters

So whats preventing our young scientists from going web2.0 and using blogs, Business networking sites such as Linkedin has given much required value to the business commnity compared to stes like Orkut whch is for the liter side of networking althought even orkut also offers communities too , shouldnt it be time to start one for the scientific community , there are few small steps in this way such as

http://www.cos.com   Community of Science (COS) is the leading global resource for hard-to-find information critical to scientific research and other projects across all disciplines.

http://labcircle.net/  Networking – the new LabCircle.net makes it possible. It is where the global laboratory, analysis, biotech, chemistry and pharma industry meets. Based on the theory of “six degrees of separation”, the club allows members to maintain their personal networks, generate new contacts and actively participate in various forums to exchange information, experiences and opinions.

http://www.scientistsolutions.com/ an international life science forum

http://linkedin.com/  reach a key decision maker and find your colleague or someone working in your field

google video publish your expertise in tackling the problems facing while operating your protolcs or project work , tips and tricks what ever it is all you need is a webcam

James from Research Information Network UK has commented on a previous blog I had published about an article on how researchers fish for information ,

Early in 2006, the Research Information Network commissioned a study as part of its work to promote better arrangements for researchers to find out what information resources relevant to their work are available, where these are, and how they may have access to them. The work has now been concluded, and the report from the study is attached below.

http://www.rin.ac.uk/researchers-discovery-services 

Surprisingly many people still do not know hoe to use the search features of google yet

Microaray and Genomcis consortiums have now started to use more collaborating tools such as wikipedia and wiki pages. few good examples are

https://daphnia.cgb.indiana.edu/83.html and http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Portal:Life_Sciences  and http://www.e-biosci.org/

Online Microarray tools

Open source was always the favourite with scientists, Now with companies liek Google and IBM pushing the concept of software as a service educational institutions and non profit organisation alike can offer there efficiencies and expertise to scores of scientists cost effectively

for a start take a look at the online microarray analysis tool offered at European Bioinformatics Institute

http://www.embl-ebi.ac.uk/expressionprofiler/

A new twist on DNA-dynamic quality of epigenetics

What makes you different from everyone else on the planet may have less to do with the spelling of your genetic code than with a scattering of chemical “tags” that, like censor’s marks, render some of your genes unreadable.The code itself, after all, is 99.9 percent identical in all of us, so these peripheral elements – referred to as epigenetics – offer a plausible reason human beings come in such a variety of shapes and sizes.

As one recent paper suggested, epigenetics can explain why identical twins don’t always look identical, especially as they get older.

There’s a dynamic quality to epigenetics. Over your lifetime new chemical tags can stick to previously active genes, thus turning them off, while tags affixed from birth can occasionally fall off, activating genes that are meant to be disabled. A growing number of researchers are connecting such epigenetic shifts to cancer.

The good news is such changes are potentially reversible, says Frank Rauscher, a professor at the Wistar Institute. “For therapeutics, manipulating the epigenome is the way to go.”

Unlike genetic mutations, which permanently scramble a cell’s genetic code, epigenetic tags leave the underlying code intact.

“The old dogma was that cancer was caused by DNA damage and gene mutations,” says Jean-Pierre Issa, a researcher from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. But a closer look showed that cancer cells accumulate a combination of spelling errors in the DNA and inappropriate or missing epigenetic tags, he says. “This has led to a rethinking of environmental carcinogens and how diet could affect cancer and so on.”

Full article is available at http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/16713996.htm 

Microarray for Catharanthus Roseus

In the recently concluded Bio-Asia 2007 meeting  Ocimum Biosolutions has entered into an accord with a scientist for developing microarray  on the medicinal plant Catheranthus Roseus. 

 

Catharanthus roseus is known as the common or Madagascar periwinkle, though its name and classification may be contradictory in some literature because this plant was formerly classified as the species Vinca rosea, Lochnera rosea and Ammocallis rosea. Furthermore, lesser periwinkle (Vinca minor) may also be called common periwinkle. Both species are also known as myrtle.

Western researchers finally noticed the plant in the 1950’s when they learned of a tea Jamaicans were drinking to treat diabetes. They discovered the plant contains a motherlode of useful alkaloids (70 in all at last count). Some, such as catharanthine, leurosine sulphate, lochnerine, tetrahydroalstonine, vindoline and vindolinine lower blood sugar levels (thus easing the symptoms of diabetes). Others lower blood pressure, others act as hemostatics (arrest bleeding) and two others, vincristine and vinblastine, have anticancer properties. Periwinkles also contain the alkaloids reserpine and serpentine, which are powerful tranquilizers.

NYIT Professor Discovers Next Generation of DNA and RNA Microarrays brings hopes of personalized medicine

A novel invention developed by a scientist from New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) could revolutionize biological and clinical research and may lead to treatments for cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and genetic and infectious diseases.

The invention allows the immobilisation of intact. double-stranded, multi-stranded or alternative DNA or RNA and has the potential to revolutionise biological and clinical research by allowing scientists to duplicate the cell environment and experiment with human, bacterial and viral genes.

Since the discovery of DNA, biologists have worked to unlock the secrets of the human cell.

Scientist Dr. Claude E. Gagna, Ph.D., an associate professor at NYIT’s School of Health Professions, Behavioral and Life Sciences, discovered how to immobilize intact double-stranded (ds-), multi-stranded or alternative DNA and RNA on one microarray. This immobilization allows scientists to duplicate the environment of a cell, and study, examine and experiment with human, bacterial and viral genes. This invention provides the methodology to analyze more than 150,000 non-denatured genes.

The “Gagna/NYIT Multi-Stranded and Alternative DNA, RNA and Plasmid Microarray,” has been patented (#6,936,461) in the United States and is pending in Europe and Asia. Gagna’s discovery will help scientists understand how transitions in DNA structure regulate gene expression (B-DNA to Z-DNA), and how DNA-protein, and DNA-drug interactions regulate genes. The breakthrough can aid in genetic screening, clinical diagnosis, forensics, DNA synthesis-sequencing and biodefense.

“This patent represents a leap forward from conventional DNA microarrays that use hybridisation,” said Dr Gagna, associate professor of the New York Institute of Technology.

This will help pharmaceutical companies produce new classes of drugs that target genes, with fewer side effects,” Dr Gagna continued.

“It will lower the cost and increase the speed of drug discovery, saving millions of dollars.”

Since the invention of the DNA microarray in 1991, the technology has become one of the most powerful research tools for drug discovery research allowing scientist to perform thousands of experiments with incredible accuracy and speed. According to MarketResearch.com sales of DNA microarrays are expected to be higher than $5.3bn (€ bn) by 2009.

The technology hinges around a novel surface that increases the adherence of DNA to the microarray so that any type of nucleic acid can be anchored, unlike conventional arrays that allow only single-stranded DNA to be immobilised.

Additionally, Gagna has developed a novel surface that increases the adherence of the DNA to the microarray so that any type of nucleic acid can be anchored. Unlike conventional microarrays, which immobilize single-stranded DNA, scientists will now be able to “secure intact, non-denatured, unaltered ds-DNA, triplex-, quadruplex-, or pentaplex DNA onto the microarray,” says Gagna. “With this technology, one day we will have tailor-made molecular medicine for patients.”

“With this technology, one day we will have tailor-made molecular medicine for patients,” said Dr Gagna.

and sure the news site are buzzing with the discovery

read more about the research and the original article details at

Dr Gagna, associate professor of the New York Institute of Technology. and also at www.nyit.edu/dnamicroarrays

Microarray test to anlyse the role of estrogen in breast cancer

Two critical characteristics of breast cancer that are important to treatment can be identified by measuring gene expression in the tumor, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reports in Lancet Oncology online.

Researchers developed and validated a new genomic microarray test that identifies whether a tumor’s growth is fueled by the female hormone estrogen and the role of a growth factor receptor known as HER-2 that makes a tumor vulnerable to a specific drug. The status of these factors is now determined by pathology tests.

About 70 percent of breast cancers are estrogen-receptor positive and another 15 to 25 percent are human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER-2) positive. Each receptor status requires different types of treatment.

Read the complete article that talkes about the revolutionary test that promises to chage the way cancer is treated

http://www.huliq.com/11047/er-and-her-2-status-of-breast-tumors 

Life Sciences Turning to YouTube- Web2.0 gaining momentum among scientists

I am an ardent follower of all things web2.0 the fact that I have more than 10000 bookmarks catagorized and formatted -big thanks to social bookmarking websites. So its exciting to see more scientists start using web2.0 products such as youtube, google video, social bookmarking sites like furl, stumbleupon , netvouz, del-ic-ious and blogs and wikipedia. The BioIt magazine has published the following article on the trend

Salvatore Salamone January 25, 2007 | Life scientists are eagerly taking advantage of a variety of next-generation “Web 2.0” Internet features to learn, collaborate, and interact more easily.

Wikipedia, for example, has demonstrated how online collaboration can quickly gather a vast amount of information from subject matter experts. Noting Wikipedia’s success, some companies are setting up internal wikis for researchers to share their insights and knowledge. Blogging and specialized social networking sites are also gaining ground among life scientists.

What might not be so obvious is the role another Web 2.0 site – YouTube — is already playing in the life sciences. YouTube allows people to post and easily share videos. Some of the user-generated content is very professional, much of it is appallingly amateurish.

Life science educators, researchers, and even vendors are using the site for a variety of purposes. Some educators have produced short videos illustrating or explaining different scientific concepts. These include molecular visualizations of DNA wrapping and DNA transcription, as well as National Human Genome Research Institute Director Francis Collins talking about advances in personal genomics.

Some researchers have produced short videos that show others how to do certain lab or computer analysis procedures. Examples of these videos includes this demo from the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Most of these videos are short (1-2 minutes) and, at best, illustrate a simple point. But they do give you an idea about the potential ways such videos might be used in the future. For instance, a new lab technique could be videotaped, posted to YouTube (or a similar site), and a link sent to all researchers who could then view the procedure whenever they needed to learn the methodology.

Some of the slickest YouTube videos, in general and specifically in the life sciences, come from vendors, which are jumping on the highly touted trend of viral marketing trend — the idea that people who view these videos will pass them (or links to them) along to friends. The power of this word-of-mouth marketing was evidenced last November when BBC News reported that a video featuring the so-called Star Wars Kid was viewed 900 million times — more viewers than any TV show or event in history. (In contrast, the highest rated program of all time, the last episode of Mash, had 105 million viewers.)

Vendors in all fields are eager to capitalize on this viral marketing phenomenon. And the life science vendors on YouTube seem to have quickly learned the key to getting their videos passed along. That key: The funnier or more creative the spot, the better, according to a recent article in Inc. Magazine.

For example, a YouTube video called The DNA-ting Game, which is a takeoff on the old Dating Game show complete with campy 70s style décor, humorously plugs the power and benefits of the Caliper Life Sciences LabChip 90 Automated Electrophoresis System.

Similarly, a series of Agilent videos show how a cocky researcher is able to quickly complete experiments using the company’s 2100 Bioanalyzer or its Total RNA Isolation Mini Kit. (Examples of these videos can be found here and here.)

All of these efforts – including those from the educators, researchers, and vendors – are the work of early adopters of the newer technologies incorporated into a site such as YouTube. And all of the examples give a glimpse of the potential use researchers and life science organizations can get out of this technology to quickly produce instructional and training videos that can then easily be shared with colleagues.

Email Salvatore Salamone.

Subscribe to Bio-IT World magazine.

The genetic detective – Pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine

 THe following interesting study was published at  article is from royal society of chemistry website

A selective way to detect genetic variations could help scientists develop personalised medicine.

“[This method] should allow several thousands of single nucleotide variations, at different positions within a person’s genome, to be analysed in parallel.”
– Andreas Marx

Variations in our genetic make-up are responsible for some diseases and are known to be major players in an individual’s predisposition to drug side effects. Convenient and rapid detection of these variations could help doctors to adapt therapies for each patient. This idea has prompted Andreas Marx and colleagues at the University of Konstanz, Germany, to devise a high-throughput technique to detect variations between single nucleotides in genetic sequences. 

Marx’s system uses a microarray of oligonucleotide probes to analyse the DNA. The probes are attached by their 5′ end to a glass surface and treated with an enzyme, a DNA polymerase. The enzyme can add further nucleotides to the unattached ends of the probes. If a probe’s terminal base complements the DNA under investigation, the oligonucleotide chain continues to form; if the base is a mismatch, the chain does not extend further.

Oligonucleotide probes are used to analyse DNA to detect variations between single nucleotides

‘Conventional enzyme-based strategies for detecting single nucleotide variations often lack sufficient selectivity,’ said Marx. The oligonucleotide chain can continue to form even when there is a mismatch. The team was able to increase the selectivity by modifying the terminal nucleotide of the probe with a methoxymethylene group. 

In human DNA, approximately one single nucleotide variation occurs per 1000 bases. This method ‘should allow several thousands of single nucleotide variations, at different positions within a person’s genome, to be analysed in parallel,’ said Marx. ‘This is still a challenging task that none of the present systems is able to achieve reliably.’

Oliver Seitz, an expert in DNA diagnostics at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, believes that Marx’s work could have a significant impact in developing diagnostic probes for DNA. ‘The method brings high specificity to the high-throughput format,’ said Seitz. ‘The challenge now is to combine multiplex analysis with specificity and signal amplification in a miniaturised format, to enable point-of-care diagnostics.’

Alison Stoddart

References

Increased single nucleotide discrimination in arrayed primer elongation by 4′C-modified primer probes

J Gaster, G Rangam and A Marx, Chem. Commun., 2007

Indian scientists from CCMB find new genetic mutations- and wins award from UK

UK award for CCMB scientist

The Hindu Business Line:January 22, 2007

Hyderabad: Dr K. Thangaraj, a scientist at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad has received the first Major UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) Award.Launched by the UK Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, during his last visit to India, the UKIERI award is aimed to promote the innovative research and academic excellence between the two countries.

The award has been given to Dr Thangaraj and his collaborators Dr Mart Mirazon Lahr and Dr Toomas Kivisild of Cambridge University for a four-year collaborative project involving genetic analysis of the various populations in India.

It also involves mutual exchange visits of scientists between CCMB and Cambridge University.

Major Award

This is the first major award given to carry out the research in the field of genomics, out of the six major awards selected from 103 proposals from India and the UK.

The award was presented by Mr Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer of Britain, at a function in New Delhi recently, according to a CCMB release.

It carries a research grant of Rs 2.5 crore. The project aims at probing the question: “Was the first `out of Africa’ settlement of Homo sapiens in India?”

Dr Lalji Singh, Director of CCMB, said that the initiative would bring many more international research collaborations in future to the centre.

Indian scientists from CCMB find new genetic mutations

Novel genetic mutations associated with certain neuro-generative disorders, cardio-myopathies and male infertility have been found in Indian population by scientists of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in studies conducted in collaboration with other medical institutions.

The mutations have been found in mitochondrial DNA which is inherited from the mother, unlike the chromosomal DNA, inherited from both the parents. Mitochondrion plays an important role in cellular energy metabolism. In the past decade, genetic variations in mitochondrial DNA have been linked with various disorders, particularly neurological.

Senior scientist of CCMB Kumaraswamy Thangaraj, who led the research teams, told  that they had begun studying the molecular basis of mitochondrial disorders in the population a couple of years ago. They focussed on neuro-muscular diseases, cardiomyopathy, male infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss and analysed hundreds of samples in each category.

The studies showed new genetic variations associated with neuro-generative disorders like MELAS (Mitochondrial encephalopathy lactic acidosis stroke-like episodes) and Leigh, cardiomyopathies and male infertility. Dr. Thangaraj said most of the mutations found in the Western were not found here. “Since Indians have a unique origin, the genetic variations will be different,” he added. CCMB scientists are analysing samples to identify specific sets of mutations associated with mitochondrial disorders for early diagnosis. Regarding genetic causes for male infertility, he said the problem of low sperm motility was looked into to understand the involvement of mitochondrial DNA. C11994T mutation in ND4 gene of mitochondria was found to be associated with low motility, he added

 

 

Multiplex PCR microarray assay screens multiple bioterror pathogens in blood

According to a study from the United States, “Heightened concern about the dangers of bioterrorism requires that measures be developed to ensure the safety of the blood supply. Multiplex detection of such agents using a blood-screening DNA microarray is a sensitive and specific method to screen simultaneously for a number of suspected agents.”

“We have developed and optimized a multiplex polymerase chain reaction microarray assay to screen blood for three potential bioterror bacterial pathogens and a human ribosomal RNA gene internal control,” said K. Tomioka and colleagues at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

“The analytical sensitivity of the assay was demonstrated to be 50 colony-forming units/mL for Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (surrogate for Yersinia pestis). The absence of any false-positives demonstrated high analytical specificity,” scientists repor

Complete article at Journal of Molecular Diagnostics

Microarray for clinical diagnostics in hand-foot-and-mouth disease

The following study was published in journal of clinical microbiology,

Combining Multiplex Reverse Transcription-PCR and a Diagnostic Microarray To Detect and Differentiate Enterovirus 71 and Coxsackievirus A16

Tsan-Chi Chen,^1,2 Guang-Wu Chen,³ Chao Agnes Hsiung,⁴ Jyh-Yuan Yang,⁵ Shin-Ru Shih,⁶ Yiu-Kay Lai,² and Jyh-Lyh Juang^1* Division of Molecular and Genomic Medicine, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan,¹ Department of Life Science and Institute of Biotechnology, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan,² Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan,³ Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan,⁴ Center for Disease Control, Department of Health, Taipei, Taiwan,⁵ Department of Medical Biotechnology and Laboratory Science, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan⁶

Received 18 November 2005/ Returned for modification 16 January 2006/ Accepted 7 April 2006

Cluster A enteroviruses, including enterovirus 71 (EV71) and coxsackievirus A16 (CA16), are known to cause hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD). Despite the close genetic relationship between these two viruses, EV71 is generally known to be a more perpetuating pathogen involved in severe clinical manifestations and deaths. While the serotyping of enteroviruses is mostly done by conventional immunological methods, many clinical isolates remain unclassifiable due to the limited number of antibodies against enterovirus surface proteins. Array-based assays are able to detect several serotypes with high accuracy. We combined an enterovirus microarray with multiplex reverse transcription-PCR to try to develop a method of sensitively and accurately detecting and differentiating EV71 and CA16. In an effort to design serotype-specific probes for detection of the virus, we first did an elaborate bioinformatic analysis of the sequence database derived from different enterovirus serotypes. We then constructed a microarray using 60-mer degenerate oligonucleotide probes covalently bound to array slides. Using this enterovirus microarray to study 144 clinical specimens from patients infected with HFMD or suspected to have HFMD, we found that it had a diagnostic accuracy of 92.0% for EV71 and 95.8% for CA16. Diagnostic accuracy for other enteroviruses (non-EV71 or -CA16) was 92.0%. All specimens were analyzed in parallel by real-time PCR and subsequently confirmed by neutralization tests. This highly sensitive array-based assay may become a useful alternative in clinical diagnostics of EV71 and CA16.

---

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Division of Molecular and Genomic Medicine, National Health Research Institutes, 35 Keyan Road, Zhunan, Miaoli 350, Taiwan. Phone: 886-37-246-166, ext. 35308. Fax: 886-37-586-459. E-mail: juang@nhri.org.tw.

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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, June 2006, p. 2212-2219, Vol. 44, No. 6
0095-1137/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JCM.02393-05
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Usage of Low-Density Oligonucleotide Microarrays for Prognosis Prediction of Colorectal Cancer Patients

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common malignancies. Unfortunately a significant proportion of surgically cured patients in the early stage of the disease develop progression and die from the disease. DNA microarrays technology was used in more than sixty studies focused on colorectal cancer during last five years.

High-density DNA microarrays showed good analytical ability also in colorectal cancer prognosis. However, comparability and reproducibility of studies based on high-density DNA microarrays are notably affected by their technological diversity, and recent findings are not conclusive [4].

This study aimed to find individual up/down-regulated genes associated with progression and metastatic potential of colorectal cancers using low-density oligonucleotide microarrays spotted with genes known to be involved in process of metastasis development. We suppose that focusing on a particular biological pathway may be more useful than genome-wide screening for our purposes.

Molecular characterization of patients at high risk of cancer progression using this more economical and productive expression profiling method may improve our knowledge about cancer progression and dissemination and also assist to oncologists in treatment decision by selecting those patients who will need adjuvant chemotherapy.

Scientists find Extraterrestrial genes in Human DNA

A group of researchers working at the Human Genome Project indicate that they made an astonishing scientific discovery: They believe so-called 97% non-coding sequences in human DNA is no less than genetic code of extraterrestrial life forms.

The non-coding sequences are common to all living organisms on Earth, from moulds to fish to humans. In human DNA, they constitute larger part of the total genome, says Prof. Sam Chang, the group leader. Non-coding sequences, originally known as “junk DNA”, were discovered years ago, and their function remained a mystery. The overwhelming majority of Human DNA is “Off-world” in origin. The apparent “extraterrestrial junk genes” merely “enjoy the ride” with hard working active genes, passed from generation to generation.

After comprehensive analysis with the assistance of other scientists, computer programmers, mathematicians, and other learned scholars, Professor Chang had wondered if the apparently “junk Human DNA” was created by some kind of “extraterrestrial programmer”. The alien chunks within Human DNA, Professor Chang further observes, “have its own veins, arteries, and its own immune system that vigorously resists all our anti-cancer drugs.”

Professor Chang further stipulates that “Our hypothesis is that a higher extraterrestrial life form was engaged in creating new life and planting it on various planets. Earth is just one of them. Perhaps, after programming, our creators grow us the same way we grow bacteria in Petri dishes. We can’t know their motives – whether it was a scientific experiment, or a way of preparing new planets for colonization, or is it long time ongoing business of seedling life in the universe.”

Professor Chang further indicates that “If we think about it in our human terms, the apparent “extraterrestrial programmers” were most probably working on “one big code” consisting of several projects, and the projects should have produced various life forms for various planets. They have been also trying various solutions. They wrote “the big code”, executed it, did not like some function, changed them or added new one, executed again, made more improvements, tried again and again.”

Professor Chang’s team of researchers furthermore concludes that, “The apparent “extraterrestrial programmers” may have been ordered to cut all their idealistic plans for the future when they concentrated on the “Earth project” to meet the pressing deadline. Very likely in an apparent rush, the “extraterrestrial programmers” may have cut down drastically on big code and delivered basic program intended for Earth.”

Professor Chang is only one of many scientists and other researchers who have discovered extraterrestrial origins to Humanity.

 

 read full article at http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/01/08/01288.html