Tag: dna
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After badly breaking a load-bearing part of your body it's not uncommon for an orthopedic surgeon to install a couple of after-market bits of hardware to hold the bones together while they knit. This usually takes the form of a couple of titanium alloy screws, though plates, rods, and tubes are not unknown. The downside of using something made out of metal to put things back together is that the screw holes left behind after the implants are removed require additional time to heal. Plus, the holes further compromise the structural integrity of the bone until they fill in. In …
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Scientists working in the burgeoning field of nanotechnology at Brookhaven National Laboratory have announced another breakthrough in molecular technology: They figured out how to use DNA to guide the construction of crystals on the molecular scale. It goes a little something like this: Because the nucleotides that link together to create DNA (adenine, thiamine, guanine, and cytosine) have regions with different patterns of electrical charges, individual molecules are attracted to one another and can stick together, rather like complimentary pieces of velcro. Moreover, each nucleotide has more than one region which can create a bond - this is how other parts …
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DNA, the molecule underlying every form of life on this planet, is in essence a very long chain of sugar and phosphate molecules connected end to end ('long' being a relative term, of course - a molecule 5 centimeters long is gargantuan when you take into account the fact that it's only about 2.4 billionths of a meter in diameter). Each link in the chain is called a nucleotide, and is comprised of one of four possible compounds, adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. Adenine bonds with thymine and cytosine to guanine; each pairing has two possible orientations, for example A-T …
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The genome of Dr. James Watson, who figured out the structure of DNA with Francis Crick, was the first genome to be completely sequenced from start to finish (the results of the Human Genome Project are actually composited from a number of anonymous humans - thank you, HIPAA), which means that each pair of nucleotides in his genetic structure was determined, mapped to a gene, and placed in its proper place in the DNA strand. You can think of it as reverse engineering human DNA because they figured out what everything in there is supposed to do... a copy of his …
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Marine biologists at the Queen's University of Belfast have made an interesting discovery: Hammerhead sharks will reproduce parthogenically under the right conditions. One of a number of female hammerhead sharks kept in captivity back in 2001 (yes, it took them this long to finish their research and publish) was reportedly able to produce young without the presence of a male hammerhead, which lead to some consternation. The original hypothesis was that the female in question had stored sperm from an earlier mating, so they took DNA samples from the sharks in the tank and the young and diff'd them to …
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Data visualisation is a process in which the bits of a given data field are displayed in a graphical format to help the analyst find patterns or anomalies in the data. For example, staring at system logs for a couple of hours is enough to put your mind on autopilot: You'll keep staring and hitting the page down key every once in a while, but your conscious mind doesn't really register the data that your eyes are sending to your brain. Unless there is something unmistakably wrong, even the pattern recognition functions of the brain will be bored to tears …
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