Sat, 22 Feb 2003 23:18:42 GMT

Well, I am making the big plunge and upgrading all my computers to OS X 10.2. I’m doing my Pismo Powerbook tady (upgraded with 1 MB of memory). I’ll test it for a while then look to take my old beige G3 over the hump. Eventually, I’ll upgrade my computer but this should last until then.

Sat, 22 Feb 2003 22:03:11 GMT

As we gain more knowledge of the different genomes, we may be gaining some understanding of what early life was like. In particular, it appears that horizontal gene transfer may have been a very important process for all life.

In this case, two of the most important cellular pathways, photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation, may have come about from the mixing of several different genes from different organisms. This group as ASU also found a group of similar genes that code for proteins that do neither photosynthesis nor fix nitrogen. These genes appear to be relics from a very ancient time and may be the ancestral genes for both photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation

It is still a mystery just what these proteins do. But, they found a bacteria containing these ‘old’ genes. Methanococcus jannaschii. It lives in concentrations of hydrogen cyanide that would kill other organisms. But cyanide would make a nice source of nitrogen and it would be plentiful in the early atmosphere.

The first college professor I ever got to work with, Irwin Spear, told the story of finding some bacterial growth in a concentration of cyanide. Being young, he tossed it down the drain before wondering just what sort of bacteria could grow in a solution that would kill everything else. Perhaps it was this bacterium or one similar,, trying to find a little bit of the primordial world in a small bottle in a laboratory refrigerator.

The ability for any researcher to access important work at any time is one of the fundamental changes that this age is providing. Now, this access may well become free. BioMedCentral has a very strong mission to provide just this sort of journal. A recent article in one of their peer-reviewed, open access journals serves as a useful example.

Entitled Severe Anaphylactic Reactions to Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase (GAD) Self Peptides in NOD Mice that Spontaneously Develop Autoimmune Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus. (Don’t you just love titles from research papers). What it discusses is the use of small peptides to help ameliorate the development of diabetes in a special strain of mice. This is a very hopeful therapy that is being used in some recent clinical trials in humans.

This paper indicates that using peptides can sometimes cause more harm than good. In this case, all the mice that got the therapy died. Pretty important stuff and something that anyone can read without having to pay a tribute to a commercial publisher. Of course, it is 16 pages of pretty dense material but that fact that you COULD read it is what matters.