(August 2003) In the early days of genetics, scientists did not have the resources to look at more than a few genes at a time. This made the process of understanding the influence of genetics on an organism slow and arduous. Scientists were faced with the enormous task of attempting to understand genetic influence with little information to complete the task. The understanding of genes would have been very helpful in solving this problem. The year 1995 saw the completion of the first two complete non-viral genomes, Haemophilus influenzae [1] and Mycoplasma genitalium [1], two bacteria that can cause human…

(August 2003) What is the Human Genome Project? Genome sequencing technology has led to many recent scientific breakthroughs. These breakthroughs have captured the interest of the public and are being reported with excitement by both the media and scientific journals. The completion of the human genome project (HGP) is an example of newsworthy science that has the potential to have major effects on our society today. The HGP was an initiative started in the early 1990’s that has involved the efforts of hundreds of scientists to generate high-quality reference sequence for the 3 billion base pairs of nucleotide sequence that…

Proteins are the molecules that are responsible for the majority of functions inside the cell. Thus scientists are usually most interested in which proteins and how much of each protein are present in a cell following a particular experimental manipulation. Unfortunately, it is difficult to study global protein expression, since proteins cannot be replicated easily in the lab. Also, proteins do not have complementary sequences like DNA or RNA that can be used as probes. For this reason, many scientists rely on gene expression analysis to give clues as to how a protein is being regulated. However, new technologies that…

Bioinformatics involves the integration of computers, software tools, and databases in an effort to address biological questions. Bioinformatics approaches are often used for major initiatives that generate large data sets. Two important large-scale activities that use bioinformatics are genomics and proteomics. Genomics refers to the analysis of genomes. A genome can be thought of as the complete set of DNA sequences that codes for the hereditary material that is passed on from generation to generation. These DNA sequences include all of the genes (the functional and physical unit of heredity passed from parent to offspring) and transcripts (the RNA copies…

(August 2003) Where’s the best place to hunt for genes that underlie cancer and heart disease? CEO Kari Stefansson and his colleagues at deCODE Genetics believe the relative homogeneity of Iceland’s population should make it a good place to investigate the genetics factors involved in human disease. DeCODE hopes to profit by selling their knowledge to pharmaceutical companies, which can use it to develop diagnostic tests and drugs. Based in Reykjavik, deCODE’s product is genetic information linked, anonymously, to medical records for the country’s 275,000 inhabitants. Isolated populations provide a relatively simple genetic background with which one can investigate the…

(September 2004) It is well acknowledged that scientific information is being generated at an exponentially increasing rate. One recent molecular biology endeavor is of particular public interest: The Human Genome Project (HGP) sequenced and mapped the complete human genome. Though the HGP was completed successfully, the work of the HGP is far from over. The structure, function, and molecular mechanisms of all the genetic elements comprising the human genome have yet to be discovered. Bioinformatics is one approach being used in this area. Bioinformatics can be defined as the application of computing tools to biological problems. The Internet provides an…

(August 2003) Cells show an astounding awareness of the environments in which they find themselves, actually adapting their behavior to changing surroundings. The key to this ability is a constant sampling of the multitude of molecules found in their environments, many of which are signals that convey information to the cell [1]. To do communicate with their environment, they employ a large array of molecules that allow signals to be sent, received, deciphered and responded to. These molecules are generally referred to as “signaling molecules [2].” Categorization of these molecules on the most general level is based on whether they…

(August 2003) As early as the 19th century it was known that phosphates could be bound to proteins. Most examples of these ‘phosphoproteins’ were found in milk (caseins) and egg yolk (phosvitin) and were simply considered a biological method of providing phosphorus as a nutrient. Therefore, the existence of phosphoproteins was considered a consequence of metabolic reactions, and nothing more, for almost a century after their discovery [1]. In the 1950’s this all began to change as phosphoproteins began to emerge as key regulators of cellular life. An initiating factor of this emergence occurred in 1954, when an enzyme activity…

(August 2003) In the beginning, there were chickens Surprisingly enough, our understanding of tumour formation has its roots not in humans, but in the chicken. For the past century it has been known that viruses can be causative agents of cancer. Cancer-causing elements were first described in viruses infecting poultry in 1909 [1]. Later, it was shown that the injection of these viruses was sufficient for tumour formation. But the molecular basis of cancer was unearthed only with the discovery of cellular homologues to these cancer-causing elements in 1976 [1]. When the viral DNA sequences were isolated and characterized they…