2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have solved a major problem in biology: how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes – the telomeres – and in an enzyme that forms them – telomerase.

The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.

If the telomeres are shortened, cells age. Conversely, if telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained, and cellular senescence is delayed. This is the case in cancer cells, which can be considered to have eternal life. Certain inherited diseases, in contrast, are characterized by a defective telomerase, resulting in damaged cells. The award of the Nobel Prize recognizes the discovery of a fundamental mechanism in the cell, a discovery that has stimulated the development of new therapeutic strategies.

Scientists began to investigate what roles the telomere might play in the cell. Szostak’s group identified yeast cells with mutations that led to a gradual shortening of the telomeres. Such cells grew poorly and eventually stopped dividing. Blackburn and her co-workers made mutations in the RNA of the telomerase and observed similar effects in Tetrahymena. In both cases, this led to premature cellular ageing – senescence. In contrast, functional telomeres instead prevent chromosomal damage and delay cellular senescence. Later on, Greider’s group showed that the senescence of human cells is also delayed by telomerase. Research in this area has been intense and it is now known that the DNA sequence in the telomere attracts proteins that form a protective cap around the fragile ends of the DNA strands.

Many scientists speculated that telomere shortening could be the reason for ageing, not only in the individual cells but also in the organism as a whole. But the ageing process has turned out to be complex and it is now thought to depend on several different factors, the telomere being one of them. Research in this area remains intense.

The 3 awardees are citizens of the USA; two were born elsewhere.
Read more about their research at the Nobel Prize web site.

Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn–one of Time magazine’s 100 “Most Influential People in the World” in 2007–made headlines in 2004 when she was dismissed from the President’s Council on Bioethics after objecting to the council’s call for a moratorium on stem cell research and protesting the suppression of relevant scientific evidence in its final report.

Webcast of Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn speaking at Google:
Continue reading →

Test it Out, Experiment by They Might Be Giants

Put It to the Test is one of the songs on the great new Album and animated DVD from They Might Be Giants: Here Comes Science.

Are you sure that thing is true, or did someone just tell it to you.
Come up with a test. Test it out.
Find a way to show what would happen if you were incorrect. Test it out.
A fact is just a fantasy unless it can be checked.
Make a test. Test it out.

A fun song on fundamentals of experimenting to the scientific method.

Movie Aims to Inspire College Students With Tales of Successful Minority Scientists

African American women are still rare in many science professions, despite their increasing representation in undergraduate science classes. The documentary – Roots to STEM: Spelman Women in Science—seeks to explore how these women were able to succeed and to hold them up as role models.

Tarsha Ward remembers begging her mother for a stethoscope so she could be the star of career day at her kindergarten class in Charleston, S.C. Her mother presented her with something that proved more prophetic: a white lab coat.

“For me that was the beginning of a career,” said Ward, who is working toward her doctorate in biomedical sciences at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga., focused on cancer research. “Ever since then everything was about science.”

“If you get into a bind you have to think it out yourself,” she said. “A Ph.D. has really taught me to think on my own. You’re here thinking in the midnight hours and there’s no book to tell you what’s right. You just have to see if it works.”

Such struggles have already paid off. “In seven months, I published my first paper. I worked on it day and night,” said Ward, a 2004 Spelman graduate. “I (loved) the fact that I could find something no one else could find and actually publish it.”

Read the full press release

Why do we Need Dark Energy to Explain the Observable Universe?

Why do we need dark energy to explain the observable universe?

Against all reason, the universe is accelerating its expansion. When two prominent research teams dropped this bombshell in 1998, cosmologists had to revise their models of the universe to include an enormous and deeply mysterious placeholder they called “dark energy.” For dark energy to explain the accelerating expansion, it had to constitute more than 70 percent of the universe. It joined another placeholder, “dark matter,” constituting 20 percent, in overshadowing the meager 4 percent that make up everything else—things like stars, planets, and people.
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An accelerating wave of expansion following the Big Bang could push what later became matter out across the universe, spreading galaxies farther apart the more distant they got from the wave’s center. If this did happen, it would account for the fact that supernovae were dim- they were in fact shoved far away at the very beginning of the universe. But this would’ve been an isolated event, not a constant accelerating force. Their explanation of the 1998 observations does away with the need for dark energy.
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And Smoller and Temple say that once they have worked out a further version of their solutions, they should have a testable prediction that they can use to see if the theory fits observations.

Another interesting example of the scientific inquiry process at work in cosmology.

Shouldn’t the National Academy of Science (NAS), a congressionally chartered institution, promote open science instead of erecting pay walls to block papers from open access? The paper (by 2 public school professors) is not freely available online. It seems like it will be available 6 months after publication (which is good) but shouldn’t the NAS do better? Delayed open access, for organizations with a focus other than promoting science (journal companies etc.), is acceptable at the current time, but the NAS should do better to promote science, I think.

Friday Fun: Hammer and Feather Drop on Moon

Gravity acts in the same way on a feather and hammer. The reason the hammer falls faster on earth is due to air resistance (well and if you try outside – wind could blow the feather too).

At the end of the last Apollo 15 moon walk, Commander David Scott performed a live demonstration for the television cameras. He held out a geologic hammer and a feather and dropped them at the same time. Because they were essentially in a vacuum, there was no air resistance and the feather fell at the same rate as the hammer, as Galileo had concluded hundreds of years before – all objects released together fall at the same rate regardless of mass. Mission Controller Joe Allen described the demonstration in the “Apollo 15 Preliminary Science Report”:

During the final minutes of the third extravehicular activity, a short demonstration experiment was conducted. A heavy object (a 1.32-kg aluminum geological hammer) and a light object (a 0.03-kg falcon feather) were released simultaneously from approximately the same height (approximately 1.6 m) and were allowed to fall to the surface. Within the accuracy of the simultaneous release, the objects were observed to undergo the same acceleration and strike the lunar surface simultaneously, which was a result predicted by well-established theory, but a result nonetheless reassuring considering both the number of viewers that witnessed the experiment and the fact that the homeward journey was based critically on the validity of the particular theory being tested.

Bacteria Use Nitric Oxide to Resist Antibiotics

Scientists Discover Mechanism to Make Existing Antibiotics More Effective at Lower Doses

Eliminating this NO[nitric oxide]-mediated bacterial defense renders existing antibiotics more potent at lower, less toxic, doses. With infectious diseases the major cause of death worldwide, the study paves the way for new ways of combating bacteria that have become antibiotic resistant.

NO is a small molecule composed of one atom of oxygen and one of nitrogen. It was known as a toxic gas and air pollutant until 1987, when it was first shown to play a physiological role in mammals, for which a Nobel Prize was later awarded. NO has since been found to take part in an extraordinary range of activities including learning and memory, blood pressure regulation, penile erection, digestion and the fighting of infection and cancer. A few years ago, the Nudler’s group from NYU demonstrated that bacteria mobilize NO to defend against the oxidative stress. The new study from the same group supports the radical idea that many antibiotics cause the oxidative stress in bacteria, often resulting in their death, whereas NO counters this effect. This work suggests scientists could use commercially available inhibitors of NO-synthase, an enzyme producing NO in bacteria and humans, to make antibiotic resistant bacteria like MRSA and ANTHRAX more sensitive to available drugs during acute infection.
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The study by Nudler and his colleagues was funded by a 2006 Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. The Pioneer Award, a $2.5 million grant over five years, is designed to support individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering and possibly transforming approaches to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research.

Neil Degrasse Tyson: Scientifically Literate See a Different World

From the interview of Neil Degrasse Tyson from 3 July 2009.

“If you are scientifically literate the world looks very different to you. Its not just a lot of mysterious things happening. There is a lot we understand out there. And that understanding empowers you to, first, not be taken advantage of by others who do understand it. And second there are issues that confront society that have science as their foundation. If you are scientifically illiterate, in a way, you are disenfranchising yourself from the democratic process, and you don’t even know it.”

I agree, and, as I have said before, when a society allows a scientific illiteracy to continue then the potential for abuse by those that manipulate those that are scientifically illiterate leaves the society vulnerable to making very bad choices.

2008 National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology and Innovation

Presidential Medal of Science - USA
The winners of the 2008 National Medals of Science, and National Medals of Technology and Innovation, have been announced. The recipients will receive the awards a White House ceremony in October.

“These scientists, engineers and inventors are national icons, embodying the very best of American ingenuity and inspiring a new generation of thinkers and innovators,” President Obama said. “Their extraordinary achievements strengthen our nation every day – not just intellectually and technologically but also economically, by helping create new industries and opportunities that others before them could never have imagined.”

National Medal of Science
Dr. Berni Alder, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA
Dr. Francis Collins, National Institutes of Health, MD
Dr. Joanna Fowler, Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY
Dr. Elaine Fuchs, The Rockefeller University, NY
Dr. James Gunn, Princeton University, NJ
Dr. Rudolf Kalman, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich
Dr. Michael Posner, University of Oregon, OR
Dr. JoAnne Stubbe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA
Dr. J. Craig Venter, J. Craig Venter Institute, MD & CA

National Medal of Technology and Innovation
Dr. Forrest M. Bird, Percussionaire Corp., ID
Dr. Esther Sans Takeuchi, University at Buffalo, SUNY, NY
Team: Dr. John E. Warnock and Dr. Charles M. Geschke (Adobe Systems Inc., CA)
Company: IBM Corporation, NY

Smokers with High Blood Pressure and High Cholesterol Lose 10 Years

By examining data from the Whitehall Study researchers have found smokers with high blood pressure and high cholesterol in middle age died 10 years earlier than the others after reaching age 50. This is independent of changes after later in life (quiting smoking, etc.). Life expectancy in relation to cardiovascular risk factors: 38 year follow-up of 19,000 men in the Whitehall study

At entry, 42% of the men were current smokers, 39% had high blood pressure, and 51% had high cholesterol. At the re-examination, about two thirds of the previously “current” smokers had quit smoking shortly after entry and the mean differences in levels of those with high and low levels of blood pressure and cholesterol were attenuated by two thirds. Compared with men without any baseline risk factors, the presence of all three risk factors at entry was associated with a 10 year shorter life expectancy from age 50 (23.7 v 33.3 years). Compared with men in the lowest 5% of a risk score based on smoking, diabetes, employment grade, and continuous levels of blood pressure, cholesterol concentration, and body mass index (BMI), men in the highest 5% had a 15 year shorter life expectancy from age 50 (20.2 v 35.4 years).

Conclusion Despite substantial changes in these risk factors over time, baseline differences in risk factors were associated with 10 to 15 year shorter life expectancy from age 50.

Another conclusion: if you don’t want to live a shorter life, don’t smoke. Not a new idea but given how many people continue to smoke it seems some don’t understand this conclusion.

3D Printing is Here

photo of objects printed using a 3D printer

Photo by Jessica Sabo at the at 2009 Annual ASEE Conference.

The Future of Printing is 3D [I removed the broken link]

At this year’s annual ASEE Conference in Austin, one of the main topics of conversation started with the question, “have you seen the 3D printer?”. The company Stratasys, Inc. has created their Dimension 3D Printers. Their latest innovation is their line of uPrint machines, which are less costly (prices starting at $14,900)
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Jesse Roitenberg, the representative from Stratasys at the conference, explained the benefits of using 3D printing as opposed to building models by hand:

“With a 3D printer, you are actually able to create an object as you had designed it. Once the object is created, the designer is then able to hold, test and verify the design. The object created is more accurate and the process is less time consuming.”
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The Dimension 3D printers have been used in both educational facilities and the workplace, benefiting everyone from engineers to middle school science teachers. Below is a video of Jay Leno explaining how he was able to use the 3D printer to recreate an old steam engine car part.