Cell Phones and Cancer - Round X

As reported on CNN (Cancer expert warns employees on cell phones, 7/23/2008), Dr Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, has advised against the use of cell phones by employees, citing that it may possibly cause cancer. Here we go again.....

This type of grandstanding by a official should not be tolerated by the academic, medical or scientific communities. It does nothing but confuse the general public and further degrade the reports of legitimate scientists (which Dr. Herberman is suppose to represent!). Reports like this one often go viral over the web, and most often get distorted in many ways. I predict that the National Enquirer will soon start to blame all of the celebrity problems in the news on the use of cell phones. If I was on the staff of this Institute, I would be asking some tough questions of my leadership.

Is it possible that the use of cell phones may increase the risk of certain types of cancer? There is always a possibility - even though multiple published reports have discounted this idea. There may be physiological and genetic factors that predispose some individuals to certain forms of cancer, and these people may use cell phones, but that does not really mean that the cell phone caused the cancer. Should additional studies be performed? ..... maybe, especially if it covers some area of study that has been neglected in a previous study, including the effects on youn brains. Herberman contends that we can't wait for the scientific process to examine the link..... and he is the head of a major scientific cancer institute? Something doesn't sound right.

I wonder if Dr Herberman drives to work in a car..... after all, we know for certain that cars kill over 40,000 Americans per year, and that the emissions from automobiles are killing additional thousands per year (as reported by the World Health Organization)....but I don't hear any outcry about that from Dr Herberman.

For a more detailed report - see the AP report "Pittsburgh cancer center warns of cell phone risks"

I am Legend - The Sequel?

There has recently been another documented case of the Hendra virus in Australia (see Rachel Nowak’s “Could killer horse virus spread amongst humans?” In case you are not familiar with Hendra, it is a respiratory disease virus of horses, and is believed to be found exclusively in Australia. The disease has been known to jump to humans from horses, and there have been a few fatalities, but in general, this virus has not gathered a lot of media attention. What is interesting about this article is that Nowak reports that the new version of the virus may be slightly different than the previous versions. So why is this important?

In general, viruses are very specific in the species, and even the types of cells within a species, that it infects. However, the big problem with viruses is that most viruses have a high mutation rate. This means that the genetic material within the virus, which may be either DNA or RNA, changes at a faster rate. Some of these changes, especially when they are compounded over time, may cause the virus to change some of its proteins, and “recognize” new hosts. By the way, for you diehard creationists out there, these genetic changes are an example of evolution, and viruses have been doing this for millions, if not billions, of years. Some viruses mutate fast, others more slowly. Hendra virus has already done this, as it is appears to be derived from a virus found in fruit bats. Since fruit bats, horses, and us are all mammals, it appears that this virus has a special liking for warm-blooded creatures. For that reason alone, we need to pay attention to this one.

While I am glad to see that magazines, such as New Scientist, are reporting these outbreaks of Hendra virus, I am a little worried about how the general media is going to spin this story. If you remember, not too long ago the media picked up on scientific claims that scientists were predicting that the H5N1, aka “Avian Flu”, would leap to humans from poultry. With the release of “I am Legend”, many people believed that the apocalyptic end of the planet was at hand. When it didn’t happen that summer, or even the next, avian flu quickly faded from people’s minds, even though it has been increasing its range annually.

In fact, I still have friends of mine who claim that this was just another example of scientists blowing things way out of proportion. Some of them even try to use this logic to say that scientists are doing the same thing about climate change. This just shows a complete lack of understanding, and respect, for nature. Nature does not work on our timescale, nor does it even have a timescale. When these viruses mutate, as they have for millions of years, they may just develop the ability to infect a new species. And if that species is us, we are going to really wish that we had paid a little more attention to those over-reacting scientists.

Men: The Next Endangered Species?

Men, have you recently had one of those feelings that something was not exactly right? A sense of impending doom? An uneasiness with the state of the world? While it was not exactly front-page news, an article by Nick Lane in the June 7^th issue of New Scientist (One Baby, Two Moms) should have all men worried. Lane’s article has to do with the generation of a embryonic cell that is basically a hybrid of three parents. The purpose was to transfer mitochondria from one cell to another to potentially prevent disease. The implications for men in general may be much more severe.

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of your cells. These small internal compartments are where your body converts food, usually carbohydrates, into the energy that runs all cellular processes. They use lots of oxygen in the process. In fact, if it wasn’t for mitochondria, the oxygen that you breathe would be lethal.

Mitochondria are interesting for several other reasons. One is the fact that they really don’t belong to us. If you take a good look at the genetics of the mitochondria you will quickly discover that they closely resemble those of the bacteria. The mitochondrial chromosome is circular, just like those of a bacterium, and the structure of the genes on the chromosome is very similar as well. Creationists absolutely hate mitochondria since they provide strong evidence of a major evolutionary event (over 600 million years ago) in the formation of modern cells. Each of our cells contains the remnants of a bacterial infestation hundreds of millions of years ago. But that fact has very little to do with the extinction of males.

What is more important is that we get our mitochondria from our mother. When a sperm cell fertilizes an egg, only the mitochondria in the egg survive. Thus, the mitochondria in my cells are all derived from my mother, who in turn got them from her mother, etc, etc. In fact, our mitochondria provide a history of our heritage. (For excellent coverage of this topic, read Brian Sykes book The Seven Daughters of Eve). But there is a flaw in this process. If there is a defect in a woman’s mitochondria, then she will pass that defect on to her offspring. Since the male doesn’t contribute mitochondria, then there is no chance of getting a “normal” mitochondria from the male. Mitochondria disorders are associated with a number of neurological disorders. Women with a history of these disorders have always been concerned about reproduction.

To bypass this problem, scientists have recently developed a procedure to produce embryos from three parents – two females and one male. This process allows a woman with a known mitochondrial disorder to produce a healthy embryo by using her DNA, mitochondria from another woman, and DNA from a man. The result is a child with the same genetic make-up as would be produced by any normal fertilization event between a man and a woman, but minus the mitochondrial disorder.

Sounds good right? Well, what this has done is place us one step closer to the ability to combine two eggs to produce an embryo. And once that happens men, there will be little reason to keep us around anymore.

Females reproducing without males is nothing new to the animal world. There are several species can either reproduce without males (called parthenogenesis). But until recently, it appeared that males were absolutely necessary for reproduction in mammals. There are several important genetic reasons for this, and the information in Nick Lane’s article does not necessarily indicate that men are doomed – yet. But it does indicate that scientists have overcome another hurdle in their ability to manipulate cells. Soon, perhaps sooner than we think, it will be possible to merge two eggs to form a zygote.

With the news being presented in this article, men are one step closer to joining the dodo bird and passenger pigeons. Author Bryan Sykes has already foretold this in another of his books - Adam’s Curse: A Future Without Men. This should be required reading for all men. For now we are one step closer to that reality. And if the guy at the top of this post is an endangered species…..men in general are doomed.

The Latest Evolution of the -Omes: The Diseasome Comes to Life

In 1988 if you had told most scientists that the human genome would be sequenced within 20 years, and that the resulting genome would turn out to be the least complicated of the –omes, most of them (including this one) would have said that you had been reading too much science fiction.

I distinctly remember discussions in graduate school about how the human genome probably contained around 150,000 genes. As the years progressed, techniques improved and research continued ... and the size of the human genome began to collapse quickly. At one point I remember hearing a colleague comment on how humans appeared to be "de-evolving" at a record pace! By the year 2000 the human genome had shrunk to around 50,000 genes, and over the next eight years it continued to contract. Recent estimates place the number of genes at around 24,000–30,000.

What had happened was not some major evolutionary genomic constriction event; rather, it was a greater understanding of how genes interacted and were processed by the metabolic machinery of the cell. Scientists began to think that it was not the genes themselves that were important; it might be the gene products that truly mattered.

For many molecular biologists, and probably most of the biotechnology community, the genome turned out to be somewhat of a bust. A disease is a phenotype, an outward portrayal of a trait, which in the case of most diseases has an underlying cause in the genome, but not in all cases. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a nice example of a condition that is caused not by a defect in a gene (although there is some suggestion of genetic susceptibility), but rather by a malfunctioning protein called a prion. In fact, most diseases are caused by protein-related problems. Thus, in order to understand human disease it was necessary to take a good look at the proteome, or the sum of the proteins within a cell.

The size of the proteome appears to be even more elusive than the size of the genome. Estimates range from between 90,000 to more than 400,000 proteins in the human proteome. Of course this number is dependent on a number of items, including cell type, influence of external stimuli, cell age, nutritional state, etc. The proteome is the cell's response to its environment, and therefore it is expected that it will fluctuate depending on the needs of the cell.

So while some still work to identify the entire proteome, attention has shifted to what the proteome can tell us about the health of a cell. To do that, it was necessary to understand interactions within the proteome. This is called the interactome and it encompasses the study of all interactions at the molecular level within cells. The interactome is based primarily on protein-protein interactions. This led to amazing breakthroughs in systems biology, which integrated biochemistry, molecular genetics and cell biology to more fully understand how cells work.

Something very interesting occurred at this point. When studying protein interactions it is often useful to go back and identify the genes that code for each protein. Advances in biotech have made this a relatively easy process, and it was only a matter of time before scientists began to uncover some intriguing connections. In a New York Times article by Andrew Pollack, the author interviews scientists who have used studies of the proteome and interactome to reveal genes common to both heart attacks and muscular dystrophy — two seemingly unrelated conditions.

In other words, molecular science has come full circle. An understanding of the genome is once again important, but so is an understanding of the interactome and proteome. Together, these items are sometimes called the diseasome. The diseasome represents the latest evolution of the -ome; it fully integrates all information to understand factors that may cause a disease.

If you are having a hard time visualizing the diseasome, then a quick visit to an interactive graphic on a portion of the diseasome prepared by The New York Times will help immensely. If you notice, there are connections in this diagram that seem to be impossible if you think only about the disease, such as genes linking myocardial infarctions and Alzheimer's disease. But if you step back from the disease for a second, and integrate the information, it starts to make sense. At the cellular level, metabolic activities are directed by genes and proteins interacting in complex manners. Since there are a limited number of genes and proteins, but a seemingly unlimited number of diseases, then there must be common factors that we have previously missed.

So what does all of this mean? The ability to visualize these interactions may allow medical researchers to develop innovative methods of detecting and treating disease states. Some, such as Dr. Albert-László Barabási at The New England Journal of Medicine and Northeastern University, have called this network medicine.

In the very near future, as more of these interactions are mapped out, doctors may begin to prescribe unique combinations of drugs that would have not even been considered 10, or even five, years ago.

Diseases that previously were thought to be too complex to cure, such as muscular dystrophy and diabetes, may very soon be things of the past.

Note: this article first appeared in the June 5, 2008 issue of BioWorld Perspectives, and is reproduced here by permission of AHC Media, LLC

It May Not Pay to be Smart...If You Are a Fly

It pays be to smart.....doesn't it? Many of us struggled through years of undergraduate and graduate school just to get an upper-hand in the great game of life. But now, a new research article in the journal Evolution suggests that, at least for flies, being smart is going to cost you... in lifespan.

Researchers at the University of Lausanne bred flies that were "smarter" in responding to specific scents than other flies. When they took at look at the lifespan of these flies they realized that the "smart" flies lived about 15% less time than the , well, "not as smart" flies.

Drosophila are often used as model organisms for a variety of genetic studies. This study is important in that it may help shed some light on the "costs" of intelligence. By costs I mean what the organism has to give up in order to develop intelligence, and this is something that we really need to know if we are going to ever figure out how complex intelligence evolved on this planet. However, lets make something clear... these were not smart flies. Flies really aren't very bright, I know, I breed them. They are like fish in a tank... pretty to look at, but not much going on upstairs. So although we can use fruit flies for a variety of purposes, let us not give them credit for being smart.

What I worry about is what will happen when a sound-bite of this information gets out. We already have a problem keeping kids in school - telling them that straight A's will cost them 10 years of their life... well, that would be a mistake. Someone, somewhere, is going to use this information to justify dropping out of school and smoking 2 packs a day.... just watch.