Tetris with Proteins

Life is messy.

An Example of Entropy

Very rarely in nature is there a straight line, or a single element. Life is messy, things mix, combine, bend and knot. The universe favors lower energy states, higher order systems require energy to be put in for them to work. As a result thingsare seldom ever neat and tidy. This is true of society, my bedroom, and of much smaller scale things, including DNA, RNA and proteins.


DNA, made famous for it's double helix formation, has even greater structure, going into tertiary and even quarternary structural units. The same is true of RNA and perhaps more importantly, proteins. Why is a protein important over DNA and RNA for it's form? DNA and RNA are, ultimately, blueprints for the body. Their structure is a result of what is easiest and lowest energy formation (caused because of negative charges, hydrophobicity etc...).






Proteins however can derive their function solely based on their shape, forming enzymes or otherwise. If a protein has an incorrect structure it will not react properly, and other biologic functions would not work, making the processes essential to life nealy impossible. As such outside of indentifying the constituent parts of the protein, another important aspect is determining it's structure. This is typically done using a Rosetta program via computer to determine the best possible arrangement of amino acids. The Rosetta program does well, except it does get stuck, as in getting to a lower energy state, sometimes you must cross through a higher energy one, causing the program to stop

So why am I going over protein structure and entropy? Much like the jellyfish article, I found another that was weird enough to catch my attention.


Protein folding is now a MMO game.

The use of the sorting algorthm is still invaluable, as the proteins can be several thousand amino acids long. However reaching the ending point of the program, researchers decided to make a game out of it, giving the virtual proteins to an online community to solve, getting points for making the protein have a lower and lower energy required. While algorthms and computer programs are extremely useful in science, human beings are definitely still needed... so screw you H.A.L.

The same tactic has begun to be used by astonomers and in other fields


I'm hoping in the future a biochem degree will boil down to a giant video game.

Regeneration of organs, limbs, not solely fiction now

Science has made many strides in the field of medicine, but now it is delving into what we had once though to be science fiction and only for Canadian born super-heroes.





In general cell generation is limited. Cells take time to divide, and cannot be reprogrammed to form other biological machinery. The skin cells cannot regrow bone, kidney cells cannot regrow a lung, and so on. The ability to regrow a limb in the multicelluar animal kingdom is limited to certain types of lizards, (and only their tale) as well as worms. Once a cell is programmed to preform a certain function (which is decided fairly early on in life) it thus far can't be reprogrammed to form new tissue.


That's starting to change....

The first instance I'll talk about is about joint replacement. Today's titanium joints work fairly well, but need to be replaced after about 10 years. Replacing them, however, is a challenge for both the patient and the surgeon and often involves weeks of rehabilitation. A team from Columbia University has proposed a way to deal with this problem: inserting a chemical-infused scaffold generates new tissue by attracting stem cells. The scaffolding, meant to resemble a joint, was infused with growth horomone to encourage cell generation in several rabbits. Thanks to the added growth factor protein, the rabbit's own stem cells naturally migrated into the scaffold and regenerated both the cartilage and the bone beneath it. The surgery to replace the joint is similar to now, except there would be no need to go back into the patient, as the joint would be natural. This is a good proof of concept in order for future regeneration of boneloss. However young rabbits are already well known for their ability to heal, and what rabbits that received the scaffold without the chemical only healed somewhat. Growth horomone while natural can lead to complications in older patients, so it would need to be monitored...


Regardless however, it is a solid proof of concept that this indeed can work and that a patient's own body can heal itself, given the right tools. This would be a marked improvement over prostetics and synthetic limb growth both of which hold the possibility of the patient's body rejecting the new limb.





Every adult creature still has stem cells, but they grow in limited numbers and are typically found in the bone marrow and therefore later in the blood, younger creatures tend to have more of them, as their bodies are still growing. Unlike other cells they may differentiate and change their function (lung cell, heart cell etc...). Stem cell research has had some bad press due to it's use of fetal stem cells, but there is a greater use of adult stem cells, which poses less ethical quandries. Stem cell research opens up alot of possibilities for future medical advances.

Meanwhile over at Yale great strides are being made in the field of organ growth. In a way similar to the one above, a scaffolding of a lung was used and then was implanted with stem cells, which then regrew the lung. It was not perfect however, as the newly formed lung did seem prone to blood clots. The organ was not reconstructed from the mouse's own tissue as well so it was prone to being rejected as a foreign substance by the body as well. It was reported that great stem cell research would be necessary before this would be applicable for use on a human.


There's alot of promising technology in the offing... it still needs work however

My love of science fiction is quickly being overshadowed by the fact that the world is BECOMING science fiction.