• BREAKING: Scientists Have Confirmed a New DNA Structure Inside Human Cells
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https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-confirmed-a-new-dna-structure-inside-living-cells-i-motif-intercalated
https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2018-04/019-dna-i-motif-structure-living-cells-1.jpg Woah, this is wild. We clearly still have so very much to learn about biology is general. I imagine a more complicated structure like this will make genetic engineering even more difficult. Excited to see what traits exist because of structures like this.
The person who discovered this is certainly going down in the books.
It seems that this particular structure acts in a similar method to nucleotide methylation, effecting transcription rates, promoter binding, inhibition etc.
Could this discovery help lead to advancements in preventing aging? It's been awhile since I've had a bio class but I'm pretty sure that's what this means
Probably not. Sure, this is cool, but it isn't anywhere near as important as Watson & Crick's discovery of the double helix structure. Besides, we've known about weird nucleotide structures for a while now. This kind of motif is reminiscent of base paring in RNA, though this is the first time I've heard of something like this in human DNA in vivo. Potentially. It's hard to say since we have no idea what the hell these structures do in the first place. It's possible they are involved in gene expression, but it's also possible that they do absolutely nothing at all. Even if it's the former, I wouldn't expect to see any clinical applications of this discovery for a loooong time, though.
What that says is that it's effectively a switch. Sure, you can use the discovery of semiconductors to make super fast computers like we have today, but that alone really wasn't enough to end up with the current designs.
When you say 'effecting', do you mean that it creates them in the first place?
DNA methylation refers to the process in which a single carbon atom (and 3 hydrogen atoms), is added to the cytosine base in DNA. How the DNA becomes methylated in the first place, or rather the specific mechanism, is unknown. However, the discovery of DNA methylation is quite recent, and is one of the pillars of epigenetics, or the study of heritable changes that do not affect the DNA sequence. Methylation is caused by different environmental factors around the individual, for example, smoking tobacco causes DNA methylation which raises the risk of asthma in the children of smokers, even if they quit before the child is conceived. Something that is fucking crazy is a recent study claimed to be able to make mice fear a certain smell with electric shocks delivered to their grandparents.
It's not exactly unknown, the reaction is catalysed by DNA methyltransferases using S-adenosyl methionine as the methylating agent. Anyway a better answer to Dan The Man's question would have been "I meant affecting, not effecting".
Ah, that's pretty interesting, thanks. I was just not sure if you meant 'effecting' or 'affecting', as the former is like, 'I effected a building' as in building it in the first place, and 'affect' would be changing an existing building. English has so many dumb rules and confusing words, lol. I've always found DNA fascinating, but don't know much about it other than that it has 4 markers, so I picked up on Blade Runner 2049's reference to that, something for which I'm very grateful.
Imagine dealing with hundreds of millions year old legacy code
Great, right after I finish all my genetics courses and get my minor, this shit happens.
Whoopsie, i'd forgotten about that. Honestly a lot of the time when you're dealing with molecular biology it's perfectly valid to say that we dunno how the fuck it works just the fact that it does. I did mean affecting though yeah.
"Something that is fucking crazy is a recent study claimed to be able to make mice fear a certain smell with electric shocks delivered to their grandparents." To be fair, I would be pretty afraid if someone was electrocuting my grandparents. Just saying.
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