Week12

Ok here it is, I feel as though this question has been a while in the coming. Nature or Nurture? And i know you aren't going to like it or want to directly answer it and say that both clearly have a massive impact. But if you had to say that one had more influence on a person's development which would it be? === I was interested when we brought up horse breeding the other class and how there is this idea even today that superior parents make a superior child. Is there any science behind this or are they just blowing smoke? === Last class you talked about biology becoming a career field with money possibilities and not just an area to that is studied for knowledge itself. Could this mean that, had biology not taken this turn, universities today would not focus on biology as much? To what extent do universities educate people to go into the knowledge area still or is it mainly focused on the career part? http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/04/12/feminism-makes-boners-sad/

You pointed out that there are/were a certain number of metaphors for the human genome and the project to decode it. With terms like the secret of life and the blueprint of life, could this be a new scientific priesthood developing? How much more serious does it become when you have large corporations built around the priesthood? Does this lead to more, less, or no difference in corruption? ===

From our discussions of gene therapy, it seems like everyone is gung-ho about it until something goes wrong and then it gets pushed into the background. However, it eventually comes up again, and people keep trying until something else goes seriously wrong. How long will this continue, and will anyone ever say never again? I know it's still a fairly new thing so it's hard to say, but I just wonder how many things have to go wrong before we understand that just because it works in a mouse doesn't mean it will work in a human and perhaps more time is needed for these kinds of things before we try human clinical trials. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/cloning/cloningrisks/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk

Is the method of 'creating' dinosaurs in Jurassic Park by mixing their DNA found in ancient mosquitos with frog DNA really a true method? Is this really possible? Obviously it hasn't actually been done with dinosaurs, but has it been done, or could it be done with any other animals that have been extinct? http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/19/japanese-scientist-wants-to-clone-a-woolly-mammoth-in-the-next-five-years/

I am curious as to why the footage of the Cambridge City Council Hearings was not released until so recently? The event was surely a major point in scientific history, and if the sessions were open to the public when they occurred back in 1976, what was the reason for keeping the videotapes of them out of public record and off the internet for so long? Or is there no specific reason and this is just one of those weird things?

Last class you said the private companies focused on gene therapies which are not used anymore, so what are the companies doing now? I know Venter has the J. Craig Venter institute still running, but have the other private companies turned to a different type of research or are they still researching better ways to do gene therapies?

I recently went to a seminar in which the speaker was explaining his research with us. He said he was using recombinant DNA and metabolic engineering using E-coli and some fungi to produce biochemicals as medicine. I found this extremely related to what we were doing in class and was wondering if this research venture was made possible because of the Asilomar Conference and introduction of the Recombinant era and the effects people like Craig Venter and Francis Collins had on the biotech industry.

This question comes from the short clip we watched in class on the Cambridge City Council hearings. One of the council members brought up the question of why they were debating a scientific matter. I agree with that, why didn't they bring there case to someone else with more knowledge on the topic.

To me the Cambridge City Council Hearings seemed like a huge over reaction. They focused on a small risk that may not have even existed. And if they existed, wasn't the whole purpose of the P3 laboratories to contain the harmful pathogen? So why was it that they were so threatened by the building of a P3 laboratory? In the end the P3 lab was not built, so was it they proved it was dangerous, or simply they were unable to guarantee its safety?

My question this week is about P4 facilities. Who is allowed to run a P4 facility? Are they still restricted to government use, or are there universities or private companies that are allowed to have them? Are they also restricted to only remote areas rather than cities? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#List_of_BSL-3_and_BSL-4_facilities http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/Projects/PastProject.aspx?projectId=4

Has anyone been able to actually see the structure of DNA? Do we have enough magnification to zoom in enough to be able to make out the double helix structure?

http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=1040&bih=501&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=dna+electron+microscope&aq=0&aqi=g3&aql=&oq=dna+electron+mi http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=1040&bih=501&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=dna+stm&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

The cost of sequencing a million base pairs was about $10,000 in 2000. The total cost of a human genome project was $3 Billion over 15 years. What exactly cost so much about sequencing nucleotides? And just out of curiosity is this a large price for a publicly funded project or does typical scientific research cost this much as well? === My question is about the video we saw on Monday about research for finding the gene to the genetic disorder that the little girl had. Where does the money come from to fund research for such a rare disease? I remember a passage from Mendel's Dwarf, where Lambert wanted to research the achondroplasia gene, except there was no money for that research.

So seeing that Venter followed in Watson's footsteps for using research to obtain glory, have there been any recent example of "Oswalds"? http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/profile/john-sulston.shtml http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040198 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sulston