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Serial Features——

Secrets of The Sequence

Country: America

Added: 2006

Category: Science

Abstract:

Certain scientific researches prove that some major illnesses plaguing human beings greatly are related with gene, such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes, hepatosis and cancer. This series introduces the latest medical achievements in genetic sequence research. And thanks to these achievements, treatment for these diseases are no longer as difficult as before. Further more, genetic research is also widely applied to farming, food industry, environmental protection and many other fields.

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Secrets of the Sequence (1)
The warnings are everywhere — in newspaper and magazine articles, in televised public service announcements, even on cigarette packages: tobacco is harmful to your health. In fact, it can be and often is quite deadly. Notwithstanding, about 3,000 Americans under 18 take up smoking every day, and many of us are unable to stop. So, once we take that first or second puff, why do we become addicted?
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Secrets of the Sequence (2)
Welcome to Secrets of The Sequence. We've got a lot of names for it: flying off the handle, seeing red, going berserk, running amok. Although come to think of it, I'm not quite sure how you run amok. We want to understand how a complex behavior like aggression is brought about by the nervous system of organisms.
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Secrets of the Sequence (3)
Welcome to Secrets of The Sequence. The World Health Organization says ten million people around the world die each year because antibiotics don't work any more. It's a growing problem and it's all because of a germ's genes. Since their discovery in the last century, antimicrobial agents have substantially reduced the threat posed by infectious diseases. Over the years, these medicines have saved the lives and eased the suffering of millions of people. But these gains are now threatened by the advent of antibiotic-resistant microbes.
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Secrets of the Sequence (4)
Biological warfare was an ominous specter in America throughout the Cold Car, but pretty safely kept under wraps by both superpowers. Now we face the possibility of biological agents in the hands of terrorists, and that's very troublesome. Genetic research is complicating biological weapons preparedness, simply because the tools are different, the tools are better. Scientists have been working to refine their weapons to make them more virulent, more likely to reach their targets at full strength and to make them resistant to antibiotics.
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Secrets of the Sequence (5)
Now the science of genomics has been drafted to serve in the war on killer diseases, including the bacteria that causes bubonic plague. The technical name is yersinia pestis. But in the 14th century it was called, more graphically, the black death, wiping out a third of the population of Europe — 25 million people. In a handful of outbreaks since the 6th century, the plague has killed an estimated 200 million people worldwide. How does this killer do its deadly work?
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Secrets of the Sequence (6)
William Heseltine, a Ph.D from Harvard in biophysics, was part of the team that discovered that AIDS is a retrovirus. Today he is pioneering the medical application of knowledge gained from the sequencing of the genome, paving the way for drugs that could potentially save millions of lives. Heseltine's dream for the future of medicine is a longer and healthier life span based on regenerative medicine.
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Secrets of the Sequence (7)
Humans have evolved to have a preference for sweet things. We have a "sweet tooth" because we need sugars to provide energy for the cells in our bodies. But modern man may be getting too much of a good thing. The western world is facing an epidemic of obesity and a rapid increase in cases of diabetes. But what if there were a natural substance low in calories and much sweeter than sugar? Our ability to track down and manipulate genes could mean sweeter times are just around the corner. Here's the brazzein.
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Malaria is one of the toughest to control of all infectious diseases. It's been the target of research and vaccines for decades, but it still strikes close to 500 million people worldwide each year, and kills almost 3 million of them, mostly children. We'd virtually given up on the idea of eradicating malaria, until now. Genetics just might help us eliminate one of the world's deadliest killers. Let's see if our cocky computer guide knows anything about it.
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Secrets of the Sequence (9)
At present there are two kinds of cloning: reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning. Human cloning is the laboratory production of individuals who are genetic copies of other human beings. All the genetic information necessary to produce a human being is contained in the nucleus of a person's cells. Remove the nucleus from a human egg, and insert a nucleus from another human being, and theory says when that egg is implanted in a woman, it will develop into a duplicate of the donor — a clone.
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Secrets of the Sequence (10)
Are twins different? That's right. Medically speaking, there are two basic types of twins, one is monozygotic twins, and the other one is dizygotic twins. So far, the doctors could determine if twins are dizygotic or monozygotic through DNA testing, which is quite important for telling whether the twins would suffer from Cohn’s disease who has a strong genetic component.
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To clone or not to clone? The question sparked a very hot controversy these days. There is widespread agreement that the repproductive cloning of human beings is and should remain taboo. We just don't know enough to guarantee that a cloned baby would be born healthy. But many favor therapeutic cloning and that research is underway in a number of laboratories. This is how it works.
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Secrets of the Sequence (12)
Need a new heart or liver? Science is making spare parts for humans. The whole idea of tissue engineering is how you get those cells to actually form the tissue and carry out the functions of tissue. Today, medical researchers are trying to develop that promethean ability to regenerate kidneys, hearts, intestines, you name it. Tissue engineering is not synonymous with genetic engineering, although it may include the use of embryonic stem cells and organ cloning. The promise of tissue engineering is enormous, especially for whole organ replacement.
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Secrets of the Sequence (13)
You know, major scientific advances often force us to reexamine what we value — what is worth pursuing, and what should be left in the petri dish or the lab? Genetics is the same, but the stakes could be much higher since we’re playing with the code that determines who we are. As we learn more about how our genes operate, we face the challenge of using that information in ethical ways. Your ethics may not be the same as mine. How can free nations and free market sort out the ethical questions of genetic biotechnology? Let's look at a couple of areas of concern.
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Secrets of the Sequence (14)
Gene therapy is not just for people anymore. The dogs were born blind, following treatment the vision returned, basically recreating that animal one hundred percent. They are our companions, our protectors, and our friends. Like us, they can weaken, get sick, and die. But also like us, pets' lives are being changed by recent advances in genetics. Researchers around the world are working to map the genetic code of all kinds of animals, from endangered species, to livestock, to man's best friend. What's next? Gene therapy for rover?
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Secrets of the Sequence (16)
In the human genome, there are 23 pairs of chromosomes. For 22 of these pairs, a chromosome from the fahter teams with the same chromosomes from the mother, the 23rd chromosome is different. It can come from an X version and a Y version. The egg always has a single X chromosome, sperm can carry either an X version or a Y. If it is an X, the embryo develops with an XX pair, and it's female; if the fertilized sperm carries a Y, it's a boy.
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Secrets of the Sequence (17)
After the mapping of human gene, the scientists try to encode genetic code of horses. There is a research statement saying that 30% to 40% of horses' performance in a race depends on their genetic factors. That's why the farmers emphasize on the genetic advantages of horses in trainings.
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Secrets of the Sequence (18)
Too many salt in the soil will poison the plants for salt desorys plants' water absorbing ablities. While there are massive plowland couldn't be planting every year for the high salt rate. The decrease of plowland made the scientists do research on salt resistant plants, and have found out the gene why the plants can resist salt. When this gene was injected into tomatoes, the tomatoes can grow in the high salt field like nomal tomatoes.
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Secrets of the Sequence (19)
For people who lost their relatives, forensic genetics may give some comfort to them. Besides this, we'll also introduce the gene application in the manufacturing of cheese.
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Secrets of the Sequence (20)
A hereditary link to one of man's dreaded cancers — we may be able to prevent this disease with this knowledge. The cloning debate and an update on the poltics of it. They really offer the chance of changing the fundamental structure of what a human being is. And we learn how scientists have genetically engineered a popular seafood. We do not support the commercial use of transgenic animals.
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Secrets of the Sequence (21)
The war on terrorism has brought some new realities to all of us. One of them is the possibility of biological attack. Terrorists might well try to release lethal germs — viruses and bacteria — in densely populated areas, which would wreak havoc. A frightening scenario! There is protection against many of these powerful agents in the form of vaccines. The problem is availability and safety. This is what everyone is afraid of.
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Secrets of the Sequence (22)
We spend billions a year fighting fat. But are we fighting our own genome? If we can find genes that contribute to thinness, we might find new answers. A small rat is helping scientists pinpoint the genetic links to the worst form of diabetes. We're looking at the reversing of diabetes. And we may soon be able to clone body tissue and complete organs from ourselves, for ourselves. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of diseases that this technology could be used to treat.
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Secrets of the Sequence (23)
The lastest DNA identification science has helped identify more than 1,200 victims of the terrorist attacks a year ago. You begin to understand that this is important work. The same science is helping people find long-lost relatives and trace the family tree. There are one billion potential ancestors for each one of us. And a report about using a leukemia patient's own bone marrow as a source to help create stem cells to cure the disease, it's been the holy grail of cancer biology.
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Secrets of the Sequence (24)
Sixty years ago, Japanese army scinetists experimented with an organic paste that glowed softly in the dark. They planned to put a stripe on each soldier's back. The glow would be subtle enough not to draw attention, but visible enough to keep patrols together as they filed through the jungle night. The luminescent paste would become one of the great tools of molecular biology.
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Secrets of the Sequence (25)
Aided by our exploding knowledge of genetics, scientists are beginning to paint the big picture of how all animals on this planet, including humans, are related through our DNA. No matter how different animals are in size, shape, composition, whatever we might see as dramatically different visually, fundamentally, the genetic logic and the genes that govern body formation are quite similar. So if the genes of all insects and animals are so similar, how can everything look and behave so differently?
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Secrets of the Sequence (26)
As techniques for analyzing gene sequences became more efficient and the data bases were filled in, researchers found they had some surprising results. What they found in organisms like fruit flies and worms, is that a relatively small number of genes seem to control the rate of aging. Biologists were beside themselves with excitement trying to find those genes, concerned maybe not so much with the longevity of worms as of humans. What people working on aging are trying to do is to improve both quality and quantity of life.
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Secrets of the Sequence (27)
Genetic diseases are linked to either dominant genes or recessive genes. In the case of a dominant condition, only one parent must carry the gene. The child has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the abnormal gene copy and getting the disease. However, most known genetic diseases are caused by recessive genes. In these cases, both parents must carry the abnormal copy of the gene in order to pass it on to their offspring. A child has a 25 percent chance of inheriting the defective gene from both mother and father. PGD can eliminate that risk.

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Secrets of the Sequence (28)
Waiting for an organ transplant is desperate and anguished time for patients and their families. More than 5,800 died while waiting last year alone. But what if patients didn't have to wait for organs? What if researchers could create organs and tissues out of cells at will, as needed? What if they could grow a new heart muscle for a failing heart. A new liver or a new kidney, turns out these efforts may no longer be in the realm of "what ifs". Researchers have succeeded in their first experimental attempts. It's called tissue engineering.
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Secrets of the Sequence (29)
Heberlein and her team study these varieties of flies and many others, in an effort to identify genes that regulate the effects of alcohol. Alcohol induces a change in behavior such as it stimulates the flies. They run around more rapidly. What you can do then is to go into the fly genome and mutate one gene at a time in a completely random fashion and then ask, "How does that mutation affect the behavior that you're interested in?".
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Secrets of the Sequence (30)
For the drug industry, it is an especially lengthy and expensive process and they say it is the major reason drugs cost so much. Regardless of the cost of research and development, whether from a government-funded lab or the private sector people will pay the money to feel better and live longer. So it spawned a tongue-twister named pharmacogenomics. That pharmacogenomics is the study of how an individual's genetic inheritance affects the body's response to drugs. Creating individualized drugs is the ultimate goal.
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Secrets of the Sequence (31)
It's commonly estimated that up to 60% to 70% of America's processed foods contain some product of genetic engineering. These new traits, designed by scientists, might be in that bright red tomato or they could be in the corn syrup that sweetens our candy bars, possibly the canola oil sizzling in the frying pan. Some people love GE crops. That's what they call them, GE which stands not for light bulbs, but for genetically engineered! Others, especially Europeans, hate the idea of GE food. They call the results of Frankenfood!
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Secrets of the Sequence (32)
Pounding, throbbing, blinding, Pain! Migraine headaches! In fact, there are an estimated 25 million Americans who regularly suffer migraines. Roughly three out of four are women. A migraine isn't your normal tension headache. It's a specific type of pain — often a throbbing on one side of the head. The cause of all this suffering has remained a mystery but recently they have started to decode the migraine's secrets using a very unusual helper.
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Secrets of the Sequence (33)
In this new era of transgenic science, spider man is out and the spider-goat is in. Nestled in the countryside outside of Montreal, Canada, there's a goat farm unlike any other. On the outside the goats look perfectly normal. They run, they play, and they munch on hay. But on the inside, the goats harbor an unusual secret. They have been genetically modified with a spider gene, an animal that is almost all goats, but a teensy-weensy bit spider.
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Secrets of the Sequence (34)
This right here is a chimerical mouse. These mice were not so much born, as engineered in the university of Utah laboratory of Dr. Mario Capecchi. We can inactivate the gene at anytime we want, in any place in the body you want. Capecchi pioneered a way to tinker with any gene in a mouse. The result is that mice can be custom designed for all sorts of medical research.
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Secrets of the Sequence (35)
For century's isolation, disease, feuds and disasters limited variation in Iceland's gene pool. In 1995, more people left the country than came to it, although lately there's been a small influx. But Iceland's small population is yielding large genetic returns. Finding abnormal disease-causing genes appears to be easier in a country whose population has such genetic similarity.
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Secrets of the Sequence (36)
The Nobel Prize went to Dr. Brenner and two of his students who discovered roundworm genes control organ development, plus genes that signal cells to die. Roundworm research uncovered striking similarities between genes of simple organisms and humans. Genes in animals usually have a human counterpart. So studying animal genomes sheds light on the human genome.
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Secrets of the Sequence (37)
The biotech revolution is headed for a grocery store near you. If the Food and Drug Administration approves, products from cloned animals could be on the market in a matter of months. The idea of genetically recreating animals with superior genes has a powerful appeal to the farm industry. And though clones are banned from the market now, they may represent the future. Care to see it?
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Secrets of the Sequence (38)
Estimates of numbers of animals of all species used in medical research annually vary widely, but are in the millions. It depends on the particular thing you’re trying to replicate. So, non-human primates might be used for virus research. Rats and dogs are used for drug metabolism for example. You name it there is some specific disease or condition that some animal might represent. Gizmos like this one may one day replace some animal test models.
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Secrets of the Sequence (39)
The hypothesis is that ability is, in part, dictated by genetics. And the scientists want to understand the genetic aspect of this trait. If a sibling who also had early musical training, there's a fifty percent chance the sibling will also have absolute pitch because they have the same genetic makeup.
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Secrets of the Sequence (40)
Across the world, science is closing in on the genetic causes of schizophrenia. Hearing voices or hallucinations is a characteristic for schizophrenia. It turns out animals that glow in the dark are not atomic freaks but they are helping advance gene research. Because it's less damaging to tissue.
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Secrets of the Sequence (41)
Women who starve themselves to extreme thinness and sometimes to death may be driven as much by their genes as by society's pressures. Anorexia nervosa is a devastating illness. It is relatively rare, affecting less than 1% of the population. Sufferers are invariably women who starve themselves dangerously thin. It is the result of our obsession with thinness. But recent research is focusing attention on what may be a genetic link.
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Secrets of the Sequence(42)
If bees were gone we'd miss all that honey. The United States produces 200 million pounds of honey every year. But far more importantly, our crops would not be pollinated. The foulbrood begins to grow in the larvae and it kills it. Genetic science is the rescue of the honeybee.
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Secrets of the Sequence (43)
Now, one in particular, the monarch, is in the middle of a genetic engineering dispute, and a lot of people are worried. Recently there was a mysterious die-off in the monarch butterfly population. Were they killed by freezing weather or genetically modified crops? It is now possible to meddle with a very fundamental aspect of hereditary.
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Today we're going to start by talking about vision — one of the most powerful ways we experience life. Now some genetic sleuths hope they can stop some people from going blind. Even if you had 20/20 vision when you were young, chances are your eye sight is getting worse as you get older. For most of us, this just means you'll turn on a few more lights around the house or get reading glasses. But for others, much more serious eye problems can develop, like a condition called macular degeneration.
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Secrets of the Sequence (45)
Bald is beautiful. Try telling that to an estimated 50 million men in the United States with some degree of hereditary hair loss who are trying to avoid the comb-over. For years we've used everything from hair plugs to hair pieces to hair growth creams to hide balding heads. But gene therapy — permanently changing our genes — is being proposed as a way to bring hair back to those shiny domes. And modifying what's on or more accurately what's not on our heads is only the beginning of changing our "cosmetic genes".
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Secrets of the Sequence (46)
It is so important to understand the mechanisms that underlie the regulation of sleep and circadian rhythms because sleep problems are prevalent in our society. They appear to be growing year by year. And more and more research is showing that it affects our longevity, quality of life and health.
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Secrets of the Sequence (47)
In December, 2002, many of those same researchers announced they had completed the second most important genome in the world. The second? What important genome could that possibly be? It's the mouse genome, of course. The mouse genome is so important because it's so similar to the human genome. And most of those genes are about the same. Line them side by side, gene to gene, and 70 million years of evolution stares you in the face.
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Secrets of the Sequence (48)
American James Watson and Englishman Francis Crick connected many smaller discoveries, and built their famous model, the DNA molecule. It's been elevated to the status of an iconic discovery. Man and toadfish, at least two things in common: our middle ear and experience in outer space. A young cancer fighter in training. The first time he faced his enemy, he was only three.
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Secrets of the Sequence (49)
The fact that deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, carried genetic information was known, but few thought it was the central mechanism in heredity. All the big players ended up getting things wrong. It was folks coming out of left field. You know the notion that DNA was the hereditary material itself. If small is beautiful, then nanotechnology is astounding. A new science, toxico-genomics aims to bar toxins from our environment and our bodies. We can save years in drug development.
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Secrets of the Sequence (50)
Gene detectives are tracking down a killer, one that has decimated our beautiful old oak trees. It's not a simple matter of going in and spraying a fungicide. How and why did plants evolve to convert sunlight into food? And an update on the new congress and what will they do about human cloning? I don't think that fertilized egg has a chance at all of becoming a human in a petri dish.
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Secrets of the Sequence (51)
We think of a microchip as the brains of a computer. Now a chip can help diagnose diseases in your brain. Smoking may be harmful to your health but the genome isn't listening, when there was genetic component to having a pleasurable reaction. Five years ago I didn't know a gene from a hubcap. You can patent a better mousetrap. And now, for that matter, you can patent a better mouse.
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Secrets of the Sequence (52)
Waiting for a cure from genetic science? For the last two decades, gene therapy has been the holy grail of genetic research. But success has been as elusive as lucy in the sky. People's hopes were raised too high then they weren't ready for the long haul. Gene researchers work to be sure there will always be an apple a day. We've got a lot of genes here that are very interesting to us, and using the genes from deep sea worms to create pollution fighters on land.