Telomeres: Gateway to Life

This month, two new things happened in science. On October 5, the Nobel Prize was, for the first time, given to two women, Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn. The prize was also shared with Jack Szostak. The three scientists are given the award for their contributions to the discovery of telomeres and telomerase in the 1980s. These two components exist in every chromosome we have, and scientists have connected them to the length of cell life.
At the end of our chromosomes there are protective caps called telomeres. These caps were first recognized by Blackburn when she discovered a sequence of DNA, CCCCAA, which was repeated at the end of chromosomes several times during cell division. When she presented her findings in a conference, Jack Szostak was highly interested. He was doing some chromosome research of his own when he discovered a chromosome that was “rapidly degraded” when introduced to yeast. Szostak wondered if the sequence Blackburn discovered during cell creation could help explain the destroying of these chromosomes.
Szostak and Blackburn teamed up to find out the effects of taking the CCCCAA sequence and coupling it with the chromosome that was destroyed by the yeast. They found that the sequence saved the chromosomes from degradation when reintroduced to the yeast. This was the discovery of the telomere and its importance to the protection of chromosomes during cell division. Through this experiment they were able to prove that telomeres are protective caps on chromosomes, and that once they run out, the cell dies.
Blackburn continued her work researching the telomeres and came in contact with Carol Greider at UC Berkeley. Here the two teamed up to find out how telomeres are made. They discovered an enzyme extracted from an organism that contained mRNA holding the sequence for the CCCCAA sequence which makes up telomeres. They called the enzyme telomerase and determined that it helps polymerases copy DNA without loosing any information. This means that with the help of telomerase, cells can continue to divide without loosing their chromosomes.
Blackburn, Szostak and Greider found that on each end of all our chromosomes there is a cap called a telomere, which is made from the enzyme telomerase. Every time the cell divides, this cap gets a little shorter and eventually the cap runs up and the cell can no longer divide. This has lead to the theory that is we can stop these caps from disappearing then we can allow our cells to divide and multiply forever, or at least a lot longer than they do now. Research has also found that telomerase has a habit of overdoing itself in cancer cells, making the telomeres indestructible, allowing for continuous division. Scientists believe if they can stop this they may be able to find a cure for cancer.
On Oct. 22 it was reported that Dorothy Shippen, a biophysics teacher made a new discovery in the telomere world. She, along with a team of other biologists found a set of telomere proteins in humans before only found in plants. Shippen discovered that when this protein was removed from the cell, “rampant end-to-end joining of chromosomes and dramatic defects in plant development” occurred. It was then discovered that when the human version of the protein was removed from cancer cells there was “wide-spread DNA damage and complete loss of some telomeres” and we know through the discoveries of Blackburn and Szostak, when the telomeres are lost, the cells can’t divide. This means a cure for cancer may be very close.
When I first started looking up news about telomeres I came across the two articles about how the Nobel prize was being given to the scientists who discovered telomeres. I was first looking at an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Being a major news paper it is a very credible source. However, I didn’t really like the flow of the article. It had no real chronological order with the decade seeming to change every paragraph along with the people it was talking about. This led me to the Nobel Prize website, where I hoped to find more clear information. Because the website is not constrained to news paper format I feel like the writer was able to convey the information a lot better. First off, every section of the article is labeled with a heading, starting with a summary. From then on the information about the three prize winners and their discoveries is laid out chronologically. The article was released by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet. Because it was written by the Nobel Assembly I feel the source is more credible and less cluttered, as it is the origin of the information.
After I read about the winners of this years Nobel Prize, I decided to see where their research has gone today. That’s when I found the articles on Dorothy Shippen’s findings. The first article I read was from Eurek Alert. I had never heard of the website but the article looked very credible. The first thing in the article is Shippen’s contact information. The writer must be someone from inside Texas A&M as they give information about ongoing research as well as places to find more news and updates. The other article I read was the actual write up of the experiments done by Shippen and her colleagues. This version was the very technical, scientific version. Its jargon made it almost impossible to read unless you were a scientist or wanted to do a few hours of additional research. The Eurek Alert provided the essential information in a way that the common person could understand, and did it in an interesting way. All the sources I looked at were credible. For the Nobel articles the primary source was more helpful for me while in Shippen’s case, it was the secondary source that did it for me.

Sources used for Nobel Prize information:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/press.html

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20091006_3_Americans_share_Nobel_in_medicine.html

Sources used for Shippen’s findings:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/tau-cwc102609.php

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WSR-4XHCCH8-9&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=dcb57d5928146b5a1e5ee9b849a53879

Long-Term effects of cocaine on Babies

I chose to research the topic of the effects of crack cocaine on fetuses during pregnancy. I was just skimming through the health articles on Popular Science, when i came across this article titled " Crack, Rats, and T Cells, Oh My!". This article discusses the misconceptions about the use of illicit drugs during pregnancy. The other article i chose was from the NY Times. This article also talks about all the short and long-term effects of drugs on pregnancy as well as legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco.
According to Popular Science, the differences between "normal children" and those exposed to cocaine where very tiny. It also states that according to research legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco have worse effects on babies then cocaine. This shocked me. Who would think that substances that are legal in our country can do more harm to your child then dangerous and illegal drugs such as cocaine.
The other article from NY Times shares a true story of two girls ages 14 and 9, who are both responsible, solid students who enjoy reading, and devoted helpers at home, are both "crack babies". Their mother used cocaine, as well as heroin and alcohol during both her pregnancies. While researchers aren't saying that cocaine is OK for a baby to be exposed to, they re saying that it is better then when a baby is exposed to alcohol or tobacco during pregnancy.
"Surveys by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2006 and 2007 found that 5.2 percent of pregnant women reported using any illicit drug, compared with 11.6 percent for alcohol and 16.4 percent for tobacco" (Susan Okie)
The news in both articles was very similar in its delivery, however both articles went about discussing it differently. The article from Popular Science was very straightforward and strictly statistically and informational. The article from NY Times was a little more personal and told the story of healthy and intelligent crack babies. I personally found the article from NY Times to be more interesting and informational. I think it grabs the readers attention more by taking it to that personal level and showing people a rela life situation and success story.
The reason i chose this topic was because i just think this is an issue that is usually somewhat overlooked by things such as war and the state of our country economically. To me, this should also be an important topic for those poor innocent children who are exposed to such harm. The amount of women who drink, smoke, and snort while pregnant is extremely large and is morally wrong.


Wallace, Julia. "Crack, Rats, and T Cells, Oh My!" Popular Science. 3 Feb. 2009. Web. 28 Oct. 2009. .

Okie, Susan. "Crack Babies-The Epidemic that Wasn't." NY Times. NY Times, 26 Jan. 2009. Web. 28 Oct. 2009. .

For my blog post I have chosen a form of artwork that has a trivial past. Graffiti art has not always been regarded as such. In recent years graffiti art has become more and more accepted in art culture with writers even opening their own galleries. This piece, entitled COMBO is a collaboration between famous street artists Blu and David Ellis. It was produced in a week during FAME Festival, a gathering of street artists from around the world, in Italy.

What really intrigued me about this piece in particular is that it is actually a few art forms combined into one. By using time lapse video and stop frame animation they are able to make their paintings dynamic and moving. By creating the video they are able to use their painting space in a totally new way. Capturing the work in video and pictures allows them to create multiple pieces within the same space simply by painting over a previous one.

In making this video they have created multiple pieces of art that can be viewed in a variety of ways. The main piece is obviously the video itself. It allows them to expose their work to a larger number of people, where as in typical graffiti art a painting may only be viewed by those who pass it on the street. Another piece they created by making this is the monastery itself. The remaining art from the video is left on the floors and walls for anybody who wants to see.

To me this piece can be most closely related to the formalist theory of art. By watching the video you really get to see the challenges and all of the work that went into painting it. The setting they chose for this is an abandoned monastery on the outskirts of Grottaglie, Italy. The choice of setting is interesting because a monastery is not a place you would typically find art of this style. It shows how they used an unconventional medium or space to produce this piece.

What is your view on grafiti? Do you consider it art?