Friday, March 6, 2009

Science is fun


(source)


Question:
J.M. Kearsey et al. “Does the p53 up-regulated Gadd45 protein have a role in excision repair?” Science 270, 1004–1005 (1995)

Answer:
G. Barreto, G. et al. “Gadd45a promotes epigenetic gene activation by repair-mediated DNA demethylation.” Nature 445, 671–675 (2007)
Another answer:
S.G. Jin et al. “GADD45A does not promote DNA demethylation.” PLoS Genet. 4, e1000013 (2008)

7 comments:

Just like a guy said...

Really? is it?

Anarchist Chossid said...

Didn’t you see what I wrote?

le7 said...

Because they're contrasting opinions?

Anarchist Chossid said...

Yes. If you actually go through the literature search, you see that in certain areas, it’s such a mess.

There are studies done, using DNA methylase inhibitors in brain, showing effects on DNA methylation, synaptic function and memory acquisition — while in fact, DNMT inhibitors cannot work in post-mitotic cells (e.g., neurons), since they require to be incorporated into replicating DNA.

What a jungle.

(One answer to that is that perhaps DNA is routinely “corrected” for damage repair and as a result demethylated, which requires it to be re-methylated — and this is where DNMT inhibitors come in, incorporating into repaired DNA and blocking methylation. But, as the cited articles show, it’s not even clear this happens. :)

le7 said...

Yeah, yeesh too lazy for all that.

Maybe I wouldn't be so lazy if I learned the lingo.

Anarchist Chossid said...

You have to be in the game to get it completely. Like in music. Even if I take time to listen to every note of Horowitz’s Rachmaninoff no. 3, I still won’t ever get it completely, since I am not a musician (a black sheep in the family).

Although there is certain advantage of science over art — emes is emes, regardless of taste — to see art in science still requires taste, in my opinion.

le7 said...

I guess I meant b'chlal. But yes. Indeed.