GDG

Approximately true, but carcinogens are generally compounds that have certain effects like binding to DNA. A compound that is just a strong oxidizing agent simply kill cells outright, without inducing cancer. If you drink a beaker of potassium permanganate, you won't have time to develop cancer Some carcinogens intercalate, or stack in between bases in the helix, which can cause reading and transcription problems. Other carcinogens chemically modify bases, which can cause the base to be misread, or in some cases can cause the cell to apoptose. Other carcinogens may interfere with regulatory proteins. A number of specific events must happen within a cell for cancer to occur. For example (and this is not a complete list), the cell must replicate inappropriately; the cell must escape apoptosis, which is the cell's usual failsafe against inappropriate or defective replication; the cell must restore its telomeres (i.e., activate its telomerase); the cell must overcome the contact inhibition on growth (which lets the cell continue to divide despite overcrowding), and so on.

I'm not sure we have enough context to give you a responsive answer to that. An electrical stimulus can be any length you want, regardless of frequency -- just a matter of how long you hold the button down...

The darting eye motion is called a saccade, and relates to how your brain builds up a visual image of your surroundings. Microsaccades (small jerks at 30-70 Hz) are necessary for basic vision, as the photoreceptors in the eye (rods and cones) react to changes in light, rather than constant illumination.

According to the GAO, the rate of approval for new drugs (new medical entities, as opposed to new uses for existing drugs) is still increasing, but slowly: the number of NMEs approved increased only 7% between 1993 and 2004. Some ascribe the reason to the idea that drug companies first went after the targets that were "easy", i.e., the "low hanging fruit" hypothesis. Research continues, but many diseases turn out to be more complex than originally thought (even those for which we have drugs now). There is a long history of "traditional medicine", which includes herbal medicine and "folk" medicines. Study of these sometimes leads directly to a good drug product, as in the case of digitalis (derived from the plant foxglove). In other cases, research has shown that there is actually no medical effect. Traditional medicine is not based on data obtained from conducting clinical trials: that data is necessary in order to determine whether a treatment actually has an effect or not. The cancer drug I think you are referring to is Tamoxifen, which is derived from yew trees. IIRC, the yew trees provide a convenient source for the precursors from which tamoxifen is made: I'm not aware of any traditional use of yew in medicine. (The wood was used to make longbows in times gone by. The needles are apparently quite toxic, and can poison livestock.)

I imagine that any mutation that affected pigmentation, e.g., of the hair or skin, would be potentially noticeable.

As long as we understand that "mutations" are not limited to single base changes. Let's not forget retroviruses and transposons, gene duplication, and chromosomal translocation...

"Transitional animals" are whole animals that can survive. In fact, evolution is all about the animals that survive the best (to oversimply things quite a bit). An animal that "cannot survive" obviously will not be having many offspring, and passing along its traits. As for what is found in the fossil record, you obviously have very little idea of what is known. See, e.g., Evolution of the horse for an example of how hooves evolved from toes. The entry on the dentary discusses how early tetrapods had jaws composed of several bones, and how 3 of these bones evolved into the bones of the inner ear (in mammals). Evolution does not explain abiogenesis, nor does it have to. As for how "instruction got into DNA in the first place", one theory is that DNA evolved from ribozymes, which are RNA molecules that have enzymatic activity (and which are known today). The activity depends on the particular sequence of bases. DNA is not "four tubes of paint", nor does it require an external intelligence. Your four tubes of paint are incapable of doing anything on their own: DNA demonstrably does. If your four tubes of paint replicated themselves (with occasional variation) and interacted with their environment, competing for scarce resources, they would probably evolve too.

I don't know if that has been fully determined (after all, the cause of MS has not been fully determined yet). L.K. Peterson et al., "Cross-reactive myelin antibody induces renal pathology" Autoimmunity (2008) 41:526-36, suggest that autoantibodies that bind myelin also cross-react with kidney proteins.

I'm happy that the paper saw fit to print the follow-up story

It is possible that factors that influence personality and temperament, and factors that shape our faces, are genetically linked. It is not necessary that the same gene cause both the facial characteristic and the personality tendency*; there may be two (or more) genes that are merely close together and usually inherited together. If your statistics hold up, and we can determine the genes that influence facial structure, this might be an excellent lead-in to genes that influence human behavior. *It is possible, though: there are other instances of genes that seem to have novel functions in the brain, as compared the rest of the body. I'll remember one of them at some point... The danger, of course, is that this type of theory can be misapplied to "racial" characteristics, and used as "scientific justification" for stereotypes. Very careful wording is called for... BTW, now that we are discussing the theory itself, perhaps this should be split off into its own thread. Moderator?

Sorry, its been too long since I worked for a vaccine company. However, vaccines that cause serious side effects rarely make it all the way through clinical trials. The tolerance for side effects is pretty low for medical conditions that are not life-threatening, and don't relieve pain or other immediate symptoms. If you vaccinate several million people, the odds are that at least a few will die within a day or so (even for no explained reason). Not necessarily due to the vaccination: a certain number of people will die unexpectedly every day, for no previously-suspected reason. And JillSwift is right about the news: the story is not nearly as interesting if they also reveal that the deceased had an aneurysm, and how likely are they to follow up with another story when they find out what the actual cause of death was? Stimulation of the immune system does make you feel "off" -- it turns out that the cytokines that run the immune system also act as neurotransmitters, and that at least some of them contribute to the feeling now called "sickness behavior." Just getting poked with a needle is enough to make many people woozy. One of my daughters used to faint every time she was vaccinated...

If you are already well-suited to the environment, it is not likely that any mutation will further improve your fitness. However, if your environment has recently changed substantially, or you have moved into a very different environment, you have much more room for improvement. It is still unlikely that any given mutation will improve your fitness, but it is more likely (and therefore more frequent) that one will. No, not really. At least, not on an individual scale. For example, mayflies are pretty successful, despite an adult lifespan of about a day. In evolution, we are only looking for that which maximizes reproduction and the survival of children to reproductive age. The ability of humans to make discussion fora does not necessarily make us more "complex" or "advanced", in the context of evolution, than apes. Although chimps are probably not well-suited to finding a mate through match.com, I suspect most of us would have extreme difficulties raising children in the jungle if dumped there naked, and environment in which chimps excel. Nope. What destination? They may be nearing "optimal fitness" for their current environment, but this is not a destination. The environment is subject to change, particularly when you consider that the environment includes the behavior of other critters, and what is optimal today may be radically suboptimal tomorrow. There is a dilemma only if you gloss over the details. First, consider that different organisms will have different rates of mutation, depending on the accuracy of their DNA polymerases and the mutagenic effects of their natural environments. Second, the emergence of a phenotypic change will in part depend on how well adapted the organism already is with respect to its current environment. As noted above, this fitness is a moving target, and the farther you are from being well-adapted, the more often a mutation will confer a benefit, leading to a change in phenotype. Third, consider that the emergence of new phenotypes and their spread throughout a population will also depend on your lifespan (or time to reproductive maturity), and how many offspring you produce.

Unfortunately, copyright does not provide a remedy against plagiarism (passing off the ideas of others as your own), only against copying your work of authorship.

This happens often enough with inventions that there is a special procedure (called "Interference") in the US Patent Office (USPTO) for determining who was actually the first to invent when independent inventors each file a patent application for the same thing. There are something over 50 new interferences declared each year. At one time, I had 4 interferences on my docket, and one interference had five independent groups of inventors. Of course, waiting until you're ready to do it yourself also carries the danger that someone else will think of your idea in the meantime. I'd suggest planting your flag in Medical Hypotheses, and then look for collaborators (while you continue to hone your skills, and prepare to do it on your own if you don't get any takers). For that matter, you could discuss it here, subjecting the theory to our informal (but just a critical) review process. At least these posts are dated. I would also suggest searching PubMed for published work, and Google for current research projects. Best of luck!

Why? Seriously, I'm curious as to how you decided among the variety of religions, and why you felt the need to have a faith.

Still a good point, and no offense taken.

Your solution is to tether the protein to a substrate. Hard to internalize if it is chained to the desktop Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedAt least, if you are trying to insure the protein stays put, you can do that. If you are trying to determine whether or not the protein naturally cycles between the cytoplasm and membrane surface, you can tag it with GFP (green fluorescent protein) and watch it under a microscope. See, e.g., C.C. Lanning et al., J Biol Chem (2003) 278:12495-506 (free online article). IIRC, there are also GFP constructs that are sensitive to cytosolic pH or Ca++ concentrations, so that you can tell if the protein is in the cytosol simply because that is the only place it will light up. Or were you asking something different?

I'm not implying an increase in genetic information, only that one might observe a greater number of differences. For example, consider a population of fish moving into a lightless cave environment. Mutations that affected eye development (up to and including deletion of eyes altogether) are no longer selected against, and thus those differences from the related fish outside can accummulate. Perhaps the cave water is also colder, and thus mutations that adapt the fish to colder waters are also now beneficial. And perhaps the bugs that the fish eat are different inside the caves, or require a slightly different feeding behavior: again, there is an opportunity for improvement (in fitness) if beneficial mutations occur. In general terms, if the population is in a new environment (or the environment has recently changed) such that the population is not already highly adapted to the environment, then it is more likely that mutations will be beneficial as compared to the population that is already highly adapted. For the population that is highly adapted, few changes would improve adaptation further, so nearly all changes will be neutral or detrimental.

Sorry, but copyright does not work that way. You cannot copyright an idea or a theory: copyright only protects the expression of those ideas or theories. In other words, copyright gives you the right to prevent others from copying your exact words, but not the meaning behind them: everyone is still free to paraphrase your words and still express the same idea. For example, even if Romeo and Juliet was protected by copyright, you could take the exact same plot (idea) and change the expression (say, by changing the Capulets and Montagues into rival street gangs, like Jets and Sharks) and not commit copyright infringement.

You could always try publishing it in the journal Medical Hypotheses. Alternatives: self-publish your hypothesis as a book or pamphlet (you can use a service like Lulu to do the actual printing on demand); Set up a website and blog, and describe it in detail; invite other researchers to comment on it; or all of the above. History does not typically recognize those who came up with an idea, and then sat on it. If you want credit for your hypothesis, you will probably need to promote it, to the point of actually having the necessary research performed. Perhaps contact a few researchers who are already doing research in that (or a related) area.

Perhaps "more evolved" in the sense of having accumulated more changes since the fork than the other side of the fork. Certainly not "more advanced". I would expect that when a species forks, with one fork remaining in the prior environment and the other fork spreading into a new/different environment, one would expect the latter fork to "evolve more" in the sense that its different environment would lead to more opportunities for successful mutations.

No problem If we knew exactly how the system worked, it would be much easier to design effective vaccines. In general, we try to avoid activating the Th2/allergy branch. I don't think that commercial vaccines (in general) do activate Th2, because you would not get a protective response. The Th2 response seems to be geared toward fighting off parasites, like flukes and worms, rather than bacteria and viruses. And yes, antigens associated with such parasites do tend to activate Th2, but (AFAIK) we are not yet sure just what characteristics of those antigens tips the scale in the Th2 direction. It is known that there are a number of interleukins involved (I don't remember off hand which combinations). One of the current theories to explain increasing autoimmune and allergy disorders is called the "hygiene hypothesis". Basically, the hypothesis is that us modern citizens are too clean, and the lack of immune system exercise on parasites, etc., leads it to attacking normal tissue.

There is scientific research being done in this field. See, e.g., P.C. Cicogna et al., "Consciousness during dreams" Conscious Cogn (2001) 10(1):26.41; M. Bosinelli, "Mind and consciousness during sleep" Behav Brain Res (1995) 69:195-201; U. Voss et al., "Lucid dreaming: a state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming" Sleep (2009) 32(9):1191-200. You can also go to www.pubmed.org and type in "lucid dreaming" and check out the other three dozen articles.

Don't take the "tree" analogy too literally. Evolution makes no distinction between the "trunk" and the branches. Instead of a tree, think of a bunch of forking paths, neither fork being the "main" path. Each path continues to evolve, at a rate determined by its environment. We may have evolved further from apes than apes have evolved away from each other. However, in the context of evolution no species is considered "advanced", as evolution does not imply a direction. I want to know what non-humans have been discussing evolution Evolution is a pretty non-subjective term. Basically, you have reproduction with occasional heritable variation; where if the variation provides a reproductive advantage, then over sufficient time that variation will mathematically come to dominate. What aspects can we not understand?

Welcome Yes, the method of administration has some effect on the body's immune response, although AFAIK the mechanism has not yet been nailed down. If you are exposed to an antigen via the mucous membranes (nose, sinuses, gut) you tend to develop more mucosal immunity (IgA). Otherwise, more systemic immunity (IgG). The memory cells will be essentially the same either way, so I don't think it has an effect on the duration of protection, just where the protection is focused. Actually, the T cells typically do not contact the antigens directly, but are usually presented by an APC (a "professional" antigen-presenting cell, such as a macrophage or dendritic cell). The T1 and T2 cells are usually called Th1 and Th2. Stimulation of Th1 cells tends to lead toward "normal" immune reactions, while stimulation of Th2 cells tends to lead toward allergy/asthma type reactions. The sort of antigen does seem to make a difference as to whether Th1 or Th2 are activated, and this is still a subject of considerable research.