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Gene Genie Genetics Carnival #33  is hosted by Mo from Neurophilosophy.  

Mo has a great series of genetics related articles from all the best genetics blogs in the world.  In this edition, there is a strong emphasis on cancer. There’s also a focus on leukodystrophy, and a special section on personalized genetics.

Well worth a read!

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

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(Image credit: medicineworld.org) 

This week b5 media’s Health and Wellness channel is focusing on celebrities health.  Our focus is not on ‘tittle tattle’  and hot gossip about Angelina, Brad or ’Tomkat’ but rather a serious look at health issues that high profile individuals share with all of us. 

In the genetics world, our ‘celebrities’ are the likes of Craig Venter and James Watson - pioneering geneticists but basking in the eye of the media.

The race to sequence genomes has resulted in some major PR, particularly for Craig and James. 454 is sequencing James Watson’s genome and Craig has announced some of his results in PLoS.  TV star Larry King, cosmologist Stephen Hawking, Google co-founder Larry Page, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and junk bond trader Michael Milken have all paid a vast sum of money to have their genomes sequenced.

However, this is causing a degree of discomfort within the scientific community.  They are worried that only the rich will benefit and it’s sending out the wrong messages to the public.

I have a different perspective.  Research has to start somewhere.  The very rich have always been the first to buy pioneering technology whether it’s a car, the latest computer or mobile phone.  Their money will assist  in further driving down the cost of the technology to such a price that will be affordable to us mere mortals.

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

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We will be taking a look at health issues which not only affect ourselves but also our celebrities.  Often, a celebrity who is suffering from a health related problem can do so much to support the cause and bring disease warning signs to the attention of the public.  Cancer survivors such as international singers Kylie Minogue, Olivia Newton-John, cyclist Lance Armstrong and singer Sheryl Crowe have all shared their battles with us, to great effect.

Their celebrity status earned through achievements in sports, entertainment, government and the arts brings the spotlight center stage to their anti-cancer message.

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

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An international  research team headed up by Imperial College, UK say they have for the first time linked enlarged hearts with a gene, osteoglycin (Ogn).

Work carried out on rodents and some 30 humans indicated that Ogn - which has never before been linked with heart function - regulated the growth of the heart’s main pumping chamber, its left ventricle.  When this gene behaves abnormally the heart can become enlarged, putting the person at an increased risk of common heart diseases and heart attacks.

For further information, click on:

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_29-4-2008-13-31-10

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

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Kissing bug blood sample being taken from a giraffe

(Photo courtesy www.bbc.co.uk) 

Wildlife continues to make a revival in medical diagnostics and treatment - leeches are back in favor for blood letting and wound management along with maggots for cleaning wounds.  Now we have blood sucking bugs being used for blood collection.

Kissing bugs are being used to collect blood from zoo animals in a pilot project underway at two London zoos.  This method has been used to successfully collect blood samples from a hippo, cheetah, giraffe, elephant and white rhino. The Kissing bug gets its label from silently and painlessly collecting blood from a human victim’s lips and eyelids.

The Kissing bug crawls onto the animal and releases a pain-reducing enzyme as they bite and suck the blood from veins.  The “stress-free” method simplifies collecting blood from animals, who do not have to be sedated.

London Zoo’s veterinary officer Tim Bouts said:

“This pioneering procedure means we can take a stress-free blood sample from an animal that we would otherwise need to sedate or anesthetize. The process is non-invasive and painless for the animal. It might take somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes to get a decent sample dependent on how hungry the bug is, how quickly it finds a blood capillary and how thick the skin of its host is.”

The bugs are humanely killed after the blood samples are collected.

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

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(Photo credit: www.marinebio.org) 

At the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Bonn nearly 200 countries agreed on measures to protect the world’s most threatened wildlife.  They pledged:

1. To set up a deep-sea nature reserve and increase by tens of millions of hectares the area of land protected (the resulting protected area would be twice the size of Germany).

2. To ban experiments to boost plankton growth to reverse climate change, because of the potential risks to other animals.

3. To set global standards for developing biofuels, a renewable energy that has been blamed for deforestation.

But environmentalists said the progress achieved at the conference was still failing the UN Millennium Development Goal, which aims to “substantially reduce” biodiversity loss by 2010.

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

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Stonehenge, UK 

(Photo credit: www.activemind.com)

A topical article for me as I will be passing Stonehenge today.  It is an amazing feat of 4,500 year old primitive engineering and still provokes feelings of wonder and awe everytime I pass by, especially on solstice and equinox days.

Stonehenge served as a burial ground for much longer than had previously been believed, new research suggests. The site was used as a cemetery for 500 years, from the point of its inception.

Archaeologists have said the cremation burials found at the site might represent a single elite family and its descendents - perhaps a ruling dynasty.

Professor Mike Parker Pearson, from the department of archaeology at the University of Sheffield, and his colleagues have now carried out radiocarbon dating of burials excavated in the 1950s that were kept at the nearby Salisbury Museum. Their results suggest burials took place at the site from the initiation of Stonehenge, just after 3,000 BC, until the time the large stones appear at about 2,500 BC.

However, two other Stonehenge experts, Professor Tim Darvill, from the University of Bournemouth, and Professor Geoff Wainwright, from the Society of Antiquaries, have a different theory about the monument.

They are convinced that the dominating feature on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, UK was akin to a “Neolithic Lourdes” - a place where people went on a pilgrimage to get cured.

They recently carried out a two-week excavation at the site to search for clues to why the 4,500-year-old landmark was erected.

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

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With the food crisis looming Jeremy Cooke of the BBC News takes a look at whether our negative attitude to GM Foods may be about to change. 

Another reference to help your studies, guys!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7426054.stm

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

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