The Genetic Ark

I came across the question today, "Can we collect the genetic infromation of endangered species now and bring them back at a later date?"



The process of storing tissue and extracting genetic information from it at a later date is a pretty standard operation. In laboratories all across the globe there are freezers containing tissue samples of alls sorts of things. A simple internet search will give you a protocol on how to extract DNA from many tissue types using chemicals found in your local biology lab. These samples can last for years. And as those years go by the cost of sequencing genomes will drop dramatically, thus making it technically feasible to deep freeze a big chunk of endangered animal now and sequence its genome at a later date. Furthermore, after the field of genetics, evolution, and developmental biology mature we should be able to use that information to rebuild the now extinct animal from scratch and enjoy them forever and ever right?

Well technically yes, but realistically probably not.

There are two types of endangered species around we try to keep around. The first are the sexy ones. We want to keep these guys around because they are exciting to be around, beautiful to watch, and we feel guilty for killing them off in the first place. The second type are the many species being killed off, especially in places like the rainforest, that have a lot of potential to provide cures to disease and other things of value to the human condition. Each type has a reason it does not make sense to bring it back in the future, even if we preserve them with that intent.

The reason we will not bring back the first type is because the same problems that exist for them now will exist for them in the future. No species on the endangered list is there because we don’t like it or don’t need it, it is there because of habitat destruction. Humans are already destroying or invading much of the territory that endangered species rely on. We continue to do this as we watch them go extinct. There is no reason to believe that anytime in the future humanity will decide to let an region revert back to its “native” state. If we bring them back where will we put them. They will have no habitat to live in. We will put them in zoo’s much like they are now.

The second type, if preserved, will have great reason to be brought back in full or at least the useful parts but there is different problem. Many species that are going extinct that have potential to be useful are simply not known. We know they are going extinct through statistics. The species diversity per land mass is so high and we are destroying so much land mass that it can be determined that we are losing many unaccounted for species. If we have not characterized them yet, there is no way we can freeze them away for later. They are gone before we know what they are or how to preserve them.

Exigency

Today’s GRE high frequency word is exigency. According to my widget dictionary it means an urgent need or demand.

In this crazy world of “publish or perish” there is an exigency to get your research published in a reputable journal.

Interesting Bills in Congress

I just read this in PLOS. On Friday the Senate will go over a bill that has already passed in the House. The bill mandates that all research findings that are published in academic journals will be free to the public after 12-months of publication. It is about time, I hope this bill passes.

It does seem silly when you think about it; scientists do research with taxpayer money and submit their findings to the appropriate academic journal. They pay the journal, with taxpayer money, to have the article published. Then free of charge other researchers, whose salaries are paid for by the taxpayers, review potential publications to make sure they are scientifically sound. After the research articles are published, the journals are sold to other researchers and people that are interested in the research. The journals make profit off of work that the taxpayers paid for. The profit that they make from selling the journals is from, you guessed it, taxpayer money, because that’s how research institutions and universities get the information, through subscriptions paid for with taxpayer money.

What a racket, but I am not surprised that it has taken this long to get to congress. I did not know any of this until recently when I actually started working for a research institution. So why should anyone else. Many scientists are extremely busy doing science and don’t have time to make an impression on congress nor become a member of congress. On the other side, you potentially have a strong lobby working against any progress. All they would have to say to any busy congressman is that any change relating to science hurts science. This hypothetical lobby would obviously be funded by the journals profiting off of taxpayer money and thus the current situation.

A New Race

It just occurred to me that I have blog with my name on it. This is interesting because every time I have searched for "Scott Kerr" on Google, the only places I can see myself are on the lab sites that I am or have been a part of. The search put my at number 18 for the Hutch, 116 for my UW lab and after 150 or so I gave up looking for this blog.

This brings up a race. Who will be more important according to Google in the future, Scott Kerr the scientist or Scott Kerr the blogger? Right now it's 18 to who knows.

Furthermore, will I become the most popular Scott Kerr in the world? I think there is a lot of us. The most notable seem to be soccer player and the director of the engineering department at NASA. There also looks to be a programmer in grad school right now who may be a direct competitor. Regardless, the competition looks stiff.

Whoops

I forgot to mention that I found my definition for the last post from an email I get daily from A.Word.A.Day

Hypergolic

On my path to wild success on the GRE's sometime in the future; I bring hypergolic. It means igniting on contact. This means it does not need a spark to ignite. I can not think of an example of something that is hypergolic but it seems like an interesting word to know. Oh, heres one a very few people will know but is good; Will Hoff has a tendency to be hypergolic. For some reason blogger thinks hypergolic is spelled wrong.

Here You Go

ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/pub/TraceDB/Personal_Genomics

Here is the website that you can access Watson's and Ventner's genome. What will be bea able to do will all this information. I need to learn how to program computers.