Biochemistry & Gene Therapy Filter

March 18, 2008 7:41 AM

What's new and exciting in the fields of molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics? I'm looking for an exciting/interesting journal article to present to my classmates along the lines of heterologous eukaryotic expression of a gene or gene therapy utilizing knockouts as a technique or with an emphasis on transgenic organisms. I could, of course, slog through the journals on my own and guess at what might be exciting in the field, but I thought I would ask the hive first. Any biochemists or molecular biologists out there want to give this a go? Citations would be incredibly helpful.
posted by stuboo to science & nature (13 comments total)

I think Morpholinos, similar to anti-sense RNA, seem like a pretty cool technology.
posted by euphorb at 9:41 AM on March 18, 2008

Skim through ReasearchBlogging.org. It aggregates posts from blogs that are writing about recent and interesting peer-reviewed research.
posted by chrisamiller at 10:06 AM on March 18, 2008

I thought the 'brainbow' mice were pretty cool.
Paper here. Is this homework?
posted by pullayup at 10:29 AM on March 18, 2008

Oh, shoot, knockouts. That's not a knockout, sorry.
posted by pullayup at 10:29 AM on March 18, 2008

Also, the paper's actually here, if you're still interested.
posted by pullayup at 10:31 AM on March 18, 2008

@pullayup - not homework persay. Everyone (10 of us) in the class choose an article to present to the others in the class. I'm just tapping the hive to try to find an article that my classmates and I will find interesting.
posted by stuboo at 10:46 AM on March 18, 2008

Well, the role of microRNAs in development/disease is fairly hot, so how about research that uses the Dicer knockout? For instance...
posted by Hutch at 10:48 AM on March 18, 2008

Sorry, "per se"

I knew that didn't look correct!
posted by stuboo at 10:53 AM on March 18, 2008

@hutch - you're behind Harvard's wall, so the link doesn't work for me. Would you mind posting another link or a traditional citation?
posted by stuboo at 11:06 AM on March 18, 2008

@hutch - nevermind, found it.
posted by stuboo at 11:06 AM on March 18, 2008

There was a recent hot article in Nature from a group able to create pluripotent cells from fibroblasts in culture- i.e. all the benefits of embryonic stem cells without the contorversy.

Park IH "Reprogramming of human somatic cells to pluripotency with defined factors." Nature 2008.
posted by emd3737 at 11:29 AM on March 18, 2008

The brianbow mouse is pretty cool. The lox/cre-recombinases tricks they used to get all the colours together were extremely creative (this paper was kind of the predecessor, and probably part of the inspiration).

The first thought that I had when seeing this question was Visualizing Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Multicellular Cell-Cycle Progression. It's new and sexy and cool, and the videos are very impressive. But upon closer reading, it might not be quite the sort of thing you're after by the look of it.

This might be though. It's a new (and interesting) model of cancer in which they use cre-recombinase to switch cells from a normal type of BRAF to a mutant form (found in many human cancers). You probably have to be a cancer person to really get excited about it, but even non-cancer people (such as myself) can appreciate the model.

Also, I think hutch is referring to this paper.


There was a recent hot article in Nature from a group able to create pluripotent cells from fibroblasts in culture- i.e. all the benefits of embryonic stem cells without the contorversy.

Park IH "Reprogramming of human somatic cells to pluripotency with defined factors." Nature 2008.

The preceding work in mice was even more impressive. They actually used the cells to create new mice!
posted by kisch mokusch at 3:18 PM on March 18, 2008

A good place to shop for articles is the Cell Podcast. It will also give you a broad sense of what's hot in the field.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 6:06 PM on March 18, 2008