Comments on: Jumping genes spread by going up for seconds

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:43:54 +0000

With what I’ve been reading lately about virus genes being incorporated into wasp genes, and fungus genes incorporated into aphid genes, etc., this article makes me wonder whether this “jumping gene” isn’t some relic of alien DNA that was incorporated into a fly millions of years ago then passed down.

By: Julien

Julien — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 20:56:26 +0000

Well Bill, although I agree with the analogy that the telomere can be considered a time-bomb, I would be very hard pressed to think that the purpose for it’s existence is the ensure the eventual death of the cell. You seem to be implying that it has been designed to ensure cell death to protect resources, rather than cell death being the result of the telomere’s presence (along with other reasons). To put it into simpler terms it is like saying that sharp rocks exist so that animals with itchy backs can scratch themselves on them. That of course is incorrect, sharp rocks exist, and as a result, animals scratch themselves on them.

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 08:01:54 +0000

Well Robert, a recent study (er… slightly recent) about DNA shows taht in many organisms at the ends of DNA strands are objects called telomeres, which act as a biological timebomb. After birth, each time the DNA copies itself, the telomeres break a little, then eventually, as the organism has lived through its life, and burned out its telomeres, the cell- unable to reproduce anymore, dies. That way, we don’t end up with eternally living organisms that use up Earth’s natural resouces (exception probably being single-cellular bacterium since having telomeres would inhibit population growth).

By: Robert S-R

Robert S-R — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 05:19:52 +0000

So, what stops these genes from getting replicated indefinitely, clogging up the DNA strands and preventing timely transcriptions from continuing? I can’t imagine sluggishly-splitting cells could be good for a fly.

By: Vinoy

Vinoy — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 03:19:52 +0000

Very interesting study. Another interesting fact (I think) is that the first author is Allan spradling who is a very well known drosophila researcher – he has been running a lab for a long time and is a HHMI investigator, national academy of science member etc etc. Very rare that you see people like that publishing research as the first author.