The big cure for the big ‘C’

This time I'm not going to make any promises. I'm going to try and keep this place going better than I have done but I may get distracted again. There's a lot of fun stuff ahead, but it should mean you'll get to see me cropping up in other places very soon. In other news, if you didn't see it, I got a post on the Nature.com network on Monday which I'm very excited about. It's on the theme of new beginnings and organising my first conference.

I'd also like to say a quick hello to some of my readers that I've had the good fortune to meet around Cambridge since I last posted anything. I'm always surprised that people have actually heard of my ramblings and am glad that I'm not talking to myself here (although after so much inactivity that may have changed :S )

Anyway, people are always asking me if I've cured cancer yet. This is one of the things that my lab and many others are working towards, in a roundabout sense. But it seems likely that there will never be one cure for all cancer and here's why:

At the risk of being cliché, given all the recent media activity (which I have spectacularly missed the opportunity to write about), finding the ‘cure for cancer’ is to biology what the Higgs Boson was to particle physics. Everyone’s working on it and it means a lot – not just to our understanding of the universe, but to human healthcare – and it may not even exist.

People like to think there can be a simple pill that will fix any problem in life from cancer to cellulite, obesity to osteoarthritis (source).

It’s very nice and easy to think of one simple, easy to administer cure – this is the ultimate dream for many illnesses – but most diseases just aren’t that simple, in particular a ‘cure for cancer’ is a very misleading concept.  It suggests that cancer is one illness that is the same every time it occurs and therefore should have the same solution each time. Actually, there are probably as many cancers as there are people with cancer, with each one unique and different to any other, to some extent.

tMoL: Genotype vs. Phenotype

It's the end of another term, time for me to move on again. I'll be going home soon to write about what's been going on, and there's a lot to say. The talks I did in schools went really well, although there's still stuff to improve on. This lab placement has been really great and I've been enjoying all the other projects I'm involved in. Next up is an unconference, SciBarCamb, which I strongly recommend to anyone reading this blog.

This is a peice I wrote for a friend of a friend, she's doing a course in genetics and was looking for clarification of the difference between genotype and phenotype, it was a bit of a rush job but hopefully it clarifies matters.

In order to live, grow and make more of themselves, cells need to have instructions. These are stored as DNA, which is mostly found in the cell nucleus. Each set of instructions is called a gene, each gene produces a particular protein. The full set of human DNA, the human genome, can make thousands of proteins and each protein performs a specific function within a cell.

Genes are specific DNA sequences (source)

 Different people have different versions of the same gene and hence of the same protein, this is what makes us genetically different. These different gene alleles have different effects within our body. As a simplified example; there is a protein which is responsible for hair colour. If it is functioning properly then you have brown hair. Some versions of the protein do not function properly so there is no colour made, this results in blonde hair. There are various other versions with intermediate effects resulting in all different hair colours. This is a slight simplification, as there are actually multiple proteins involved in hair colour, but it illustrates the principle.

SOS: Save our Science - Last minute Christmas

Now that Christmas is drawing to a close our thoughts turn exuberantly towards the January sales. Blowing all of our new gift vouchers and our remaining money on last minute impulse buys. The good news for all of us is that we may be able to blame these rash choices on our genes.

Impulsivity is described as doing something without foresight, and understanding it has major implications for a range of psychiatric disorders as well as explaining what will be going on in the high street over the next few weeks. Impulsive behaviour is very complex and under the control of many genes. It has many aspects, most especially reduced inhibitions, but also including reduced attention span, limited awareness of consequences and inappropriate responses to rewards. Impulsive behaviour is also known to be inherited in some cases. This new study shows that it is possible to identify the genes involved in this behaviour.

SOS: Save our Science - Inside Endometriosis

I wrote this after reading the BBC article about the same paper. The work was very poorly explained, and the findings were completely mistranslated. However, this time the original paper was pretty good, although filled with statistics (Bleh!)

All women hate periods, but a small percentage have it much worse than others. They suffer from endometriosis; severe pains and poor fertility throughout their reproductive life. The illness is often passed down through families, so must be partially dependent on genes. A new study has identified where some of these genes may occur.