Rabbits get functional artificial penises
I don't know how much I want to write about this one. Let's just say that with a lack of permanent consequences, John Bobbit-like incidents could end up being more common. An argument against advancing science if I've ever heard one.
Okay, so the implications are important. We're now able to go into a lab, grow tissue that otherwise wouldn't regrow, and implant it into you. They did it with bladders. They've figured out how to do with with hearts (using a neat cartilage shell). Pretty soon, any organ you need with be grown for you. Organ donors won't be a thing of the past, exactly, but they'll only be necessary for emergency purposes. Even then, I can envision hospitals keeping a few samples of each organ in the incubator at all times, just in case.
So yes, not only is there a decent chance that you're not going to die, ever--except perhaps through some horrible meeting with the front end of a moving truck--but if you survive that accident and your penis gets damaged, they can fix it too.
More from LCROSS
There is water on the Moon.
Not very much water, mind, but it's enough to get people excited. There are implications for one day putting a colony/research station up there: if there is water, then we don't have to drag our own up there.
Even more interesting, I think, is the detection of hydrocarbons. They ought to be common in space, forming on the surfaces of the dust grains that get blown out by exploding stars. A few chemical signatures of organic molecules have been detected out in space, but it's hard to say just how much is out there. The dark craters of the Moon, however, act as a sort of trap for all the crud that floats through our solar system, and the detection of hydrocarbons in there means that there must be more floating all around us in space.
It will be interesting to see if the experts can draw any conclusions about hydrocarbons in space from this data. After all, if organic molecules are abundant in space (and it appears that they are), then maybe that will mean life is commonplace throughout the Universe.
Hey, the Moon has oil on it! No wonder the USA bombed it! This particular mission only cost half a billion, though... a far better investment than other, similar endeavours.
A speech gene
Well, sort of. There have been reports in the newspapers about the discovery of a language gene in humans. The truth about FOXP2 is way more interesting. A single change in a single nucleotide... well, read for yourself.
This could be corrected, perhaps, through gene therapy. If only there were a way to insert the proper genes....
Curing people with HIV
No, not curing people who have HIV, but using HIV to cure people (with other diseases).
The reason diseases like HIV and hepatitis B are so bad is that they are caused by a type of virus called a retrovirus. What this means is that the virus actually inserts its own genetic code into the genes of the organism it is infecting. With influenza, for instance, your body eventually kills the invading viruses, and then it is gone. But with retroviruses, even after your immune system has killed the viruses, the code for making more stays inside your cells, meaning that you will infect yourself over and over again.
However, medical science can take advantage of this! Researchers are now using a part of the HIV virus (the insert-into-genes part) to insert genes for making an enzyme called ALD to break down certain fatty acids into patients with a disease also called ALD (which is, of course, caused by an inability to break down fatty acids). This isn't a completely new idea, but it's one of the first major successes I've read about.
The usual method for curing this is bone marrow transplants. Unfortunately, marrow is hard to come by, and because it's intimately involved in the immune system, the body tends to reject it. Inserting new genes gets around these problems.
This bodes well for the future! One can imagine that maybe diabetes will be cured in a similar way, or anemia, or pretty much any other chronic disease. Remember how a few weeks ago they were curing Parkinson's with gene therapy? Remember how five paragraphs ago they discovered what was causing speech problems in certain people?
(Also, maybe we'll one day be able to change our eye colour on the fly, by inserting the right genes in there. Awesome.)
For more on this specific study, read the article linked from this section's title. It's very well written, far better than I can do. But as you read it, think of how far the implications reach....
That's all I have for this week. In the coming days, expect descriptions of a couple of experiments that someone should do, and maybe a little writeup on a chemist who is unknown today, but was one of the greatest in his time. Also, I might translate this into regular English for you, because it's actually pretty neat. (That issue of JPC A has no fewer than ten articles I really want to read, so I might get too distracted....)
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