The Gene Quest

Baby with two faces

Katie — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:36:05 +0000

In a northern Indian village, a baby girl born with two faces is being worshiped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess.

The little girl, Lali, apparently has an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces. Except for her ears, all of Lali’s facial features are duplicated — she has two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes. Despite her obvious facial malformations, Lali is doing fine. (Read CNN story)

Nucleotide Expansion Diseases

Katie — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 23:35:46 +0000

For most of the 20^th Century, human genes were thought of as stable, identical sequences passed from generation to generation. However, this all changed in 1991 when an unstable, expanded trinucleotide repeat was found to be responsible for fragile X syndrome. Since that time, over 40 neurological, muscular, and developmental disorders have been shown to result from the expansion of unstable nucleotide repeats, and the once unique mutational mechanism of nucleotide expansion had itself expanded into a new class of diseases.

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100 Facts About DNA

Katie — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 04:42:20 +0000

Did you know….
1. DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid.
2. DNA is part of our definition of a living organism.
3. DNA is found in all living things.
4. DNA was first isolated in 1869 by Friedrich Miescher.
5. James Watson and Francis Crick figured out the structure of DNA.
6. DNA is a double helix.
7. The structure of DNA can be likened to a twisted ladder.
8. The rungs of the ladder are made up of “bases” (more…)

The Colbert Report on DNA!

Katie — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:57:57 +0000



Fighting Cancer with Video Games
Katie — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:00:36 +0000
Can you really fight cancer with a video game?? HopeLab thinks so!  They created a PC-based video game, Re-Mission, to help young patients fight their terrible disease.

In this game, an epic battle rages as cancerous invaders try to take over the bodies of young patients.  Your job is to control a nanobot named Roxxi through the body while she destroys cancer cells, battles bacterial infections, and manages realistic, life- threatening side effects associated with the disease.
The idea is that a video game will play a positive role in helping kids fight their disease by give them a feeling of control as they blast away at the cancer cells.
The video game was helpful in 80% of patients!   Re-Mission players maintained higher blood levels of chemotherapy and showed higher rates of antibiotic utilization.  The overall self-efficacy score of the patients also increased significantly,