For a skin cell to do its job, it must turn on a completely different set of genes than a liver cell — and keep genes it doesn’t need switched off. One way of turning off large groups of genes at once is to send them to “time-out” at the edge of the nucleus, where they are kept quiet. New research from Johns Hopkins sheds light on how DNA gets sent to the nucleus’ far edge, a process critical to controlling genes and determining cell fate.
A report on the work appeared in the Jan. 5 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.
“We discovered a DNA sequence and a specific set of protein tags that send DNA to the edge of the nucleus, where its genes get turned off,” says Karen Reddy, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Picture the nucleus as a round room filled with double strands of DNA hanging in suspension as they are opened, closed, clipped, patched and read by proteins that come and go. At the edge of the nucleus, just inside its flexible walls, the lamina meshwork provides shape and support. But accumulating evidence from the past few years suggests that this meshwork is not just a structure, but is crucial to the cell’s ability to turn large segments of genes off in one fell swoop. It’s as though certain stretches of DNA feel a magnetic pull that keeps them clinging to the lamina in a state of “time-out,” inaccessible to the proteins that could be working on them. (1)
Great! Just great!
A great mechanism.
Doing things in order to achieve things.
Or are the things which that mechanism achieves the things we a posteriory believe it was designed to achieve?
What is a plan?
What is a result?
What is a cause?
We are confused.
We do not have an objective criterion to set the mark.
We do not know what “normal” is.
So let’s accept there is not.
Let’s accept that there is no plan. And that there is.
Let’s accept that these is no cause. And that everything have one.
Let’s accept that there are no results. And that everything is one.
Let’s go craaaaazy ese!
Let’s pound our heads to the wall. (not hard enough, you know)
Let’s just accept there is nothing.
Let’s understand that everything comes from our mind.
Let’s open our selves to the nothingness of the world.
Let’s inhale the cosmos.
One deep breath.
And we will be One…
Inhale…
We ambition in vain to measure the infinite with a school-ruler, weigh the Universe with a Roman scale, analyse, list, categorize, classify. It’s just the left brain gone out of control. We need more connective, analogue thinking, in order to finally realize how far we have gone astray from the real reality… When the two halves achieve balance we’ll finally find out how primitive we were; by then, it won’t really matter because we’ll have escaped “logical reasoning” already.