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December 6, 2006
NMPDR - Sometimes a Pet's Problem is Also Your Problem
Today we replaced Peg-Eye Nate's headshot with a much more recent one taken by a professional photographer. While Bruce and I were admiring the results, I noticed that there are not nearly enough pictures of me on the front page.
The problem here is that tomorrow there's a big conference for all the Bioinformatics Resource Centers, and Bruce has been under the opinion that his grant would be terminated if he couldn't get this page to come up in less than a second. I fully appreciate the importance of Bruce's job to my quality of life, but I forgot that if he's using the computer 16 hours a day I don't have any time to blog.
Anyway, in addition to the search performance, there was also a problem with the Signature Genes Tool. This is a really nifty thing that compares genes occurring in different organisms to find the things they have in common and the things that are different. The tool worked okay on small organisms with a few thousand genes, but it broke down for multicellular organisms.
All multicellular organisms are eukaryotes; that is, they have a bunch of rope-like chromosomes enclosed in a nucleus. Some single-celled organisms-- like amoebas and algae-- are also eukaryotes. Bacteria, on the other hand, are prokaryotes-- they have a single chromosome ring plus a few DNA fragments called plasmids. The picture on the left shows a single skin cell surrounded by dozens of bacteria. The key thing to notice is the enormous size of the eukaryotic skin cell compared to the prokaryotic bacteria. The size is also a reflection of the complexity of the DNA. A bacteria has a few thousand genes; a eukaryote can have tens of thousands.
Anyway, the importance of all this is that if the signature genes tool is fast enough to handle the enormous numbers of genes in eukaryotic organisms, we could use it to compare human and cat DNA. The genes cats have that humans don't would presumably be associated with superior intelligence, which would be the first step in making humans more sensible. Unfortunately, they haven't sequenced cat DNA yet, so the best we could do with our current knowledge base is compare humans with mice to find the genes associated with self-preservation. I'm not a big fan of mice, but they don't go in for suicide bombing, and that's a big plus in today's world.
The good news is that the worst is over, and Bruce will be returning to 40-hour work weeks for a while.
By the way, if you could call your congressman and tell him or her that the NMPDR web site is a much better use for your tax dollars than investigating the cause of the Iraq War, it would really make the next few years less painful for everyone.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
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