General Medicine

» tinuviel - DNA editing

This sentence was snipped from your Impaired DNA Repair article: "However, many cancer cells exhibit mutations within genes that code for proteins involved in DNA mismatch repair."

This is a scary thought. I was just being impressed with the capabilities of these DNA proofreading guys. The idea that these mutations can and do occur in the very mechanism that is put in place to prevent these mutations does pose a problem. Cancer is a cunning little disease, isn't it?

I have a technical question. Does (105) mean 10 to the 5th power--like 10^5? That was a bit confusing for me, because if that's not what it means then I'm a bit lost.

I was also going to ask for some further explanation of methylation, but when I looked it up, it seemed pretty involved and probably too complicated to explain here. I guess it is enough just to know that it allows the newly synthesized DNA to be distinguishable from the parent one. This is pretty interesting stuff, though. Maybe you could write about more things like this in the future.

-- posted by tinuviel

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» P_Al - DNA editing

In response to DNA editing posted by tinuviel:

It seems that superscripts are not picked up on the site. I have removed them to avoid confusion - we'll just stick to the numbers.

Yes, cancer is cunning. The various mechanisms that I have written about recently are all normal processes within cells that control vital functions like replication, adhesion, programmed cell death and DNA repair. All have been sidetracked in various cancers. The good news however, is that many of these genetic abnormalities would have been removed before they can be passed on to the next generation of cells. It is at this stage that they are usually called mutations and pose a more serious risk.

Thanks for the feedback on the article. Will consider writing more on methylation at a later date. For now let me just say the methylation is the addition of a methyl group (small chemical compound) to the side of the units that make up the DNA. You could imagine them as sticking out from the chain of bases (units of DNA). They are then identified by the replication apparatus which is 'programmed' to associate their presence with a more mature DNA strand.

Hope that helps.

-- posted by P_Al

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» tinuviel - DNA editing

In response to DNA editing posted by P_Al:

That does help, actually. Thanks. I was trying to read a Wikipedia article on methylation, and could hardly make it through the first couple sentences. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of this and other stuff on the site.

-- posted by tinuviel

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