Telomeres: Telling Tails
Telomeres protect chromosome ends and help stabilize the genome. Throughout human life and in aging, telomeres often erode down, eventually causing cells to malfunction or die. The highly regulated cellular enzyme telomerase adds telomeric DNA to tel....
More details | Watch nowMinimizing a Bacterial Genome by Global Design and Synthesis
In 2010, we chemically synthesized the 1078 Kb Mycoplasma mycoides genome and transplanted it into a recipient cell cytoplasm to create a 'synthetic cell', JCVI-syn1.0 (Science, 329, 52-56, 2010). We identified several hundred non-essential genes by ....
More details | Watch nowThe Origins of Cellular Life
The complexity of modern biological life has long made it difficult to understand how life could emerge spontaneously from the chemistry of the early earth. We are attempting to synthesize simple artificial cells in order to discover plausible pathwa....
More details | Watch nowA Crime against Humanity
When Monsanto first tried to introduce GMO seeds into Europe there was a backlash by the Green parties and their political allies, who feared that American agro-business was about to take over their food supply. Thus began a massive campaign not agai....
More details | Watch nowFinding Mutations that Affect Immunity
Beginning with an exception to normal function caused by a genetic aberration, one may hope to find at least one protein with non-redundant function in a certain biological process. This approach permitted the identification of the receptor for bacte....
More details | Watch nowInsight into the Laws of Nature for Biological Evolution
Both evolutionary biology and genetics have their roots 150 years ago in work with phenotypic variants of plants and animals. In contrast, microbial genetics originating as recently as the 1940s, rapidly revealed that filamentous DNA molecules are th....
More details | Watch nowFrom Proto-oncogenes to Precision Oncology
The diagnosis, classification, and treatment of human cancers are being transformed by scientific discoveries that were strongly influenced by the discovery of the c-src proto-oncogene, as described in the lecture by Michael Bishop. The path to this ....
More details | Watch nowNatural Selection and the Future of Life
In his lecture Professor Christian Rene de DuvŽ gives a rough overview on the history of life starting about 3.5 billion years ago with the first cells up to the appearance of the first primates 70 million years ago, and he states that all organisms....
More details | Watch nowOn the Genetic Basis of Morphological Evolution
Darwin's theory of evolution states that variation of the shape and pattern of the adults rather than the embryos are the basis for natural selection. In order to understand how morphological variation arises, it is important to identify the genes th....
More details | Watch nowBiological Evolution in the Context of Cosmic Evolution and of Cultural Evolution
After reconsidering the very long time periods in cosmic evolution, we will focus our attention to the evolutionary development of living organisms on our planet Earth. The genetic variants (mutations), which are occasionally produced, are alteratio....
More details | Watch nowInheritance from Teratomas
The techniques and concepts that have resulted in the identification and isolation of embryonic stem cells have come from studies with mouse teratocarcinomas. Embryonic stem cells isolated from normal mouse embryos may be grown in tissue culture and....
More details | Watch nowGenes and Proteins that Control Secretion and Autophagy
The broad outlines of the secretory pathway were established by pioneering EM and cell fractionation experiments conducted by George Palade in the 1960s. Beginning in the mid 1970s and early 80s, my laboratory isolated a series of conditionally leth....
More details | Watch now