Technology can make a difference

Hi everyone! Here I am with my second post of my blog. This time around I am going to talk about the great technology we know at this stage of live.

As sad as it might sound, many of you had to deal with some kind of cancer. Maybe it affected you mother, sister, aunt, friend, grandmother, father, uncle or brother. Some of the cancers can be hereditary such as breast cancer. This means that a specific gene in your genetic material is responsible for this disease. In case of breast cancer we talk about a mutation (changes in the genetic material) of the BRCA1 of BRCA2 gene.

When someone  knows that this kind of hereditary disease runs in his/her family, it can be helpful to go to a hospital and perform a screening on those specific genes. This genetic testing uses allele-specific oligonucleotide. This is a piece of synthetic DNA complementary to the sequence of the target DNA. Allele-specific means that it will bound specifically to one site or allele of the chromosome. In case of BRCA we talk about chromosome 17 were the gene is located.

A positive result is not the best news but is also give some sort of warning. Having the BRCA gene doesn’t directly mean you have of going to have breast cancer. A yearly check-up will be advised so if the cancer comes to expression it can be treated a soon as possible.

This is some kind of prevention that can make quit a difference.

Quote of the day: What does not kill us makes us stronger. – Friedrich Nietzsche

See you next time

Jooske

Small DNA, big thing!

Hi everyone!

Welcome at my very first blogpost. To dive into this adventure I’m going to give you some (fun) facts about DNA. Did you know:

• That DNA has a double helix structure as a twisted ladder? The steps of the ladder consist of four bases, Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Thymidine (T) and Cytosine ( C). These bases make pairs of two. A and T makes a pair and U and G. If we talk about RNA, T is replaced bij Uracil (U).
• That if we would place all the DNA in all of the cells in the human body end to end, it would reach the sun and back 600 times?
• That DNA replication has a rotational speed of severel hunderd times a second? It’s the same as driving a vehicle 300 miles per hour (483 km/h) while spinning like a top along the direction of the movement.
• That it would take a person 60 words per minute, 8 hours a day, around 50 years to type the human genome.
• DNA is found in all living things?

My Master thesis consists of just a small part of this big subject. I’m searching into the process of duplex annealing. Now you might ask: What in the world are duplexes?

Well, DNA duplexes are two segments of DNA held in a double helix. This helix is formed by complementary base pairing between A’s and T’s and between G’s and C’s. So RNA duplexes consist of base pairing between A’s and U’s and G’s and C’s.

 

The process of the making of the duplexes is more complicated. There are a lot of factors who play a big role in running this process smoothly. My job is to make sure that those factors don’t influence the annealing in a bad way. In the end we need to improve the process so that the costumers go home with the most pure and functional duplexes.

 

Quote of the day: All living things need their instruction manual and that is all they need, carried in one very small suitcase. — L.L. Larison Cudmore

See you!

Jooske