Becky Ward, Aneil Mallavarapu, human cell lines, microtubules, and prions
After talking with Galit, I went with Becky on a quick tour of the offices and labs. A postdoc named Paul Chang showed me some live human cells under a microscope. These cells where from a line that was over 50 years old, originally from a woman with a particular kind of cancer. The researchers just keep growing new cells from this line to use in experiments. Paul was feeding the cells. I didn't even quite realize that human cells could live outside the body. How are these individual cells any more or less alive then the aggregate I call me?
I needed a break to check in on the outside world. While surfing, Becky came in and we got to talking about one of the cells that I had seen under the microscope and which had a dark line running down the middle. It had duplicated its chromosomes and was about to split them. The duplicated chromosomes align themselves along the center of the cell. To split them, tiny thread like structures called microtubules grow from opposite poles of the cell. They shoot off in random directions, hoping to catch a chromosome. Microtubules that hit chromosomes stick, while those that don't shrink back and shoot off in another direction. Once each chromosome is attached to two microtubules, one from each pole, the cell produces a protein that slices the chromosomes so that they can be pulled apart.
This shrinking and growing process would be interesting to reproduce on a much larger scale. Imagine robotic arms that navigated this way. Tim Mitchison, deputy chair of the DSB, has done a lot of work in this area, and hopefully I'll get a chance to chat with him.
Aneil Mallavarapu joined Becky and me. Aneil is one of the folks whom Becky introduced me to and that I became friends with before the residency. He's an interesting guy. Somewhat of a modern-day nomad, moving and working around the world, changing from experimental biology to computational biology, and able to talk about diverse topics, from biology to Buddhism. Once there, we got to talking about prions, the nightmare behind mad-cow and other fatal diseases.
Prions are simply proteins; not all of them are bad, although we don't know what they're good for. The problem is when you introduce one bad one into an organism it converts other prions into bad ones, and they link together into long thin fibers that muck up the system.
I needed a break to check in on the outside world. While surfing, Becky came in and we got to talking about one of the cells that I had seen under the microscope and which had a dark line running down the middle. It had duplicated its chromosomes and was about to split them. The duplicated chromosomes align themselves along the center of the cell. To split them, tiny thread like structures called microtubules grow from opposite poles of the cell. They shoot off in random directions, hoping to catch a chromosome. Microtubules that hit chromosomes stick, while those that don't shrink back and shoot off in another direction. Once each chromosome is attached to two microtubules, one from each pole, the cell produces a protein that slices the chromosomes so that they can be pulled apart.
This shrinking and growing process would be interesting to reproduce on a much larger scale. Imagine robotic arms that navigated this way. Tim Mitchison, deputy chair of the DSB, has done a lot of work in this area, and hopefully I'll get a chance to chat with him.
Aneil Mallavarapu joined Becky and me. Aneil is one of the folks whom Becky introduced me to and that I became friends with before the residency. He's an interesting guy. Somewhat of a modern-day nomad, moving and working around the world, changing from experimental biology to computational biology, and able to talk about diverse topics, from biology to Buddhism. Once there, we got to talking about prions, the nightmare behind mad-cow and other fatal diseases.
Prions are simply proteins; not all of them are bad, although we don't know what they're good for. The problem is when you introduce one bad one into an organism it converts other prions into bad ones, and they link together into long thin fibers that muck up the system.
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