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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Let us begin our journey towards understanding the human condition by examining life. Biology uses a number of different terms to represent living entities. These terms include life forms, living organisms, and more recently living systems. These terms have subtle but important differences which I will discuss later in The Science section, but for now these terms may be considered as synonymous. We humans are a form of life. This is a fact of reality paramount to understanding ourselves. And, yet this fact is so pervasive and constant that it rarely enters our consciousness. Our clear and distant superiority to all other forms of life have made it easy for us to neglect our biological basis. As we have seen ourselves different and superior to all other forms of life, we have missed the point . While we differ from plants and animals, we share their aliveness – we are still forms of life – we are still living organisms –we are still living systems . When we examine ourselves scientifically, we discover that humans are living systems, and it follows therefore that our powers and our problems will be those of life. If we are to create a safe and comfortable future for ourselves and our children, we must understand our connection to life. Our life connection is not only relevant, it is the crucial factor in determining a safe passage through the current human crisis. A fundamental way of understanding life is by examining needs and actions. All living organisms have needs and all living organisms act to meet those needs. The primary drive of all living organisms is to survive – to continue to live. (12/24/04)
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BBC Health – Scientists hope discovering how the ageing process turns a person’s hair grey will help them treat skin cancer. Greying is linked to pigment cells called melanocytes, Science reports. Hair loses its colour and turns silver when cells that spawn melanocytes die off, the team from Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute told the journal. Melanocytes also go awry and multiply uncontrollably in deadly skin cancers so the team hopes the findings could lead to a way to stop tumour growth. The malfunction occurs in malignant melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer. Now that they have pinpointed how melanocyte numbers are killed off with ageing, the US scientists hope doctors will one day be able to turn off cancerous melanocytes. Dr David Fisher and colleagues looked at what was happening in the hair follicles of mice and then humans as they aged. They traced the loss of hair colour to the gradual dying off of the precursors to melanocytes. Not only were there fewer numbers of these non-specialised cells, they also began to make more errors. Some were turning into fully committed melanocytes in the wrong place within the hair follicle where they are useless for colouring the hair. The team then looked at what would happen if they ‘knocked out’ a gene in mice that is known to be important for cell survival. Mice lacking this Bcl2 gene went grey shortly after birth. The scientists believe the same principle might apply in humans, which would explain why some people - such as TV presenter Philip Schofield - go grey in their 20s, while others keep their dark locks into retirement. (12/24/04)
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BBC Health – Exposure to alcohol makes mouth cells more susceptible to HIV infection during oral sex, research has shown. Earlier studies focused on how alcohol consumption increased the chance of someone having unprotected sex and therefore risking HIV infection. But the team from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) looked at how alcohol affected cells. The research is published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Cells from the lining of the mouth, the epithelium, were obtained from people who were HIV negative. The cells were then exposed to various concentrations of alcohol, similar to those found in beers, and then to a strain of HIV which had been modified with green fluorescent protein so that researchers could see if it infected cells. It was found that epithelial cells which had been exposed to 4% of ethanol for 10 minutes showed between a three to six-fold greater susceptibility to infection from the HIV strain. (12/24/04)
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BBC Life – A baby spiny turtle has hatched at the Durrell Conservation Trust in Jersey. It is the first ever spiny turtle to be bred in captivity in Europe - and only the second in the whole world. Spiny turtles, which live in southeast Asia, are extremely threatened in the wild because of habitat loss, hunting and the international pet trade. But the new arrival in Jersey has given conservationists fresh hope that a captive breeding programme might haul the species back from the brink. “Breeding these rare turtles here allows us to study and learn about their breeding ecology and what makes these beautiful, yet complex, animals tick,” said Gerardo Garcia of Durrell Wildlife. “This kind of information can prove invaluable for conservation action in the wild.” The diminutive spiny turtle (Heosemys spinosa), which grows to no more than nine inches (22.9 cm) in length, has been causing concern since it was upgraded from Vulnerable to Endangered on the IUCN’s Red List. Their natural range is through southern Burma, southern Thailand, Malaysia, Sumatra and several Indonesian islands. But human activity is weakening the species’ grip in the wild. In an attempt to divert their almost inevitable slide into extinction, scientists are developing a coordinated protection programme. Prior to the new spiny turtle hatching in Jersey, the only successful captive birth and rearing of one of these creatures was in Atlanta Zoo, US, in 1992. (12/24/04)
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