James Watson: A Geneticist's View of Cancer

At 82 years old, you might imagine James Watson would be taking life easy. After a spectacular scientific career, during which he was part of a duo which made , as his fellow Nobel Laureate Sir Peter Medawar described it, "the greatest achievement of science in the 20th century", a relaxing retirement might be in order. Not so for Watson, it seems.

Speaking at University College Cork last night, while presenting the inaugural Cancer Lecture of the Cork Cancer Research Centre (CCRC), Watson told a packed audience of his ongoing research into finding a cure for cancer at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York where he is now Chancellor Emeritus.

Striking a highly optimistic note, the Nobel Laureate bemoaned some pessimistic cancer researchers who he said were more interested in merely researching cancer and didn't realise that they had an obligation to cure people and to save lives.

"We are nearly there", was his message for the evening, having suggested that the medicines to do the job might already be in use for a variety of ailments, but that doctors and scientists may not have recognised their anti-cancer properties yet.

Watson explained how he initially became interested in cancer research early on in his career. So much so, that he included a whole chapter on cancer in the first edition of his seminal textbook Molecular Biology of the Gene, which was originally published in 1965. The book was based on a a ten-lecture series he had been giving at Harvard for six years to introductory biology students and its format was ground-breaking at the time.

In the preface to the 1965 edition, Watson proclaimed that "it is time to reorient our teaching and to produce the new texts that will give the biologist of the future the rigor, the perspective, and the enthusiasm that will be needed to bridge the gap between the single cell and the complexities of higher organisms. The we may expect hard facts about today's most challenging biological problems: the structure of the cell, the nature of cancer, the fundamental mechanism(s) of differentiation, and how the ability to think arises from the organization of the central nervous system".

Writing in the final chapter of the first edition, Watson explains his hopes for elucidating the causes of cancers and beginning to treat them effectively. In "A Geneticist's View of Cancer", he writes that scientists at the time were just beginning to understand the genetic makeup of the diseases.

 "If we are still a colossally long way from understanding a healthy animal cell at the molecular level, have we any chance of gaining an insight into the diseased cell?"

Even at the time, just over a decade after the publication of the double-helical structure of DNA, Watson was optimistic that "an understanding of at least some aspects of uncontrolled cell growth may soon be achieved at the molecular level. Such optimism arises from recent, spectacular results on the induction of tumors by viruses".

'Only today are we beginning to gain some confidence that we are close to understanding the essential molecular features upon which the life of even the simplest bacterial cell depends' - James Watson, 1965As a young scientist, at the time, he recognised the obstacles that lay ahead: "Only today are we beginning to gain some confidence that we are close to understanding the essential molecular features upon which the life of even the simplest bacterial cell depends. The jump to an attempt to understand the much more complex vertebrate cell with its thousandfold greater amount of DNA has only begun".

Born in Chicago in 1928, James Dewey Watson received his degree from the University of Chicago in 1947, having enrolled in university at the age of just 15. A PhD from Indiana University followed in 1950 and the young scientist then spent two years doing postdoctoral work in Copenhagen before moving to the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University.

In the Spring of 1953, while still at Cambridge, Watson and his colleague Francis Crick published the results of their collaboration - the elucidation of the double helical structure of DNA.

Watson has had several high-profile roles over the years, including serving as the director, president and chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York where he focused on the study of the genetic basis for cancer. He resigned as chancellor in 2007 after a controversy erupted over comments he made in an interview regarding race and intelligence. He was also involved in the Human Genome Project and was only the second person to publish his full genome publicly online.

'I think the ethics committees are out of control' - James Watson, 2010Prior to receiving an  Honorary Doctorate from University College Cork last evening, Watson spoke to journalists telling them that he was in favour of less regulation for clinical trials as this could speed up the process of finding a cure for cancer: "We're terribly held back on clinical tests by regulations which say that no one should die unnecessarily during trials; but they are going to die anyway unless we do something radical. I think the ethics committees are out of control and that it should be put back in the hands of the doctors. There is an extraordinary amount of red tape which is slowing us down. We could go five times faster without these committees".

Speaking in an introductory address to the gathered audience, Prof. Gerald O'Sullivan of CCRC praised Watson: "His accomplishments and contributions transcend boundaries, disciplines, and generations. One of the greatest scientists ever, he is also a respected leader, a gifted administrator, a brilliant author and a beacon in the Gaelic Diaspora". Watson mentioned his mother's family during his speech who left Co. Tipperary during the famine.


Prof. O'Sullivan continued, "Hopefully mankind will also constructively use its increasing technical capability to live peacefully. If so,  the humans in future millennia  may not know of  many from our time but they will know of the structure of DNA and of Watson and Crick as by then the ramifications of its discovery will have impinged on life in ways that we cannot yet imagine".

The Inaugural Cancer Lecture of the Cork Cancer Research Centre by James Watson is available as a series of video clips here.

An edited version of this article appears on the Guardian.co.uk Science Blog. You can read it here. 







Parts of the post were also reported in the Wall Street Journal. You can read it here. 

It's murder on the dancefloor

Scientists using 3D motion-capture technology have identified key dance moves that make male dancers look good in the eyes of female observers.

The research, conducted at Northhumbria University led to the creation of computer avatars depicting "good" and "bad" dancers by filming 19 male volunteers (who volunteers for these things!) and gauging female reaction.

Dr. Nick Neave of Northhumbria University says "We now know which area of the body females are looking at when they are making a judgement about male dance attractiveness. If a man knows what the key moves are, he can get some training and improve his chances of attracting a female through his dance style".

There has been some debate online as to whether this constitutes a worthwhile scientific endeavor. So, just for the record: Do I consider this an important scientific breakthrough? No. Do I consider these videos hilariously funny? Yes!



A "good" male dancer:



A "bad" male dancer:

Communicate Science and the Irish Web Awards

Thanks for the nominations in the Irish Web Awards 2010. We were nominated in the Best Web Only Publication category. Fingers crossed, but we are up against some fine competition. Judging and shortlisting is due to begin soon and the winners are due to be announced on October 16th in Dublin's Mansion House.

Reaping what you sow: Irish education spending

University College Cork: climbed 23 places to 184th

The latest QS World University Rankings are out and they make for mixed reading for the country's third-level institutions. While TCD and UCD both dropped down the rankings, UCC and NUIG have improved their ranking since last year.

Trinity College Dublin is still Ireland's highest ranked university in 52nd place worldwide, but this is down from 43rd last year. University College Dublin remains second highest in Ireland at 114th place, but this is again down from 89th place in 2009.

On the plus side, NUI Galway increased its ranking from 243rd place, up to 232nd. At University College Cork (still ranked third in Ireland), the worldwide ranking was improved from 207nd place in 2009, up to 184th place this year.

The rise of UCC is one of the high points of the ranking system. Annual rises since 2006 have seen the university rise from 386th position to 184th.

The results come as the latest OECD (Organisation for Economic Development) reports confirm that the government spends just €12,631 for every third-level student. This figure is below that in 30 other developed countries studied.

When measured against GDP, Ireland's total spend on education is just 4.7%, which places it in 25th place out of 28 OECD countries. This is significantly less than the OECD average of 5.7% and below the EU19 average of 5.3% of GDP.

What is most disturbing about the OECD data is that the results are based on data from 2007, before the huge raft of cutbacks ordered by the Government were implemented.

Concerning too is the news that, at primary-level, just 4% of pupils time is spent on science education. This compares to 29% spent on reading and writing (including Irish). The time spent on science in primary schools here is just half of that in other EU countries.

Combined with this bad news for science, just one-eight of pupils' time at primary-level is spent learning maths. This is the lowest of all countries measured. And we wonder why maths achievement at Leaving Certificate level is so low!

One wonders whether Irish universities can sustain such rankings given more cutbacks planned for next year.

Researchers stating the bleeding obvious

In a not unexpected development, newly published research suggests that people who fail to dry their hands properly after washing them may be more likely to spread disease-causing bacteria.

The researchers say that paper towels are the best way to reduce bacterial numbers when drying hands. Dr.Anna Snelling, one of the papers authors, says: "Good hand hygiene should include drying hands thoroughly and not just washing. The most hygienic method of drying hands is using paper towels or using a hand dryer which doesn't require rubbing your hands together".

No doubt this came as good news to the company that funded the research: Dyson Limited, who produce the Airblade, a dryer which uses air 'blades' to strip water from still hands. The paper found that the Airblade was "superior to the warm air dryers for reducing bacterial transfer."

The researchers quantified the effects of hand drying by measuring the number of bacteria on different parts of the hands before and after different drying methods. Volunteers were asked to wash their hands and place them onto contact plates which were then incubated to measure bacterial growth. The volunteers were then asked to dry their hands using either hand towels or one of three hand dryers, with or without rubbing their hands together, and levels of bacteria were re-measured.

However, the results also suggest that "if people use conventional warm air hand dryers for at least 30 seconds, then it is likely that the hygiene benefit will be similar to that achieved with 10 s use of the Dyson Airblade"

Expecting conventional dryers to function effectively using the reduced drying time for the Airblade is hardly reasonable. Obviously, if equipment is not used as designed, it will not function effectively.

Expecting the conventional dryers to work using a 10 second drying time, just because Dyson's latest gadget does is missing the point. When used for the recommended duration, the conventional dryers worked just as well as the new product.

When the A5 and Turbodry (the two conventional driers used in the study) were used for their recommended times of 30 and 35 seconds respectively, there was no significant difference in mean log bacterial count numbers compared to the that present when the Airblade was used for 10 seconds.

The work carried out at the University of Bradford also found that rubbing hands together while using traditional hand driers could actually increase bacterial numbers by bringing bacteria to the surface that usually reside within the skin. These bacteria can then be transferred to other surfaces.

However, this study used a drying time of 15 seconds for all dryers, significantly less than that recommended by the manufacturers of the conventional dryers.

What this paper has shown is that the Airblade does its job effectively in a relatively short duration of 10 seconds. But, what it also shows is that if you use a device incorrectly it won't work properly. That's hardly surprising, is it?

The paper is here.

Sleep, Diet and Life Expectancy

Sleep seems to be on the mind of lots of scientists over the last few days with a number of intriguing sets of results being published.

According to a study published on Tuesday in PLoS Biology, when flies are starved they are able to stay awake for long periods of time without feeling the downsides of going without a nap.

The experiment was conducted by starving some flies while allowing others to feed normally and then providing a physical jolt to prevent them from nodding off. The starved flies were less susceptible to the effects of sleep deprivation such as cognitive impairment.

The scientists also made use of mutant fruit flies which lack the 'canonical clock gene cycle'. Such flies normally die within 10 hours of being deprived of sleep, but when starved they lasted nearly three times as long.

The authors believe that two genes recently shown to control the response to starvation in fruit flies brummer (bmm) and Lipid storage droplet 2 (Lsd2) also have a role to play in sleep regulation.

"brummer mutants, which are fat, show exaggerated response to sleep loss. In contrast, mutants for Lipid storage droplet 2 are lean and are able to stay awake without becoming sleepy or showing signs of cognitive impairment" the authors write.

"Given that metabolic pathways are highly conserved between mammals and flies, it will be interesting to determine whether lipid [fat] metabolism also plays a similar role in mammals".

Meanwhile, a recent study reported in the September 1st issue of Sleep found that men with serious sleep problems had much higher mortality rates.

The study of 1,742 men and women, who were randomly sampled in Pennsylvania and studied for 14 and 10 years respectively found that the overall mortality rate was 21% for men and 5% for women.

'in men who experienced insomnia, that mortality rate was significantly increased' However, in men who experienced insomnia (who slept for less than 6 hours a night), that mortality rate was significantly increased. In women, on the other hand, mortality was not found to be associated with insomnia and disrupted sleep.

Of the men who were studied, 51% of insomniacs died during the study period, compared to just 9% of normal sleepers.

“Insomnia has potentially very severe side effects,” said study co-author  Edward Bixler. “It needs to be treated, and more effort needs to be put into sorting out better treatments.”

More evidence of sleepless nights being bad for your health came from a report also published on Wednesday (Sept. 1st) in which US researchers found that teenagers who sleep for less than 8 hours a night during Monday to Friday eat more snacks and fatty foods then those who get a solid eight hours.

The study analysed 240 teenagers and asked them to wear wrist monitors that measured sleep duration. During the study period, researchers discussed eating habits with the participants twice a day to monitor their food intake.

'teens who did not sleep well consumed 2.2% more calories from fat' The results, also published in the September issue of Sleep, showed that teens who did not sleep well consumed 2.2% more calories from fat compared to those who slept for eight hours. Girls were more prone to this than boys; consuming 3.3.% more calories from fat compared to 0.9% in boys.

Teenagers who slept for eight hours or more a day during the working week consumed 1,723 calories per day, with 1,968 calories being consumed by those who  slept for less than eight hours.

The authors of this study have suggested that sleep may be the "missing link" in the fight against obesity, which up to now has focused on diet and exercise.

From this handful of recent studies it seems that diet and sleep are certainly closely linked and that more research is required to find out exactly the nature of that link.

One thing is for sure, if the results of the the mortality study is anything to go by, the outcome of cutting back on sleep time (either by choice or not) can be serious effects on your health and life expectancy.

References:
Thimgan MS, Suzuki Y, Seugnet L, Gottschalk L, & Shaw PJ (2010). The perilipin homologue, lipid storage droplet 2, regulates sleep homeostasis and prevents learning impairments following sleep loss. PLoS biology, 8 (8) PMID: 20824166


Vgontzas AN; Liao D; Pejovic S; Calhoun S; Karataraki M; Basta M; Fernández-Mendoza J; Bixler EO (2010). Insomnia with short sleep duration and mortality: the Penn State Cohort SLEEP, 33 (9), 1159-1164


Weiss A; Xu F; Storfer-Isser A; Thomas A; Ievers-Landis CE; Redline S (2010). The association of sleep duration with adolescents’ fat and carbohydrate consumption SLEEP, 33 (9), 1201-1209

Wheat and Apple genomes provide hope for food security

The recent sequencing of two major crop genomes is good news for plant protection and for food security.

With the full genetic sequence now available for wheat and apple, scientists will have more information at their fingertips for the improvement of these crops to fight plant diseases and to ensure that growing human populations have adequate food resources in the future.

On the 26th of August last, a team of researchers in the UK released the 'first draft' of the wheat genome. While further work needs to be done to produce a fully annotated genome, the work is a major step forward for plant science.

The team of researchers responsible for the the wheat genome publication were funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and come from the University of Liverpool, the University of Bristol and the John Innes Centre.

The first draft (basically the raw data from the sequencing work) will need to be further annotated and assembled into the individual chromosomes and is based on a reference wheat variety called Chinese Spring. Information on this reference variety will be key to unlocking the genetic information behind other commercial varieties of wheat.

Prof. Mike Bevan from the John Innes Centre says that "The sequence coverage will provide an important foundation for international efforts aimed at generating a complete genome sequence of wheat in the next few years".

The information should lead to improvements in current wheat varieties to ensure that high yields can be maintained in the face of changing environmental conditions and an increased threat from a variety of plant pathogens.

'By understanding the genetic differences between varieties with different traits we can start to develop new types of wheat' - Prof. Anthony HallProf. Anthony Hall of the University of Liverpool hopes that the new information will allow scientists to probe differences between wheat varieties with different characteristics: "By understanding the genetic differences between varieties with different traits we can start to develop new types of wheat better able to cope with drought, salinity or able to deliver higher yields. This will help to protect our food security".

Meanwhile, just this week, an international team of scientists announced that they had published a draft sequence of the domestic apple genome. The genome was published in the current issue of Nature Genetics.

Apple is the main fruit crop of the world's temperate regions and is a member of the plant family Rosaceae which includes many other important species including cherry, pear, peach, apricot, strawberry, and rose.

Much like with the wheat genome, this new information will allow scientists to identify genes which provide desirable characteristics to the crop such as higher yields and disease or drought resistance.

The work by scientists from Italy, France, New Zealand, Belgium and the US was based on the well-known golden delicious apple.

'the scientists were also able to delve into the apples mysterious past'As well as looking to the future of apple production, the scientists were also able to delve into the apples mysterious past. For years they have argued about where the domestic apple came from and now they know. The data published this week shows that the ancestor of the modern apple in Malus sieversii, a plant native to the mountains of southern Kazakhstan.

Prof. Doug Kell, Chief Executive of the BBSRC, who funded the wheat project, points out that "The best way to support our food security is by using modern research strategies to understand how we can deliver sustainable increases in crop yields, especially in the face of climate change. Genome sequencing of this type is an absolutely crucial strategy.

"Knowledge of these genome sequences will now allow plant breeders to identify the best genetic sequences to use as markers in accelerated breeding programmes" said Prof. Kell.

Both the apple and wheat genome work have been made possible by huge advances in sequencing technology. As Prof. Hall of University of Liverpool notes: "Sequencing the human genome took 15 years to complete, but with huge advances in DNA technology, the wheat genome took only a year. The information we have collected will be invaluable in tackling the problem of global food shortage".