News Items

Charles Darwin is widely recognized as the father of evolutionary theory.  In recognition of his 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of his seminal book, “The Origin of Species,” the New York Botanical Garden has launched a stunning exhibition of his life and scientific work.

The exhibit features a full-scale replica of Darwin's house and garden.  His simple "at-home" experiments with plants provided him with key insights that contributed to his overall theory of evolution.

The New York Times article linked below includes a very informative slideshow, showcasing the exhibit.  For those of you living in New York or planning to visit, “Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure,” runs through June 15.

In this NPR podcast by Science Friday's Ira Flatow, researchers describe several new ideas in the quest to efficiently produce fuel from foodstuffs.

One one example, Mariam Sticklen (Michigan State University) describes a technique to use a gene from a microbe that lives in a cow's stomach to convert fiber into fermentable sugar.  Her approach is to insert the gene into a corn plant, only producing the enzyme in the leaves and corn stalk – not in the pollen, root, or ear of corn itself.  This way, humans and animals can eat the corn, while the stalk and leaves (containing the enzyme) are ready to be used for energy production.

Researchers have used a new approach to identify genes that lead to elevated risk for schizophrenia, which affects approximately 1% of the population.

The new method, known as a genome-wide association (GWA) study, compares the genomes of people with a particular disease to those without the disease. By identifying key differences between the two, one can generate hot leads as to which genes might be involved.  The trick is identifying which genes are truly related, and which are not – a difficult task, to be sure.

This approach has become important for identifying the many genes thought to contribute small increases in risk for diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and schizophrenia. Previously, these genes were difficult to track and identify using classic, family-based genetic discovery techniques.

At Northwestern, researchers in the NUgene project were recently funded by the National Institutes of Health to use the GWA approach to look for genes involved in diabetes and asthma.

There are practical concerns, though, with how this type of research finding might be used by doctors and their patients.  Should genetic tests be ordered for conditions where the risk factors are small, or where treatment options may not exist?  For many diseases, more informative risk factors are evident just by looking at one’s health record and family history. For example, risk factors for diabetes, including weight, lifestyle, and family history (the simplest genetic test), are straightforward to interpret and quite informative.

So while this news is exciting to researchers because it represents a start for unraveling the genetic contributions to schizophrenia, this is not likely to be information that will directly benefit a patient quite yet.

An article in the New York Times this week explores the much-covered topic of performance enhancing drugs. This time, however, the users are not athletes, and the goal isn't more home runs.

Instead, as reported in the journal Nature, prescription drugs such as Adderall, used to treat attention deficit disorder, and Provigil, used to treat narcolepsy, are being taken by college students and faculty alike to increase academic performance through enhanced concentration and wakefulness. 

Opinions on the ethical issues surrounding "brain-boosting" differ, especially between those who use the drugs and the experts who speculate on the long term consequences. Some urge that widespread use will eventually raise "normal" standards, creating an unfair advantage for those with access to the drugs over those who do not. Others suggest that making people who are already driven and productive even more productive could be seen as a positive thing, assuming- and this is a big assumption- that no one, including the user, is harmed in the process.