Working with Genes: from 7,500 BC to the Present

Allyson ListerCISBAN, Newcastle University

Image: PD, Wikimedia Commons,http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ankord&action=edit&redlink=1Presentation/Slides: Allyson Lister , CCSA 2.0 UK

KS1 and KS2:These are Maine Coons, a particular breed of cat.

Has anyone heard of genes before?Genes store the information that makes each one of us different. Eye color, shoe size, hair color...

Sometimes, there can be a change in a gene that is good: that allows a cat to run faster, or a dog to smell better

Sometimes that change can cause problems: some diseases are caused by mistakes in genes

Cats have been around for 1000s of years. They were domesticated by us.

How do we get domestic animals? What does domestic mean?We can breed animals we like the most together

New ways of doing this are around now, which I'll talk about later

KS2:How do you know it is the right thing to do? (Irish setters epilepsy http://www.canadasguidetodogs.com/setterirish.htm, laborador retrievers hip problems, mutts - can be healthier)

In short: remember to think for yourself, and learn before reaching a decision

http://www.allerca.com/images/aboutt.jpg

Charlie the CatCCSA 2.0 UK

KS1 and KS2:Charlie is a normal domestic cat. She is 6 years old and lives with me. Do you know what that pattern is? She's a brown tabby with some orange spots.

This other cat looks the same, and acts the same. But there is one big difference. He wouldn't make my neighbour sneeze!

How many of you know people who sneeze when they are around cats or dogs?

The domestic cat was selectively bred from wild cats at least 9.500 years ago, and has been around since at least ancient Egypt (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6251434.stm) and probably longer, see recent SciAm article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-taming-of-the-cat

The company that breeds cats like the guy at the bottom here found a few cats that didn't cause allergies, and bred more of them.

What traits do you like most in cats? What would you like to see?

KS2:Allerca bred out cases where the Fel d 1 glycoprotein was a version that caused allergic reactions. The process uses gene sequencing to detect rare naturally occurring genetic divergences in cats.

CCSA 2.5: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mangalarga_Marchador.jpg

KS1:What kind of domestic animal is this?

KS1 and KS2:Humans breed horses to look and act specific ways

What do you think are the most important things that make up a good horse?Colour?

Strong muscles?

Good eyesight?

Size?

Personality?

KS2:What might you want to breed out of horses? Do they have any problems that should be fixed?

CCSA 2.0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Biandintz_eta_zaldiak_-_modified2.jpg

KS1 and KS2Would those things you suggested in the previous slide be good all the time?A large horse would have trouble finding food on a small island

A black horse would stand out in the desert.

KS2Having lots of different types of horses makes sure that some of them will always survive changes in the environment

Unrestricted, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Zebrafisch.jpg

KS1 and KS2What kind of animal is this?This is a zebrafish. You can often find it in home aquaria. It's pretty small only a few centimetres long

Why do you think it is called a zebrafish?

CCSA 2.0: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Jellyfish_in_the_Montery_Bay_Aquarium.jpg

KS1 and KS2What animals are these?They're jellyfish

Under the right light, some jellyfish are fluorescent, and you can get both yellow and green colours.

You can get red fluorescence from a sea coral

www.glofish.com

KS1 and KS2What is different about these zebrafish?They are not striped, and they are different colours.

Instead, they're called glofish.

The colours are not normally found in zebrafish.

The genes for these colours are taken from the coral and the jellyfish, and added to the zebrafish

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/gm-food/dn4411

The fantastical fishberry

http://www.geo-pie.cornell.edu/assets/jpeg/fishberry.jpg

KS1 and KS2What do you think a fishberry is? Can you tell from the name? Do you know what antifreeze is? it gets put into cars in the winter. Some scientists tried to make tomatoes resistant to frost by putting a fish antifreeze gene into it. It never worked, but the media picked up on it anyway. fishberries - tomatoes and/or strawberries with the flounder antifreeze gene were researched, but never worked properly. A bit of an urban legend. See http://www.geo-pie.cornell.edu/media/fishberries.html What are some other ideas for plants that might help them survive bad weather, diseases, or insects?

Scientists have lots of ideas, but they don't always work. Also, scientists are very careful and try to ensure that the combinations they make are good ones. Lots of testing!

PD: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:E_coli_at_10000x.jpg

KS1 and KS2We use germs to make medicine!

The germs in the picture live in our guts, and help us out in digesting our food.

You might have drunk some if you have had a probiotic drink.

Some examples of good choices discussed in previous slide: Using germs to make medicine.

Insulin (Diabetes)We can put the human gene for insulin into these guys, and they will make the medicine for us

Originally from cow, horse, pig or fish pancreases , but now 70% of insulin sold is recombinant (2002).(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin)KS2 With cells dividing rapidly (every 20 minutes), a bacterium containing human cDNA (encoding for insulin, for example) will shortly produce many millions of similar cells (clones) containing the same human gene. http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/VL/GG/transfer_and.phphttp://www.littletree.com.au/dna.htm : 51 amino acids long

Adding vaccines for humans into food crops/animals (into tomatoes, e.g.) References in reference document.

CC 2.0: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ Image:Flickr_cc_runner_wisconsin_u.jpg

PD: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:HeterochromiaEye.jpg

KS1 and KS2We can fix mistakes in our own bodies!

Target a specific area: Diseases of the eye: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/04april/pages/genetherapyforrareeyecondition.aspx

Cystic fibrosis: http://www.cysticfibrosismedicine.com/cfdocs/cftext/genetherapy.htmlIt is a single gene defect.

The lung is most affected.

Most heterozygote carriers have approximately 50 % CFTR function and are completely asymptomatic.

Thalassaemia: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2915

(others include Haemophilia, but prb won't talk about it)

Scientists Think Carefully About...

What is needed

Safety

CC 3.0: Cardiff University,http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Martin_Evans_Nobel_Prize.jpg

we change things, and have done for 1000s of years

The tool is not the issue: it used to be just selective breeding, now there are new tools

each individual change has to be thought about, to determine if it is a good idea or not

http://tsienlab.ucsd.edu/Images/General/IMAGE%20-%20Wreath%202002.jpg

Ideas of your own

pigs with less saturated fat (not happened yet, but people talking about it): http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/gm-food/dn1841

spider silk from goats' milk (in the original study, 5x stronger than steel, by weight, and very flexible bulletproof vests!): http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/gm-food/dn1807and now in 2008 from alfalfa http://hayandforage.com/hay/alfalfa/0301-silk-gene-value-alfalfa/ , as it would otherwise take 600 lbs of goats' milk to make one bulletproof vest!

caffeine-free coffee plants: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/gm-food/dn3851

no-tears onion: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/gm-food/dn2935

http://tsienlab.ucsd.edu/HTML/Images/IMAGE%20-%20PLATE%20-%20Beach.jpg

Just a nice picture of different-coloured bacteria on a plate.

Questions?

Shinomura, Chalfie, and Tsien shared this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their work on green fluorescent protein, originally isolated from a jellyfish. Science is interesting and beautiful!

This is the last true slide. The one after this links to the licenses for the photos, and the ones after that are just in case we want to show them.

Licenses

These slides were created by Allyson Lister and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License (see CCSA 2.0 UK below). Contact: a.l.lister@newcastle.ac.uk. The images are the copyright of their creators, as specified using the legend below. For those where no license was available, the download location was provided.

CCSA 2.0 UK:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/

CCSA 2.5:This file is licensed under the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/.

CCSA 2.0:This file is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

CC 2.0:This file is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

PD: Public Domain

Martin Evans, Nobel Prize Winner: This photo can be used under Creative Commons Unported 3.0 license. Public Relations Office, Cardiff University

http://www.littletree.com.au/images/dna3.jpg

This is too old for them, but put it at the end in case there is a specific question by a precocious kid or an adult.

A weakened strain of the common bacterium, Escherrichia coli (E. coli), an inhabitant of the human digestive tract, is the 'factory' used in the genetic engineering of insulin. (http://www.littletree.com.au/dna.htm)

http://www.nichd.nih.gov/news/releases/green_brown_mice.cfm

Fluorescent mice. However, the kids might be scared of this pic, or not like it, so include it at the back and only use it if it seems appropriate.