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Ella, Linda and Columbo
A mutual admiration society
Yes, another baby
Back on 7/2/12 I wrote about a piece I had read in the Fred Hutch journal. It concerned some research by Dr. Carla Grandiori and her laboratory people on ways to curb the pernicious activities of what I took to be an “oncogene” – a gene which, when mutated (?) drives rapid cell division and, if not counteracted, can lead to cancer. My confusion was so obvious that one of Dr. Grandiori’s fellow scientist, Heather, offered to buy me a cup of coffee and set me straight. Wires were crossed and re-crossed, and Heather and I never did get together. Maybe she will read this blurb and try again.
Anyway, the NCI Cancer Bulletin for 10/2/12 contains a short summary of two papers concerning Myc and its deplorable behavior. Seems it isn’t a gene at all, it’s a protein. (However, am I correct when I surmise that there also exists a gene with the same name, one that codes for the Myc protein? I greatly hope so, or more of what I thought I knew about genetics and biochemistry will fall in ruins.) Seems also that what this Myc protein does is accelerate the activity of every damned active gene in the cell – not just specific oncogenes. Thus, if a gene has gone haywire and might cause cancer, Myc will urge it along. Frankly, I don’t know what’s going on - but I guess I should take comfort in the realization that they know Myc is a bad actor, and they’re moving on it.
It may comfort you to know that I no longer am wasting reams of paper printing out any article I run upon that attracts my curiosity. Too often when I do that I merely end up with is in effect a pile of scratch paper – meaning that I can make neither heads nor tails of what I have printed. Now I just print the summaries. I also search for “Press Releases” on the subject; often the institute sponsoring the work wants to make sure it gets the proper credit for its expenditure of research dollars. But, discouragingly, sometimes I even have a hard time with the press releases themselves! Oh, well – that Noble Prize is still out there.
I ALMOST FORGOT: This is the last paragraph of an “Editorial” that aims to explain the significance of the two papers we have been discussing. It nicely summarizes some of the difficulties of doing cancer research, as well as my frustrations in trying to comprehend what is going on.
“….What we do have, thanks to these two seminal studies, is a glimpse of a coherent and holistic view of Myc. We have come a long way since the 1980s’ view wherein Myc exerted its pleiotrophic* biological effects through just a few target genes, whose identification would unlock Myc’s mysteries. Now Myc regulates a third of everything – and which third depends on everything else. It’s a strange way for things to turn out.”
I’ll say it’s strange!
*pleiotropy is the condition wherein a single gene has multiple, apparently unrelated, effects. Thank you Medical Dictionary.
I'm sure there is probably a myc gene that codes for the myc protein. It seems theoretically possible that there is more than one gene coding for a protein (that proteins could be put together in different ways, with different subunits, based on their environment) but I'm not sure whether that has ever been demonstrated. I'm just hypothesizing. It sounds like from what you've written that myc is a protein that regulates other genes - turns them on and off. Interesting, not boring! Fascinating stuff!
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