A prion is a protein that can adopt a conformation other than the ‘standard’ functional conformation and this alternative conformation favors self-association. The aggregation-associated conformation can then be imposed on additional copies of the protein in the...
This past December, science writer David Dobbs published an essay (2013) in the online magazine Aeon (aeon.co/magazine/) that purports to explain why the ‘selfish gene’ concept is outmoded and should be retired. It elicited a good deal of commentary, and in...
The consortium of investigators known as ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements) published, with much publicity, a series of about thirty papers last fall purporting to “identify all functional elements in the human genome sequence” (https://www.genome.gov/ENCODE/). ...
An assumption fundamental to medical genetics is that the DNA sequence of an allele at a particular locus will (in the vast majority of instances) be faithfully transcribed into RNA and translated into protein. This assumption has been largely accepted in spite of...