In studies of breast cancer cells, [senior investigator Dr. Bert] O'Malley and his colleagues showed how the clock works. Using steroid receptor coactivator-3 (SRC-3), they demonstrated that activation requires addition of a phosphate molecule to the protein at one spot and addition of an ubiquitin molecule at another point. Each time the message of the gene is transcribed into a protein, another ubiquitin molecule is chained on. Five ubiquitins in the chain and the protein is automatically destroyed.A counter on a separate work tape: neat !
Main article at sciencedaily; link via Science and Reason.
The result is rather neat, but if this is the "algorithmic lens" were are in trouble as it does not use a single fact from a published paper in theory of CS.
ReplyDeleteWe ain't going to get more funding with claims like that. A better example of the "algorithmic lens", say, is the application of the pumping lemma to simple (DFA based) stock trading strategies, and it seems that the best examples, at least in terms of funding, are direct application of advanced algorithms such as shot gun sequencing.
I saw you talking about ubiquitin protein, so I thought you might be interested in Science Magazine's current webinar regarding disease treatment:
ReplyDeleteScience Magazine's Webinar: The Ubiquitin-Proteasome Pathway