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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 6, 2016 11:02:37 GMT -5
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Post by starbuckwhy on May 6, 2016 13:30:15 GMT -5
the tutorials on united nuclear are pretty good too. that is where i plan to buy the x-ray tube and socket from. |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 6, 2016 14:58:22 GMT -5
the tutorials on united nuclear are pretty good too. that is where i plan to buy the x-ray tube and socket from. I've bought chemistry supplies/equipment from them before. They are one of my favorite shops. Although sometimes their prices are higher than others. But for radioactive supplies i would think they would be a good place to use and fairly singular/unique in the stuff they have. And since they do this kind of stuff all the time they should have the knowledge to do it safely. Perhaps send them an email over here. Who knows, maybe they will jump into the discussion. |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 6, 2016 15:08:53 GMT -5
That corn paper you linked to was interesting. i only briefly skimmed over it. It was interesting that they hadn't encountered any dominant gene mutations, but that some of the recessive mutations will sometimes convert themselves to dominant traits. Weird concept. I'll have to try reading it again later. I believe the "old gold" gene in corn that Joseph Lofthouse has posted pictures of in the past were produced using radiation. And i believe they are also a dominant trait. I originally sent him the seed that i originally got from Ken at the Long Island Seed Project. Sadly i don't have any seed for that trait any more, but i'd like to get some back to breed with again at some point. in fact i'd like to start working with variegated corn again. I really really like seedlings that are variegated white and green. maizecoop.cropsci.uiuc.edu/mgc-info.php |
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Post by darrenabbey on May 7, 2016 0:18:13 GMT -5
I wonder how much of the weird behavior of the mutations the paper talks about was due to how Xrays induce chromosomal irregularities.
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Post by mskrieger on May 9, 2016 10:03:24 GMT -5
Hm. Good question. If the x-rays do enough damage to break up and rearrange chromosomes (the way chemical poisons used for this purpose do) that could happen. Also potentially a case of jumping genes (transposons). Can Carol Deppe weigh in? |
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Post by darrenabbey on May 11, 2016 2:46:00 GMT -5
Hm. Good question. If the x-rays do enough damage to break up and rearrange chromosomes (the way chemical poisons used for this purpose do) that could happen. Also potentially a case of jumping genes (transposons). Can Carol Deppe weigh in? The chemicals typically used for mutation breeding tend to produce much smaller effects, such as point mutations or indels. These smaller effects are far less lethal. Transposons could hypothetically be activated by the stress caused by the Xrays. Identical sequences (the transposon itself) at lots of genomic loci can allow for chromosome crossovers. If the chromosomes can crossover at enough places, it starts to look like the chromosomes were hit with too much Xray. Essentially, too high a transposon activation level can result in chromosomes getting shredded just like Xrays can [more directly]. |
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Post by mskrieger on May 12, 2016 9:06:43 GMT -5
Do you have access to equipment (high powered microscopes or gene sequencers) that can determine what's happening to the chromosomes, darrenabbey? (I know that the 3D configuration of the chromosome when it's in the nucleus also affects gene expression, and can also be altered by even point mutations...but to get that kind of resolution requires an army of data scientists working for you. Some of my developmental biologists collaborate with folks at a private institution that actually has an army of data scientists, and even they take years to determine this stuff. But at the grossly obvious level of 'chromosome shredding', it should be pretty obvious, no?) |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 12, 2016 16:35:39 GMT -5
I wonder how much gene mutation is actually just changes to epigenetic activation/deactivation of genes. There are chemicals that are known to remove/reset the methyl group proteins that bind and deactivate expression of DNA. Makes me wonder what x-rays would do to those. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1bZEUgqVI |
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Post by darrenabbey on May 13, 2016 2:35:04 GMT -5
Do you have access to equipment (high powered microscopes or gene sequencers) that can determine what's happening to the chromosomes, darrenabbey ? (I know that the 3D configuration of the chromosome when it's in the nucleus also affects gene expression, and can also be altered by even point mutations...but to get that kind of resolution requires an army of data scientists working for you. Some of my developmental biologists collaborate with folks at a private institution that actually has an army of data scientists, and even they take years to determine this stuff. But at the grossly obvious level of 'chromosome shredding', it should be pretty obvious, no?) Not at this time. I had previously worked on a project that was using Xrays as a mutagenic agent in fruit flies because we could visually (staining, microscope, etc.) identify where chromosomes were broken or fused. This relied on previous results that showed consistent staining patterns of different chromosome regions. We would visually identify the location of the chromosome breaks, then drill down with localized sequencing to identify the specific genes that were impacted. There are more modern staining methods (like "Chromosome Painting") that can help identify large chromosome translocations in organisms without such easily visualized chromosomes. Using these sort of techniques, shredded and recombined chromosomes are easy to see in relatively short time-frames. 3D mapping of chromosome organization in the nucleus is a really cool new area of investigation. It takes years to develop the new analytical techniques. However, after the software is written, the data-analysis step drops to minutes or hours. Writing software for biological data analysis is what I spent most of my graduate degree developing. ---- I suppose I really do have sufficient of a microscope to visualize the fruit fly chromosome recombinations, but I don't have the chemicals needed to prepare and stain the cells appropriately. I have contacts that could assist in getting a sample sequenced, if I were motivated enough. An additional problem is that translocations/breaks are very small point defects in the overall genome map, which makes them very hard to see with modern sequencing techniques. Lots of data can be gathered for the entire genome, but if you don't have enough data at the specific coordinate of the break it becomes very difficult to tell if you have something real vs. noise in the sequencing tech. The usual routine would be to generate a list of potential break points, then do targeted sequencing across them to determine which are real. One of my graduate school projects revealed another method that can be used to identify the coordinates of chromosome translocations/breaks using modern sequencing techniques. Unfortunately, the method relied upon an accidental error in the preparation of the DNA... but in a way that made translocations/breaks obvious in the final map of DNA content across the genome. In the time we were working on it, we were not able to replicate the error. Lab notebooks are great for replicating experiments, but they only capture what you thought you were doing. Accidental protocol improvements can take a very long time to isolate. |
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Post by templeton on May 15, 2016 23:50:50 GMT -5
Unfortunately, the method relied upon an accidental error in the preparation of the DNA... but in a way that made translocations/breaks obvious in the final map of DNA content across the genome. In the time we were working on it, we were not able to replicate the error. Lab notebooks are great for replicating experiments, but they only capture what you thought you were doing. Accidental protocol improvements can take a very long time to isolate. I love this...reinvigorates my love of science and the capricious universe  And 7 inches of concrete - that's a serious amount of weight. Could you use concrete pavers for ease of construction? I suppose earth would work as well- ahah! thus the darrenabbey cellar/bunker! T |
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Post by steev on May 16, 2016 0:58:26 GMT -5
So in what is your PhD to be? Renaissance economics, Mesopotamian cuneiform love-poetry, Finnish bagpipe music, or something dealing with facts and the crap-shoot of life?
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Post by templeton on May 16, 2016 5:27:46 GMT -5
So in what is your PhD to be? Renaissance economics, Mesopotamian cuneiform love-poetry, Finnish bagpipe music, or something dealing with facts and the crap-shoot of life? Mine? How did you guess? Actually it's even more esoteric than any of those Steev. Let's just say it combines lichenometry, orienteering maps, root hemiparasites, and Xanthorrhoea. Not a cellar or wire in sight. T |
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Post by darrenabbey on May 17, 2016 3:11:15 GMT -5
So in what is your PhD to be? Renaissance economics, Mesopotamian cuneiform love-poetry, Finnish bagpipe music, or something dealing with facts and the crap-shoot of life? Mine is from the department of Genetics at the University of Minnesota. Most of my work was heavy on the computational. |
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Post by darrenabbey on May 17, 2016 3:25:09 GMT -5
And 7 inches of concrete - that's a serious amount of weight. Could you use concrete pavers for ease of construction? I suppose earth would work as well- ahah! thus the darrenabbey cellar/bunker! I've lost the train of conversation that led to this response. This sounds like something to contain some Xrays... but this sounds more useful for the machine that starbuckwhy is working on than mine. |
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