{"id":60,"date":"2011-07-23T00:04:56","date_gmt":"2011-07-23T00:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genotopia.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=60"},"modified":"2011-07-23T17:07:57","modified_gmt":"2011-07-23T17:07:57","slug":"genome-%e2%80%9ceditors%e2%80%9d-find-nature-writes-like-middle-schooler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/genotopia\/60\/genome-%e2%80%9ceditors%e2%80%9d-find-nature-writes-like-middle-schooler\/","title":{"rendered":"Genome \u201ceditors\u201d find Nature writes like middle-schooler"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers in one of the hottest areas in biotechnology are learning how to edit the genome<\/a> as if it were a word processing document. And as they do, they\u2019re discovering that nature has the compositional skills of a typical eighth-grader.<\/p>\n

As genomics moves ever closer to text editing, copyeditors, English teachers, and literary criticism theorists are flocking to the life sciences. And they don\u2019t always like what they\u2019re finding.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my view,\u201d said Maya Primweed, who teaches 8th<\/sup> grade English at Podunk Middle School in East Jesus-By-The-Sea, CT, \u201cthe human genome is performing well<\/em> below grade level.\u201d Adjusting her glasses and clearing her throat significantly, she said, \u201cIf it were my student, I would send a note home insisting<\/em> on a parent conference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Primweed estimates that spelling errors alone would lower the human genome\u2019s SAT scores below the threshold of even third-tier colleges. \u201cMaybe<\/em> a 500 on the verbal test,\u201d she said, clucking her tongue ever so slightly. \u201cOn a good day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does God even use Microsoft Word?<\/em><\/p>\n

Indeed, researchers have noted spelling errors in about one in every three hundred characters\u2014that is, base pairs\u2014in the human genome. Miss Primweed prefers the old-fashioned method of rote drilling to improve spelling accuracy, but she concedes that many of the errors could have been prevented had God simply spellchecked the genome before turning it in. For example, at position 7q on the Y chromosome, Primweed finds, the \u201cdancer\u201d gene, which is associated with a 3% increased risk of excessive thigh muscle mass and a predisposition for lycra, is often misspelled as \u201ccancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, genome copyeditors are finding in fact that many of the typos lead to cancer. For example, a gene closely linked to MAOA-L4C, associated with thalassophilia<\/a>, leads to a predisposition to colon cancer in the presence of a diet low in vegetables. A copyeditor from Fort Oowonaginst, Nebraska, suggests that this could explain why pirates have historically tended to die young. \u201cImagine giving Blackbeard chemotherapy,\u201d she said. \u201cIf he could have gone from \u2018Avast!\u2019 to Avastin, we might have saved him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all the DNA typos are tragic, however. The human genome is full of spoonerisms, in which syllables of words or phrases are swapped. In the last two years, GWAS studies have uncovered polymorphisms associated with armatoid rheuthritis, wipe ton biadetes, epsilepy, posteo\u00f6rosis, fyomardial incarction, and kolypistic Sydney disease. And Norbert Pancake, a freelance indexer from Mos\u2019 Lalanos, Mew Nexico, recently received a grant from the National Institute of English to sequence and analyze the Nomarch flutterby genome. \u201cIf there was an intelligent designer,\u201d said Miss Primweed, \u201cI\u2019m beginning to think She was dyslexic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jean\u2019s four common diseases<\/em><\/p>\n

Primary and secondary school English teachers are also moving into genomics, and are gaining surprising insights into the grammar of life. Punctuation and spelling errors can create serious misunderstandings for DNA polymerases as well as comp. lit. profs.<\/p>\n

Comma splices are common as dirt, researchers find them almost every day. That\u2019s the finding of Francis Bowtie, a ninth-grade English teacher from South Nowhere, Iowa, and his collaborator, Erica Islander of MIT. \u201cWe\u2019ve found genes on almost every chromosome,\u201d says Bowtie, \u201cthat essentially say, \u2018It is a serotonin receptor, make it in the prefrontal cortex,\u2019 or \u2018It\u2019s a microtubule, keep it in the cytoplasm.\u2019\u201d Genome guru Islander feels fortunate to have a grammarian on his team. \u201cFrancis is a much better proofreader than me,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t get nothin\u2019 but C\u2019s in English.\u201d \u201cAnything,<\/em>\u201d Bowtie interjects, pointedly. Bowtie, who minored in the history of science in college, pointed out that such problems could have been avoided if God had adopted Francis Crick\u2019s \u201ccomma-free code\u201d instead of the non-overlapping triplet genetic code employed universally throughout the organic world.<\/p>\n

Much to their surprise, dangling participles are also popping up in researchers\u2019 findings. Edna Parsewell, a fourth-grade Language Arts teacher is working with Mark Ptosis at Memorial Burger King Hospital in New York City. Promoting expression of a downstream ion channel, they found a regulatory region expressed in women with a TATA box.<\/p>\n

And the set of human genes are also prone to problems of, misplaced commas, subject-verb disagreement and beginning a sentence with a preposition\u2014which, some grammarians admit, is disputed as to whether or not it still constitutes a mutation.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the new hybrid discipline of grammomics is discovering that nearly every rule of grammar and style can be found broken somewhere in the 3 billion nucleotide pairs that inhabit each of our cells. Transposition of a mobile disrupt element can alter the fragment of a gene\u2019s function. Subject-verb disagreement are frequent. Run-on sentences occur on several chromosomes they disrupt gene function some think they may lead to many diseases. Redundancy is common in gene sequence and widespread in the DNA. And sentence fragments.<\/p>\n

High throughput<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, professors specializing in literary criticism are addressing the genome as text. \u201cPostmodern genomics or post-genomic modernism: it\u2019s all one,\u201d said Myron Nosehair, of Tweedy College in Elbow Patch, New Hampshire. In his course, \u201cRemedial English and computational genomics: a synergistic dialectic,\u201d Nosehair examines cybertextual problematization as the quintessential cognitive strategy of the bio-digital age. Following the paradigm of French deconstructionism pioneered by Jacques Derrida, Nosehair is analyzing DNA as text.<\/p>\n

To illustrate, Nosehair picked a sequence he has been studying, rs6318, a region in the human serotonin receptor:<\/p>\n

CCTAATTGGCCTATTGGTTTGGCAAT[C\/G]<\/p>\n

\u201cThis string of nucleotides,\u201d he explains, \u201cthis sequential logos<\/em>, this twisted lineal inscription\u2014ostensibly the signification of natural \u201ctruth\u201d\u2014is in fact but an ancestral bias which has sedimented in our culture during the course of history. But consider the sequence. Repetitive. Insistent. Even, at risk of excess emotion, obscurely compulsive. To unmask it is to devalue it\u2014to reclaim our bodies as socio-historical agents, transgressing the liminal constraints of scientific nature. Free of the text, we are free of these constraints.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing outside the sequence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toward a poetics of DNA[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, some poets are collaborating with researchers in the field of synthetic biology, creating \u201cliving poems,\u201d organisms with meter, sonority, rhetorical devices, and deliberate ambiguity literally in their genes. For example, the poet Tommy Collins has teamed up with synthetic biologist Ahmad Mosque in creating a terpsichorean bacterium. Taking advantage of the fact that bacteria have a single circular chromosome, Collins and Mosque have designed their bug with palindromes, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and full, half, and internal rhyme, with alternating iambic pentameter and heptameter in an AABA form.<\/p>\n

AAAATAAACGCAAATTAAACGCAAATAAAA<\/p>\n

Although some poetry critics dismiss this work as derivative and lightweight, the genome community has been much warmer in its reception. The tables are turned, however, when it comes to the performance of this living art. Collins will read the sequence of \u201cI, Escherichia wordsworthi\u201d<\/em> tonight at Pipettes and Prose, a bookstore in Bethesda, MD. Mosque, however, cannot \u201cperform\u201d the poem biologically. \u201cIn several places, we had to choose between what could survive in the test tube and what worked poetically,…aaaand, we went with the Art.\u201d The bug, in short, was dead. \u201cIt\u2019s the germ of a good idea,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s just not viable.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

[1]<\/a> Sincere apologies to Judith Roof (2007), The Poetics of DNA<\/em>, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers in one of the hottest areas in biotechnology are learning how to edit the genome as if it were a word processing document. And as they do, they\u2019re discovering that nature has the compositional skills of a typical eighth-grader. As genomics moves ever closer to text editing, copyeditors, English teachers, and literary criticism theorists … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guess"],"yoast_head":"\nGenome \u201ceditors\u201d find Nature writes like middle-schooler - Genotopia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/genotopia\/60\/genome-\u201ceditors\u201d-find-nature-writes-like-middle-schooler\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Genome \u201ceditors\u201d find Nature writes like middle-schooler\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Researchers in one of the hottest areas in biotechnology are learning how to edit the genome as if it were a word processing document. 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