A birthday cake with three billion candles please!

This week we celebrated Thursday, April 25th, which since 2003 has been referred to as DNA day! It was in fact the 60th anniversary of the groundbreaking elucidation of the 3D helical structure of our genetic material by the legendary British duo of Francis Crick and James Watson, who published their discoveries in the prestigious pages of "Nature".  

I am of course referring to the famous double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and it is impossible to overstate the impact that the work of Crick and Watson (among others) had on biology and medicine. Suddenly we were able to better understand how our genetic information is stored and transmitted, and evolution became much less of an hypothesis and much more a reality that could be proven.

The 2003 date has a significance that owes much to Crick's and Watson's 1953 publication, but which also stands on its own two feet, or rather on some three billion building blocks. It was in 2003 that the enormously ambitious project to sequence the entire human genome, known as the Human Genome Project (HGP), came to conclusion after 13 years. 

The various teams on the HGP combined their data in an effort led by NIH Director Francis Collins to provide a reference sequence of the three billion base pair genetic code, at a cost of some $3B, or more or less a dollar per code letter. Cheap at half the price, as they say in Ireland! By 2003 it was basically a done deal, with the few remaining missing pieces considered too expensive to chase further. The 60th birthday of DNA is thus simultaneously the 10th anniversary of completion of the human genome sequence. 

Congress declared April 25th DNA day on that date in 2003, timed to coincide with and underline the 50th anniversary of the staggering discovery of Crick and Watson. You can imagine how it must have felt for those who discovered the structure of DNA 50 years before to see the publication of an entire human genome. Francis Crick lived to see that happen, before passing away in 2004, and his colleague Jim Watson actually became only the second person on the planet to publish his own genomic sequence. 

Watson led the HGP for a couple of years, but ran into conflict with Bernadine Healy, the then director of NIH, over an item that remains contentious to this day - the business-like approach to the genetic material of nature by actually patenting pieces of DNA. Watson, a hardcore fundamentalist, strongly opposed the idea that people could claim ownership of and profit from what was in effect a public project, and one that involved reading a code that was synthesized by a force greater than man - nature, and evolution.

The concept of profiting from a sequence derived from many millions (billions in the bigger picture) of years of evolution remains controversial to this day, and in fact the Supreme Court recently debated whether one should be allowed to patent DNA sequences or not. To date some 4,000 patents have been granted by the USPTO, covering about 40% of the human genome. However, if the court ends up ruling in favor of those who contest the right to file on a DNA sequence, those 4,000 patents could be negated.

Like everything else in science and medicine, life is rarely uncomplicated. However, as a scientist it was a nice change to see that we overestimated our own complexity in terms of the number of genes that the human genome contained, and even the fairly recent estimates of 30,000 prior to completion of the HGP were still off. In the end, it appears that our entire genome encodes a mere 20,000 gene products, but quite clearly we also discovered that what we refer to as "junk" DNA is anything but that. 

Of course, we were all in love with the thinking that a completed human genome sequence would revolutionize our lives and the world of medicine, and it has, but in a more general rather than specific nature, thus far. Watson is not only occasionally cantankerous, but he is a cantankerous visionary and he foresaw the era of personalized medicine that is very much in vogue in modern research and medical therapy today.

We have not yet harnessed the full power of knowing the sequence of our DNA code, and of the some 54 million variations identified so far which certainly are telling us something about our lives, the aging process and susceptibility to disease - we just haven't figured it out - yet. Let's hope that in our lifetime, we get to see a day where our own DNA sequences can be used to stratify us as patients so that our chances of being cured by choosing a particular course of action will be maximized. That day is coming, but it won't be tomorrow. 

The discovery of the beautiful double helix remains one of the most spectacularly visionary in the history of science, and well merited the Nobel Prize that Watson and Crick received in 1962, when they were still young men in their 30's and 40's, respectively. The impact of their work on contemporary biology and medicine is immeasurable, and we all stand a chance of benefiting from their research, one day. 

It's a lovely sunny day today, the first real spring Saturday of the warmer season, and so I think I will pay homage to DNA, or mine more specifically, and see if I can't modify it a little (beneficially) by running up a sunny mountain trail and reaping the genetic rewards. Happy 60th birthday, dear DNA! ;) - Kevin Mc 

Big Brother is here, and he just captured little brother!

After a feeding frenzy of speculation and much frantic activity since the explosions that rocked the Boston Marathon on Monday, the authorities got their men with an amazing demonstration of their efficiency and professionalism. Mere days later, and one of the two brothers involved is dead, while his younger brother is in custody. Kudos to all involved in closing this crisis down in a heartbeat. 

The thing that struck me with the incredible ease with which these two were identified and cornered was how impossible it is today to walk down any city street and not be recorded onto someone's hard drive. As much as this can be seen as an invasion of one's privacy/rights by "Big Brother", recent events simply prove how such surveillance can be viewed as a positive rather than a negative. 

None of us like the idea of walking around a town or city being followed by cameras on every corner, but you know, with the advent of camera-wielding smartphones, it is possible for all sorts of people to be taking your photo or even recording video of you at any time out in public, without you being remotely aware of it. If one was forced to choose, I think we would probably feel that our images were in safer hands with the authorities. 

Quite why these two brothers (from the current young generation) would not assume that they could be caught via camera surveillance is beyond me. Unless of course, from the get-go, they wanted to be identified, found and martyred for some ridiculous cause or another - thereby ensuring their fifteen minutes of fame. Make that "infamy". If they actually thought their baseball caps and dark glasses could prevent their identification then they were even more unsophisticated than imagined. 

We probably won't get to hear precisely how they were picked out of thousands of images from the crime scene area, but almost certainly it involved the FBI's new billion dollar tool - Next Generation Identification (NGI). This tool is not fully operational as yet, but it is purported to include iris scans, as well as facial and voice recognition software, and a vast database with which to compare data of interest.

This truly is Big Brother in action and means that whether a criminal or innocent passer-by, your movements around town on any given day can be completely monitored/recorded, and your freedom to commit any criminal act you choose is definitely compromised. But that's a good thing, right? Right! Or in many people's minds, maybe. There are always the bleeding hearts moaning about invasion of privacy and unconstitutional abuse of one's civil rights. 

Ditto the bleeding hearts already moaning about the fact that the younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was not read his Miranda rights upon his capture. I have to say, this outrage is both amusing and simultaneously outrageous. Have we come so far down the road of civil rights for all, that we worry more about the Miranda rights of some violent terrorist coward than the human rights of the 175 wounded and 3 dead victims? Give me a break, puh-lease!

These two criminals showed zero humanity towards hundreds of people who they randomly targeted and whose lives were either destroyed or changed forever, and yet we hear bleeding hearts crying out about how disgraceful it is for the FBI to detain and interrogate Tsarnaev in whatever fashion is deemed necessary (and legal)?! 

The way I see it, scum don't have any rights. Slime gets to be stuck against the wall, where it belongs. If you carry IEDs into public streets, and onto a site where you know there are the maximum number of potential victims to maim/kill, and then detonate said IEDs causing irreparable damage, carnage and mayhem - guess what ? You forfeit your rights to any kind of civility whatsoever. You don't have the same rights that might be afforded to "normal" criminals. 

But there's always someone taking the sides of those who subject society to their insanity, trying to find the "root causes" and finding someone/something other to blame, rather than the insanity of the protagonist itself. However, all of that bleeding heart liberal BS seems to evaporate a lot quicker when it is your town, your partner, your son/daughter, your family whose lives are twisted cruelly or obliterated totally by such insanity. Then people suddenly seem to look at it differently, and are not so worried about the civil rights of terrorist murderers. 

It was a shocking and horrifying week, one that included an entire American city and surrounding towns being on total lockdown, with a "shelter in place" order, and even a no-fly zone over Watertown, MA. But the authorities did a stellar job of regaining control and one can only hope that the speed and efficiency with which they did so will act as a deterrent for those living a lie as the enemy within.

It is painfully ironic that the younger brother now in custody was a pre-med student in college, and he got there in part via a scholarship provided by, wait for it, yep, the City of Boston. It transpires that he will now be remembered forever by that city, and (unless he gets the death penalty) the city will be housing, feeding and looking after him for the next six or seven decades. I am pretty certain that many in Boston resent every further penny that the city will now be forced to spend on him, given what he has cost them already. - Kevin Mc

The Boston Marathon explodes in all the wrong ways

Yet again, the minority who are discontent and disgruntled with this life and the world we all live in have forced their anarchistic terror on the civilized world, this time at an event celebrating health and life, by bringing thousands of people together in a sporting event.

The Boston Marathon had proceeded according to plan, and that plan incorporated the usual level of increased scrutiny and security that goes hand in hand with any major public event today, since the disgrace that will always be remembered as 9/11.

The fact that there were two explosions at the finish line simply underlines the evil intention of hurting as many people as possible, given that there were not only banks of seated spectators, but the usual gathering of finishing/finished racers and various working Bostonians going about their business in the downtown core. 

From what I can gather at this early time, it appears that the explosions occurred on or near Boylston Street, and perhaps right in front of the Fairmount Copley Plaza. Ironically, the Fairmount had recently celebrated their own centenary and had spent a cool $20M renovating the hotel inside and out. A second blast filled the air from a couple of blocks further down Boylston shortly afterwards. 

You can see the fiery outburst in the video; this does not appear to be any kind of accidental explosion, especially given that there was a second one. At this time, I am hearing reports of at least two dead, with as many as one hundred victims with various levels of injuries. A devastating contribution to what had been an otherwise celebratory day and event.

What can one say? In many ways for me, it is a sort of deja vu, reminiscent of a much more violent time in the history of Ireland where we grew so accustomed to bullets and bombs that it had simply become accepted as a way of life. Until the Irish people themselves grew so tired of living in the past and living in a war zone, that the likes of the IRA became the problem rather than the one they were formed to supposedly solve. 

In many ways, many of us left that small island due to our fatigue at living in civil war, and headed off out to a much wider world with less parochial issues. Ironically, the world has shrunk considerably since then, and somehow, problems in a variety of formerly irrelevant countries became a daily concern for many, if not most. Look at South Korea or Iraq, for example. 

Today, daily life basically anywhere in North America or Europe has been impacted by the heinous acts and evil intent of the discontent, the psychopathic, the anarchistic, the violent and those who wish to effect global terror. The exertion of their sick desires onto everyone who walks a city street or travels basically anywhere these days is now something we apparently are forced to accept and live with - even when they are homegrown so-called "citizens" living among us and taking full advantage of the better life that ultimately eats at them so much.

The Boston Marathon is now sadly only a reminder that we are essentially no longer free, not in the true sense of the word. Yes, we are not slaves (outside of the office, at any rate), and yes we can move about supposedly freely, even if moving about now comes at the huge cost of a level of security previously unthinkable. Are we truly free when we have to be at an airport several hours before a flight, and are forced to take off a whole slew of personal items for scanning and inspection? Where one may even be forced to pass through a full body scanner?

The bottom line is that yes, we are still free, but the cost has gone up. The word free has changed to mean free to be potentially at the mercy of the cowardly and the weak and the crazy - because they enjoy a level of freedom that is actually frightening and should be equally unthinkable. I hope that Boston was riddled with cameras for this event, catching those responsible for this outrage in the act, and let their faces be patrolled across the front pages one time, before having those faces buried in some hole in the wall and letting them rot. 

News is coming in by the minute as I type, and I just heard that there was a third bomb that was unexploded, and was later defused by the authorities. Additionally, one person (a foreign national) who was acting suspiciously was brought down by civilians on the street - he remains in custody at this time. There is more to come on this story, for sure.

I know that I usually end with a witty one-liner, but today, out of respect for those dead and injured, all I can say is that this is yet another terrible memento of the fact that we are far from the freedom that people used to talk of so fondly. Being at the mercy of terrorists hellbent on tearing apart the very fabric of our lives is one huge price to pay for that supposed freedom. - Kevin Mc 

To be or not to be? Let's hope that B2 means not 2B!

Tensions are escalating in the Korean peninsula and matters have not been helped by the recent recommendation from Pyongyang that foreign missions evacuate their diplomatic personnel, because "we cannot guarantee their safety beyond April 10", which is the likely date that will trigger conflict. 

North Korea has a history of making major moves on dates of significance to members of the ruling Kim family, and it seems the number nine has some significance also, but the mid-April timeline might have more to do with an anniversary of Kim Jong-un's grandfather, Kim Il-sung. Whatever the case, they are ramping things up considerably with chilling warnings to the British and Russian embassies to get their people out - a move which as of today still seems to be being taken as pure rhetoric and no one is moving anywhere for the moment. 

That this 28-year-old kid is at the helm of such an unstable and militarily top-heavy regime seems like a bad joke. Make that an extremely bad joke, and one that may be coming to a head with all the recent chest-beating, anti-USA ranting and movement of missiles and components to the east coast - no doubt to imply an imminent strike against Japan or Guam. North Korea's statement that it also intends to reactivate its nuclear program is hardly encouraging either, even if today it is accurate to say that they do not have the capacity to deliver such a weapon on USA soil.  

The recent combined exercises by the USA and South Korea militaries in the region seems to have only incensed Jong-un further; the mere sight of the frightening B2 stealth bomber in the air was an ominous event but rather than serving as a deterrent it seems to have raised the thermometer by more than a few degrees.

North Korea said today that it was entering a "state of war" with the South over increasingly tight United Nations sanctions imposed following the nuclear test in February, as well as in response to the joint military drills being carried out as a show of strength. The new leader of South Korea, speaking in Seoul, said that the south will strike back immediately following any military aggression from the north. 

China is a very dominant player in this scenario and Obama's move to get them on board by joining forces in not only condemning the destabilizing warnings and threats of North Korea, but also in providing military force if necessary, would seem to be a smart move. If the south, China and the USA all stand together, what outcome could Kim Jong-un possibly foresee, except the total obliteration of his regime and the infrastructure that it teeters on. 

It would be nothing more than total proof of his own lack of leadership and intellect if he were to sanction strikes of any nature. The fact that the USA military has been stretched by being involved in two wars in the middle east over many years might suggest that it's the right time to take advantage of the situation, but I think it might only signal that the machine has been well oiled of late and any rustiness is gone. The west's patience level in any new war started by North Korea would be at an all-time low in my opinion, and I would expect to see a flattening of 

a nation with what would probably be record speed.

One has to pray that someone with a brain in the north's regime will stop this despot from doing anything (else) stupid, thereby preventing what will be the most explosive "shock and awe" response ever seen. I still tend to think that Kim Jong-un is just another blowhard, but this time he has painted himself into the corner somewhat, and he almost seems forced to do something or be seen as a total joke and bullshitter, even in his own country. If you order foreign missions to empty their embassies, and then you do nothing, you are only going to become the subject of ridicule - perhaps even among the military and its top brass, and that is untenable in the North Korean playbook.  

Let's just say that it's going to be an interesting week around the corner, to say the least. One cannot help (hope) but feel that common sense will prevail, and that this false start might teach the volatile North Korean regime that leading the country into certain annihilation does not achieve anything other than underlining their own idiocy - an idiocy that must be condemned not only for its existence but also prevented from ever being in a position to act on it, militarily at least.

In the meantime, it's the weekend, so after dealing with such heavyweight matters I think we all deserve a cup of tea and a thick slice of chocolate tart! - Kevin Mc