Typed and Scraped from NAR site without needing permission into Arcturus
Here is the latest publication from our new Liberal MP for Cambridge, Julian Huppert. I’ll comment below:
Nucleic Acids Research, 2009, Vol. 37, No. 20 6716-6722
© The Author(s) 2009. Published by Oxford University Press.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Genome-wide analysis of a G-quadruplex-specific single-chain antibody that regulates gene expression
Himesh Fernando1, Sven Sewitz1, Jeremy Darot2, Simon Tavaré2, Julian Leon Huppert3 and Shankar Balasubramanian1,4,*
1Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1EW, 2CRUK Cambridge Research Institute, Li Ka Shing Centre, Cambridge CB2 0RE, 3Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge CB3 0HE and 4School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 0SP, UK
G-quadruplex nucleic acids have been proposed to play a role
in a number of fundamental biological processes that include
transcription and translation. We have developed a single-chain
antibody that is selective for G-quadruplex DNA over double-stranded
DNA, and here show that when it is expressed in human cells,
it significantly affects the expression of a wide variety of
genes, in a manner that correlates with the presence of predicted
G-quadruplexes. …
My point here is that Julian is a SCIENTIST. There aren’t many MPs who are scientists. I’m told there is only Julian. That’s a great pity, because our future must be based in large part on science. We have to innovate to stay competitive. Science is a major producer of new wealth. Science also teaches people to be logical and stay in touch with reality. There are conservation laws that say “you cannot make something out of nothing”. Most of us could have told Brown and the bankers that you cannot generate wealth out of thin air – it requires something to happen in the real world. To scientists that’s pretty obvious. The price of something depends on what people can afford. What they can afford depends on what wealth they create. Tangible things – materials, services, software, information, culture. But not meaningless leveraged derivatives.
The snippet above relates to work that enhances our understanding of how biological systems work. People like Julian collect DATA. Here is some DATA:
This text in this paper is OPEN ACCESS. The graphs are DATA. I can freely use the data. I can quote them in my own work. I can stick them on my web site. If Julian had chosen many other publishers I couldn’t. [I have minor quibbles – NAR uses CC-NC for no good reason and we should gently educate them.].
Can a single elected scientist rescue the country? Yes, if he can get the new government or ungovernment to sponsor science rather than destroy it. The logical case for supporting science is clear. The illogical one may prevail. I hope not.