Fruit flies may save her body one day, even if they can't save her brain.
( its about gene research dumb palin)
Sarah Palin is now going after the US government's funding of science.
The science of genetics to be more precise.
Now, as David Suzuki demonstrated in work that made him a famous scientist long BEFORE he became famous for being a TeeVee star, fruit flies (a.k.a. Drosophila melanogaster) are a model organism ripe for genetic manipulation.
Why?
Because they are super fast breeders and it is easy to mutate their genes and then screen for physical changes that occur because of those mutations.
And one of those mutations causes flies to become sort of hunchbacked and segmented. As a result the researchers who did the work, which was funded by US government grants, called the gene 'Armadillo'.
****
Returning to the matter at hand, the Empress Sarah Palin recently denounced a certain type of research as an egregious 'earmark' because it leads to the disbersement of......
"....dollars that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruitfly research in Paris France......I kid you not!"
Sure.
But here's the real thing.
That Armadillo gene mentioned above?
Guess what?
It turns out that the human form is a critical component of an entire genetic pathway that now forms the basis for the genetic screening of familial colon cancer.
And correcting those mutations and/or blocking their function is now the focus of a huge therapeutic initiative for treating ALL colon cancers. In fact, this approach forms the basis of modern cancer research's 'holy-grail', in which the goal is to develop of patient-specific treatments that are way less toxic than the old-fashioned 'slash-and burn' chemo treatments that are still in widespread use today.
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