So DNA is sitting in the nucleus. It’s organized into chromosomes. A chromosome is essentially a big bunch of DNA. In each chromosome there are many genes and remember each gene is nothing but a string of base pairs.  There are 46 different chromosomes and they come in pairs so you get 23 in a human. They are not literally shaped as X’s and Y’s. Here’s a snap shot for a MALE:

Roughly the LONG things are X chromosomes and the short ones are Y chromosomes. So you see the last one, number 23 has 1 X and 1 Y in a male. In a female this’d be two X’s.

Each chromosome has many genes, example is chromosome 1 has roughly 4300 genes and obviously a LOT of base pairs.

Now we know everything’s made from protein. What’s protein made from? and how is protein made? Protein is a sequence of amino acids. Amino acids are a collection of nucleotides, base pairs. Remember there are 20 total. So when you take a Gene, it has the information on how to make a protein.

Imagine the DNA double helix. This thing splits down the middle and gets copied or "transcribed" into a single strand called "RNA". This strand is smaller than the DNA and can fit through the nucleus membrane and get to a thing called a "ribosome’ which is outside the nucleus but inside the cell.

The Ribosome takes this RNA and processes it, like a big piece of tape going through a cassette player and as it goes the ribosome constructs a new piece of protein which then wanders off into the rest of the body.

So you can see, the instructions are critical to making the right protein.

Next up, what happens when things go wrong?

At this point I understand only the basics. I still don’t know what I don’t know, but I have more of an understanding than when I started and that’s enough to go on. This post is more for my own benefit to test if I understand this stuff so it may read a little like a biology lesson. Here’s what I’ve pieced together.

Humans are made of cells *duh*. Roughly 10^14 or 100 trillion cells. There are different types of cells but they generally share the same traits in that they all have a membrane, a nucleus, ribosomes, chromosomes and DNA. Here’s a visual:

The DNA’s in the nucleus, but what is it? And what are genes? chromosomes? how’s it all work?

DNA is made up of 2 strands of what are called "bases" or nucleotides (A, C, G, T) arranged in a row. These bases form base pairs (A-T or G-C for example) with their opposing base in the opposite strand. Remember the movie GATTACA? Each base pair is an instruction, you’ll see why in a minute.

If you took all the instructions needed to make a human, you’d have the human genome. The human genome has about 3 billion base pairs of DNA arranged into 46 chromosomes. All of this in a tiny nucleus of each and every cell and ALL in your body replicated 100 trillion times. What’s 3 billion times 100 trillion? 10^23? Amazing so far right?

Back to the strands. Every 3 nucleotides in a strand is called a "codon" e.g. ATT or GGT etc. and there’s also a few combinations that are called "start codons" and "stop codons".

Ok so (A,C,G,T) are the possible base values and 3 positions in a codon so 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 possible codons. Each combination represents an Amino Acid but some are duplicates so instead of 64 amino acids it turns out there are only 20.  Here’s a table of amino acids with the corresponding codons.

If you took a bunch of amino acids in a string you’d have a Gene. I originally though you’d have a protein but I think it’s only the information needed to CODE for the protein. So a Gene is essentially the series of codons between the start and stop codons (I think). Hence by manipulating the genes you get different proteins and essentially a different evolution of the host.

Next up: Genes, RNA and how it DNA splits apart.

Cancer is not a single disease, it’s a very personal one. I will write more in a future post on what exactly is meant by this. The human genome consists of approximately 3 billion instructions (DNA base pairs). That’s a LOT of instructions and hence a requires a lot of analysis. When the scientists say they’ve found 10 mutations, they literally mean 10 base pairs out of 3 billion which have gone wrong.

Today, because of the sheer size of the information, scientists must focus their research to a few targeted genes within the genome. If they don’t pick the right ones to look at, they’ll miss the mutation. That’s basically what’s happened over the last 40 years.

This latest research looked at the entire genome and of the 10 mutations, 8 of these were new and would have gone unnoticed using traditional targeted research.

I remember back in 2000, a company called Celera were analyzing the human genome and they completed it in 2003. It took a number of years to look through and sequence that much information.

Fast forward to 2008, it took a couple of months to sequence this lady’s genome. Moore’s Law states that technology capability doubles roughly every 18months and this has held true since the 1960′s.

One day, and it’s not far away, we’ll be able to analyze a genome, YOUR genome in a couple of days. Until then, scientists must rely on distributed computing techniques, such as the Stanford Protein Folding project [LINK] and YOUR computer.

Please help by visiting this page [LINK], download and install the folding application and if you’d like, enter my wife’s team number #144824. This is a way to make a REAL contribution that will one day yield new and improved gene targeted therapies that will fight the range of diseases that is "cancer".