Visualize 23andMe haplogroup defining SNPs with Mitowheel!

Last Friday 23andMe came up with Haplogroup Tree Mutation Mapper which is the first experimental feature that can be instantly tested by biogeek customers (a large portion of  the company’s customer base) in its freshly launched technology sandbox 23andMe Labs that is much like Google Labs. Haplogroup Tree Mutation Mapper “shows you which particular mutations…

Leigh syndrome – where are those mitochondria replacement therapies?

Dear Sir: I came across your blog after reading Stanley Bing’s recent article in Fortune Magazine. I will try to be brief. I have a 4 year old son who was diagnosed 1.5 years ago with a form of Leigh’s disease; one of the most devastating forms of mitochondrial disease. While he is receiving care…

Mitowheel now helps you design PCR primers for mitochondrial DNA!

Gábor Zsurka, scientist and developer made another upgrade on our favorite human mitochondrial DNA visualization tool, MitoWheel: this time allele frequencies at polymorphic positions are included in the sequence bar in the form of a gray bar above or below a nucleotide representing the number of individuals carrying the SNP. This is really cool as…

Mitowheel upgrade: phylogenetics in motion

Gábor Zsurka has built some killer functions into Mitowheel, the human mitochondrial DNA visualization tool: – compare GenBank‘s circa 3000 fully sequenced human mitochondrial genome to the revised Cambridge Reference Sequence mutation by mutation – by harnessing the power of the colorful group view and using the +, – mutation operators (see detailed introduction) you…

Very well informed Stanley Bing on life extension

Huffington Post, Fortune’s Stanley Bing: The Next Big Thing? Please pay extra attention to the language here (especially transmogrification). Human genome schmutz: Nobody wants to get old or worse, appear old. And forget about dying. That’s the ultimate bummer. Genetic research has been held back recently by a series of disasters too terrible to mention…

The human mitochondrial consensus genome sequence by Robert Carter

For historical reasons the standard human mitochondrial sequence, the Revised Cambridge Reference Sequence (rCRS) is a reconstruction of a single European individual’s mtDNA and contains several rare alleles. That’s why many times a usual mtDNA sequence alignment must appeal to phylogenetic historical reconstructions. The rCRS nevertheless provides a uniform nucleotide numbering scheme (0-16569). On the…

Friday lunch heaven for a Gumbo loving biogeek at Tulane

The eccentric Complex II of the mitochondrial respiratory chain

Complex II, otherwise termed Succinate-coenzyme Q reductase is an exotic member of the electron transport chain at least in 3 ways:

The fingerprints of a mighty creator in Proteomics, impact factor >5

Creationism/intelligent design is not really an issue for me as I am a biologist working with mitochondria and stem cells, also a life extension supporter, whose angle on things and projections are based on the recent advancements in science and technology. As far as I know, creationism/ID neither suggests any new experiments or heuristic solutions…

The MitoWheel blog keeps you updated!

MitoWheel is a cool graphical interface of the circular human mitochondrial genome, which helps the user to get familiar with the mito DNA by searching, clicking and tailoring it. I introduced you MitoWheel a week or so ago, but now you can follow the updates on the MitoWheel Blog. On the blog you get first-hand…

Can you tell a good article from a bad based on the abstract and the title alone?

Many times people only have access to the abstract of peer-review articles, and nothing more. There are different abstract styles (sometimes they’re going too far or on the contrary) in the literature and I’d be curious to hear about your opinion on the following review abstract and title. I became interested and suspicious reading these…

MitoWheel 1.0: the human mitochondrial genome just got visual!

Your 16569 basepair long human mitochondrial genome does a lot for you and tells a lot about you. It encodes protein subunits playing crucial role in the production and conversion of ATP, the body’s main chemical energy currency. On the other hand the actual sequence of one’s mitochondrial DNA in a particular tissue or cell…

The first human genome project: mitochondrial DNA, 16.6kb, 1981, Cambridge

When I had worked on my MSc thesis in biology on the relation of human mitochondrial mutations and aging the paper I used most frequently was Sequence and organization of the human mitochondrial genome by Anderson et al. published in Nature, 1981. The reason was simple: it is more of a database than a hypothesis…

23andMe on the biparental inheritance of mitochondrial DNA and more

In my former blog post inF.A.Q. for 23andMe: what if I have mitochondrial DNA from Pa? I meditated on 23andMe‘s capability of detecting paternal mitochondrial DNA in their customers’ saliva with their Illumina microarray chips scanning around 2000 mitochondrial single nucleotide variants. Published here the initial answer of the 23andMe Editorial Team to this fairly…

inF.A.Q. for 23andMe: what if I have mitochondrial DNA from Pa?

Have you ever asked any important but infrequently asked questions? Have you ever heard about the first personal genome service by the biotech startup 23andMe? Here is an inF.A.Q. addressed to this company: According to the cool 23andMe genetics educator: According to the peer review literature this is not necessarily the case and sometimes (rarely…

Unpublished SENS3 conference report for mainstream scientists!

Recently I wrote a meeting report on the SENS3 conference for a very prestigious science journal, but finally it did not go through the filters. I knew that the chance for publication is small as the journal rarely publish such meeting reports and as it was in many respects an unconventional science conference. The standards…

“Mitochondrial Oasis Effect”: fasting => NAD+ up in mitos => cell survival

Quick storytelling through citations (alert from Jim Hardy, thanks): Cell: Nutrient-Sensitive Mitochondrial NAD+ Levels Dictate Cell Survival A major cause of cell death caused by genotoxic stress is thought to be due to the depletion of NAD+ from the nucleus and the cytoplasm. Here we show that NAD+ levels in mitochondria remain at physiological levels…

Mitochondria in the tubes of stem cells poster on Nature Precedings

Back in June I was a happy beta tester of Nature Precedings, Nature’s own free preprint server. I uploaded a poster of our group called Intact mitochondria migrate in membrane tubular network connections formed between human stem cells by Csordas, Attila, Cselenyák, Attila, Uher, Ferenc, Murányi, Marianna, Hennerbichler, Simone, Redl, Heinz, Kollai, Márk, and Lacza,…

The power links of the mitochondriologist focusing on human mitochondrial genetics

I am hanging around stem cells all the time, while there are as many interesting things happening with mitochondria too. So I asked my former supervisor, Gábor Zsurka excellent mitochondrial geneticist (especially on mitochondrial DNA recombination in human skeletal muscle) to email me his main web sources in the field in order to share. Here…

Blogxperiment: science article popularization with Contents

The question of the blogxperiment series is: What are the good ways to summarize peer-review articles for a more general readership and transmit scholarly knowledge and literature? After showing an abstract and some graphics of a sample review on mitochondrial fusion and division apparatus here I wonder whether the simple copy of the Contents is…

Stories from my PubMed feeds: hESCs, p53, apoptosis and differentiation

Short peer-review storytelling : One big technical problem of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) (in contrast to mouse embryonic stem cells) that hESCs normally undergo high rates of spontaneous apoptosis and differentiation, making them difficult to maintain in culture. Now we are getting to know a bit more on the molecular background of these processes.…

Blogxperiment: mitochondrial division, the graphics way

In the blogxperiment series part 1 the question was: What is the best way to summarize peer-review articles for an open web readership and transmit scholarly knowledge and literature? Here is the cartoon way, figure 1. out of the context of The Machines that Divide and Fuse Mitochondria review, written by Suzanne Hoppins, Laura Lackner,…

Blogxperiment: What are the good ways to summarize peer-review articles?

In future posts I’d like to do a blogxperiment based on comments feedback. My general question is: What is the best way to summarize peer-review articles for a more general readership and transmit scholarly knowledge and literature? What are the opportunities used in blog posts? Figures, abstracts, dense citations, other summarize options, journalist lingo, superficial…

Edmonton Aging (Life Extension Technologies) Symposium starts, March 30-31.

The Edmonton Aging Symposium starts today. Based on the program and speakers you can expect hot debates: Huber Warner, Aubrey de Grey, Irina Conboy, Amit Patel, Judith Campisi. I hope that the discussions will be hot, clarifying, perspective and scale conscious (quantitative enough), backed by strict scientific arguments. The organizing principle of the sessions seems…

ATP production and oxygen consumption distribution of the human body?

I am looking for an overall ATP production, or ATP/ADP ratio map of the – resting – human body (organ system, organ, tissue level) and the detailed oxygen consumption distribution of the same entity, would you help me, please?

Human mitochondrial DNA vs. nuclear DNA

In order to introduce you the circular human mitochondrial DNA, I compare it shortly to its more famous neighbour, the chromosomal nuclear DNA. (Thx for Google Spreadsheets.)

Resveratrol goes to the clinic: a Pulitzer for David Stipp!

Truth to be told I am not really interested in the Resveratrol story neither as a researcher nor as a life extension supporter. First, it is about classical pharmacology, seeking the molecular targets of a relatively simple molecule back and forth, testing its effect on different animals with standard setups, no hint at a new…

Are there any mitochondria in our red blood cells?

One thing people usually know that human red blood cells do not have cell nuclei, so they are lacking chromosomal DNA. But far less people have a guess about mitochondria’s presence in the erythrocytes. So let’s ask the experts Wikipedia. The answer is NO, mammalian red blood cells also lose their mitochondria during erythropoiesis at…

Mark Hamalainen, the MitoSENS fellow: blogterview on life extension

Mark Hamalainen is a young PhD student at Cambridge University at the mitochondrion lab of Ian Holt. Mark received a Bachelor of Science Honours degree in biochemistry and computing from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He also had research training as a visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology and the Biodesign Institute at…

Human heart mitochondria and nitric oxide production: hard work

I’ve almost missed the publication of an article by our group back home, in Budapest which is my first real first author peer-review article published in Life Sciences, impact factor, 2.512 as of 2005. The peer-review process was hard (illustration: me under the hood) and bloody, because it is a negative result, so you have…

New key protein player in mitochondrial fission and fusion: make or break

Regulators of the balance between mitochondrial fusion and fission events are of special interest. November 27, Journal of Cell Science: Katsuyoshi Mihara and colleagues identified a mammalian protein – mitofusin-binding protein (MIB) – that regulates mitochondrial fusion by interacting with mitofusins (Mfns), mitochondrial outer-membrane GTPases that are required for mitochondrial fusion. Overexpressed MIB induces mito…

The (all)mighty condrion: Mitochondrial biology, new perspectives, meeting in London

I am happy to participate: The Novartis Foundation in collaboration with The Royal Society of Medicine and The Physiological Society will be holding a one-day meeting on the above subject at Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1 on Friday 1 December 2006. The field of mitochondrial research has undergone a complete re-evaluation in recent…

Commentary on mitochondrial transfer in recent Rejuvenation Research

I published a commentary paper on mitochondrial transfer experiments (PNAS) in recent Rejuvenation Research, impact factor 8.571. Rejuv. Res. is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal and the leading forum publishing solid science to expedite a real cure for aging. Here is the public abstract:

Mitochondria, the not so hidden superstars of current life sciences

If one thing is for sure, it is mitochondrion’s ascending career in late biology. Mitochondria are the power centers of the eukariotic cell and eventually tell the nucleus what to do next: die or live. Mitos do not exist stably as distinct, individual, autonomous organelles according to new results, but form a highly dynamic semi-tubular…

Cell cinema, the era of silent films: healthy voyeurism

This is an early time series movie of mine shot by a Zeiss confocal laser microscopy system in the lab. With tools like that we are in the silent film era of cell cinematography: we do not hear what the cells say to each other, we cannot able to fix every minute of their life,…