'Quadruple helix' DNA seen in human cells

Originally posted by CosmicCitizen
reply to post by android

 

A "double double"...cool. Are they still A, C, G and T strands?

Yes. It's a transcription error that occurs only during cell division. Instead of continuing a chain, the teleomere gets confused and starts splitting off a new chain.

Originally posted by robhines
Thanks to those that answered my question(s). I still think a lot of this is bizarre and probably just a messed up mutation than anything to do with real evolutionary extra DNA strands appearing, or re-appearing though.

Cancer cells are "broken" (they don't function like the real cells that they are replacing.) This is a mutation and has been around all the while -- it's just that you have to catch the cells at exactly the RIGHT moment.

In order to get a picture of the cancer cells, researchers have to kill them (freeze them in time) and then put special dyes on them (that are absorbed into the cells.) If you don't have the dye (stain) or use fluorescent biomarkers (as they did this time) then you can't actually make out the structures. The chance of catching a cell at a certain phase in division is small.

There appears to be earlier research that found these quadruple helix (knots) structures in other cells from non-human (animal) sources.

Originally posted by robhines

Originally posted by digital01anarchy
I also heard somewhere that we evolved to die and that cancer was the primary reason for this evolution

We evolved just so we could die and cancer is the main reason for evolution? Ok, so what does cancer do when we're all dead then? Is it the next species or something? Can you explain what you mean more please? One of the most bizarre sentences, maybe the most bizarre sentence that I've ever seen on here!

I used to pride myself on accepting the chances of some of the most far out theories I thought possible, but you've really got me with that one.

Edit : do you mean the emergence of the cancer line is going to kill many of us off, but then in an evolved Human that line will work properly or something? So it's basically killing us until we evolve to accept it properly as a working part of a future form of Human?

edit on 21-1-2013 by robhines because: added

Seriously I could not tell you where i came across this i think it had something to do with DNA and how they found the gene that ages people. I could be incorrect, also I could see how cancer is an evolutionary stage that many of our species is dieing from.To think the immortality gene of ms lacks thoughout the body that is somehow functional on a cellular level. Interesting this would cause mutations in the human body

I'm surprised nothing more was said in relation to this topic. Isn't such a find greatly...significant??