Hope of a cure for Parkinson’s
Steve Connor

A potential cure for Parkinson’s disease has come a significant step closer today with a study showing that it is possible to treat the degenerative brain disorder with cells derived from cloned embryos — a development condemned by the Roman Catholic Church.

The research was carried out on laboratory mice but scientists believe the findings are proof that the techniques could be applied to humans suffering not just from Parkinson’s, but a range of other incurable diseases.

Researchers have demonstrated the possibility of treating Parkinson’s disease by transplanting laboratory-matured brain cells back into the individual who supplied the skin cells that were turned into cloned embryos — a process known as therapeutic cloning.

“This is an exciting development, as for the first time it may be possible to create a person’s own embryonic stem cells to potentially treat Parkinson’s disease,” said Kieran Breen, director of research at the Parkinson’s Disease Society — a charity representing the 120,000 people in Britain affected by the illness.

Dr Breen said: “Stem cell therapy offers great hope for repairing the brain. It may ultimately offer a cure, allowing people to lead a life that is free from the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.”

Proof that therapeutic cloning is more than a pipedream will be used by British scientists as justification for their push to expand the boundaries of their research to include the use of animal-human “hybrid” embryos for medical experiments, a process that is bitterly opposed by the Catholic Church.

Scientists say that, because of the shortage of human eggs for research purposes, they need to use cow or rabbit eggs for cloning experiments, and have lobbied hard for it to be allowed under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill currently going through Parliament. Even though the stem cells derived from cloned hybrid embryos will never be used on patients, the practice is condemned by the Church, which wants all MPs to be given a free vote in the Commons.

The latest development, published in the journal Nature Medicine, is further proof-of-principle that therapeutic cloning can effectively treat — and possibly cure — a degenerative brain disorder.

For the first time scientists have been able to create healthy, working brain cells from immature stem cells, derived from embryos cloned from skin cells, and transplant them back into the diseased brain.

The laboratory mice in the study suffered from a type of Parkinson’s disease, which is marked by the death of certain nerve cells or neurons in the brain that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine. Skin cells were scraped from the tails of the animals and cloned using mouse eggs, which had their own cell nuclei removed. Stem cells taken from the resulting cloned embryos were grown in the laboratory into mature dopamine-producing brain cells. After transplanting the cells back into the brain, the mice showed significant improvements in a range of experiments designed to test skills that become notably worse in those with Parkinson’s disease.

— The Independent, London

This Universe
Prof Yash Pal

What is the colour of water? If the water is colourless, what is the cause of the blue colour of the sea?

The blue colour of the sea and large tanks of clear water is due to the fact that water is not that colourless. It does have a bluish tinge that shows up when we see it in bulk. It is well known that colour of various objects is due the fact that the material of that object selectively absorbs the light of some of the colours that together make white light. For example, grass is green because it absorbs all colours except green.

The absorption properties of materials depend on their atomic and molecular structure. For most cases the important effects on incident photons are due to their interaction with the electrons of the material. Water happens to be rather special.

The vibration modes of the molecule containing one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms are such that absorption can occur near the orange red end of the white light spectrum.

This can lead to the relative depletion of these colours when white light passes through bulk water. This makes the emerging light bluish. Water is a very special substance in many different ways.

We cannot imagine any life without it. It is marvellous that it also gives us clouds, rain, snow, blue lakes and seas, blue glaciers and rainbows.

Perhaps there is no other molecule whose vibration states fall at one edge of the visible light spectrum. If water nucleus were twice as heavy as a proton, as in heavy hydrogen, its molecular absorption bands would be outside the visible spectrum and we would not have had any blue lakes or seas!

Trends
Human ancestor fossil

The basic ingredients for life — warmth, water and organic chemicals — are in place on Saturn’s small moon Enceladus, scientists said on Wednesday in detailing the content of huge plumes erupting off its surface.

The scientists described observations made by the Cassini spacecraft when it flew over the surface of Enceladus on March 12 as part of an ongoing exploration of Saturn and its moons.

Scientists working on the joint U.S.-European mission did not say they had detected any actual evidence of life on this moon where geysers at its south pole continuously shoot watery plumes some 500 miles off its icy surface into space.

But they said the building blocks for life were there, and described the plumes as a surprising organic brew sort of like carbonated water with an essence of natural gas.

“Water vapor was the major constituent. There was methane present. There was carbon dioxide. There was carbon monoxide. There were simple organics and there were more complex organics,” Hunter Waite of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, told reporters.

Organic molecules contain carbon-hydrogen bonds and can be found in living things. —AP

Fish that crawls

A University of Washington professor says a recently discovered fish that crawls instead of swimming and has forward-looking eyes like humans could be part of an entirely unknown family of fishes.

The creature sighted in Indonesian waters off Ambon Island has tan- and peach-colored zebra-stripping. It uses its leglike pectoral fins to burrow into cracks and crevices of coral reefs in search of food.

UW professor Ted Pietsch says this relative of the anglerfish will have to undergo DNA scrutiny to verify that it is unique. But the world's leading authority on anglerfish says he's never seen anything like it.

Pietsch says they have probably escaped notice until now because they are so good at sliding into narrow crevices. — AP