Nobel Prize in Medicine

[AOTANI, Masayasu]

Study of College Athletes Finds Exercise-Induced Asthma Is Common
Also: Two Americans and a Briton win the Nobel Prize for their work on the duties of individual genes. Transcript of radio broadcast:
29 October 2007
 
VOICE ONE:

 

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.  I'm Bob Doughty.

 

VOICE TWO:

 

And I'm Faith Lapidus.  On our program this week, we will tell about the winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine.  We will tell about a health problem resulting from physical exercise.  We also report on depression in young people and genetic studies of an ancient animal. 

 

(MUSIC)

 

VOICE ONE:

 

The two thousand seven Nobel Prize in medicine will go to three men who found a way to learn about the duties of individual genes.  They discovered how to inactivate, or knock out, single genes in laboratory animals.  The result is known as "knockout mice." 

 

The Karolinska Institute named the winners earlier this month.  They are Martin Evans of Britain and two Americans, Mario Capecchi and .  They will receive what is officially called the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at a ceremony in Sweden on December tenth.  They also will share about one million five hundred thousand dollars in prize money. 

 

VOICE TWO:

 

In the nineteen eighties, Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies both studied cells in mice.  They wanted to find how to cause changes in individual genes.  But the kinds of cells they independently studied could not be used to create gene-targeted animals.

 

Martin Evans had the solution.  He worked with embryonic stem cells to produce mice that carried new genetic material.

 

The research greatly expanded knowledge about embryonic development, aging and disease.  It also led to a new technology -- gene targeting.  This has already produced five hundred mouse models of human conditions.  Knockout mice are used for general research and for the development of new treatments. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**********************************
  青谷英語のすべて
 「英語勉強力： 成功する超効率学習」　
  （DHC出版のCDBook）
  http://aoitani.net/dhc.html
**********************************
 
 
 
青谷正妥（あおたにまさやす）♂
プロモーションビデオ（衛星放送録画：個人使用のみ）
http://aoitani.net/Go_on_AOTANI.wmv
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
『下に出ていますが、年20回発行で、一回400字という、非常に
slowなメルマガを始めました。』
 
幸運の青い谷、京大のゴールデンボーイ：　青谷正妥
　　http://aoitani.net/
　　（来ると不幸になるホームページ：但し、虫はいません。）
・英語のカリスマ青谷正妥：TOEFL,TOEIC満点達成
　　http://aoitani.net/TOEFL_iBT.html
・英語のコンビニ：目からウロコの英語情報（メールマガジンです。）
　　http://www.mag2.com/m/0000113907.htm
・留学と英語学習のメーリングリスト"EERR"
　　http://aoitani.net/ の登録ボックスより
・「人は不特定多数に名刺を配り続けると有名になれるのか？」
　　http://www.japantoday.com/jp/newsmaker/2
-----------------------------------------------------------

[AOTANI, Masayasu]

An international team of scientists has recovered genetic information from hairs of ancient wooly mammoths.  The scientists say the genetic material will provide valuable information about an animal alive today -- the elephant.  They say it may also help in the study of mammoths and other ancient animals.

 

Mammoths lived on Earth thirty thousand to sixty thousand years ago.  They are ancestors of modern African and Indian elephants.

 

Most of the hairs in the study came from a frozen mammoth.  Its remains were found in the Siberia area of Russia in seventeen ninety-nine.  For the past two centuries, the hair remains were stored at room temperature at the Zoological Museum in Saint Petersburg.

 

Stephan Schuster was part of the team that made a genetic map from the mammoth hair remains.  He works at Pennsylvania State University in the United States.

 

Professor Schuster says no team member thought it would be possible to get usable genetic material from the hair remains.  He says the scientists had thought that removing the hairs from a cold climate would have destroyed every gene.  Yet the scientists found genetic information in even the smallest piece of hair.

 

Professor Schuster notes that scientists are able to collect genes from the bones of dinosaurs.  That is how they know about the age and development of the ancient creatures.  But he adds that genetic studies of dinosaur bones are costly and difficult.  The bones have very small holes.  It is difficult to separate the genes scientists want to study from bacteria, plant and other material.

 

Professor Schuster says genetic testing of hair is simple and does not cost much.  He says his team found the bacteria on the outer end of the hair remains.  The scientists were able to the outer end whiter ??? while the other end remained undamaged.  After removing the bacteria, the scientists were able to observe very pure genetic material from the mammoth.

 

Professor Schuster says this kind of test can be performed on something as small as a single hair.  And he says the scientists found usable genes along the complete hair, not just the hair root closest to the skin.

 

Professor Schuster says the genetic map will tell scientists a lot about the development of Indian and African elephants.  He says it may provide clues about (2) how long it took before they separated and their last common ancestor.  A report describing the study was published in Science magazine.