Three News Stories: Mobile Phones, Cloning, and the Search for New Medicines

Hello! Good night!
A crazy day is over. One can go to bed, have a chat on the mobile phone with someone whose voice is pleasant to hear, set the phone on the nightstand, and turn off the light…
The debate over whether mobile phone radiation is harmful to human health is far from over. No complex research is needed to establish that this radiation is not a natural component of the environment to which humans have adapted in the course of their evolution. Our bodies and psyches emerged as a result of a particular way of life and therefore bear its imprint. We, the descendants of the inhabitants of African savannas and Eurasian forest-steppes, have placed ourselves in an environment that is unnatural for us. On one hand, this is wrong: when introducing a new species of fish, an experienced aquarist consults a reference book to determine what conditions are natural for that species. Why do we not do the same with respect to ourselves? On the other hand, the beneficial nature of the change that has happened to us is demonstrated by such a simple demographic parameter as average life expectancy. The modern "unnatural" human lives longer, far longer than their "natural" ancestor. Over a long lifetime, they accumulate a multitude of ailments, allowing inquisitive physicians to isolate the contribution of individual factors to their pathogenesis.
So, about mobile phones. The Mobile Manufacturers Forum, an association of mobile phone manufacturers, funded yet another study on the impact of their products on consumers. A Swedish-American team investigated the effect of talking on a mobile phone shortly before falling asleep on sleep parameters. It was found that people whose brains received a dose of radiation at 884 MHz an hour before falling asleep took longer to transition to deep sleep, and also spent less time in this beneficial state. Such changes, according to accepted understanding, must affect overnight recovery. Among the possible consequences are fatigue, low mood, excessive irritability, impaired concentration, and much else. Evidently, the discovered phenomenon may be especially significant for adolescents prone to late-night mobile phone chatter. In passing, the study once again confirmed that even those people who "feel" the influence of radio-frequency radiation on their brains are unable to distinguish actual exposure from a sham.
Naturally, somnologists (sleep specialists) and mobile phone manufacturers interpret the results of this work differently. Some speak of serious harm to health; others speak of preliminary and not particularly important data. Nevertheless, the very fact that the study's leaders are willing to publish results that are unfavorable to the funders demonstrates the viability of the contemporary Western model of science funding. Although one need not receive a grant from the Mobile Manufacturers Forum to suppose that a warm "good night" from someone close, even if conveyed by mobile phone, is more likely to do good…

One Step from a Clone
While the mass media frighten the public with prophecies about the coming of clones, serious research teams around the world are attempting to overcome the difficulties associated with cloning our species. And what drives them is not at all the desire to create something akin to a photocopier for humans, capable of producing a "hard copy," but far more pragmatic interests.
Our body is a remarkably complex system of interacting cells. A system of such complexity cannot be governed from a single centre, however perfect that centre might be. Our vital functions are a consequence of the fact that cells themselves "know" what to do. However, the more deeply cells specialise, the more the scope of their possible transformations narrows. Our thinking, locomotion, or defence against infection is provided by extraordinarily specialised cells, while the repair of damage is carried out by those that retain a sufficiently broad range of possible transformations. There exists a whole hierarchy of stem cells capable of proliferating and producing specialised progeny. "Highest" in this hierarchy stand embryonic stem cells — their potential is the broadest.

A COLONY OF SKIN CELLS FROM AN ADULT MALE. These are fibroblasts — connective tissue cells whose function is the repair of damage

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UNFERTILISED DONOR EGG CELLS. The nuclei of skin cells will be introduced into them

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THE NUCLEUS IS REMOVED FROM AN EGG CELL (ULTRAVIOLET IMAGE). The company Stemagen does not disclose how the fibroblast nucleus is inserted into the egg cell cytoplasm

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THE RESULT OF TRANSFERRING A SKIN CELL NUCLEUS INTO AN ENUCLEATED EGG CELL. The cell appears normal: this is the first sign of successful cloning

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AN EARLY STAGE OF CLONED EMBRYO DEVELOPMENT. The cells comprising it may become the progenitors of an embryonic stem cell line derived from the individual whose skin cells were taken

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Everyone understands how attractive is, for example, this idea of treating disease: stem cells are introduced into a person, find by themselves the sites where they are needed, and populate those sites with their young and healthy progeny. Incidentally, it is quite likely that in treating diseases associated with damage to specific tissues, it is best to use stem cells specific to those tissues, which have already narrowed their potential to some degree — this would reduce the probability that the injected cells will transform into something undesirable. Yet embryonic cells nonetheless possess the greatest "potency." Imagine the success that awaits the laboratory which learns to cultivate cells capable of finding all the weak points in the body by themselves, integrating there, and providing an infusion of youth and health! Is this possible? It is not yet clear, but the dream of eternal youth is still alive. A similar effect is sought by those who inject aborted embryonic cells into wealthy clients. Apart from the fact that such treatment constitutes an ultra-modern form of cannibalism, the genetic differences between the patient's tissues and the cells of the involuntary donor give serious grounds for doubting the efficacy of such a procedure. If only this could be done with one's own cells!…
This is precisely where the idea of cloning comes to the rescue. One takes a cell from an adult human, transfers its nucleus into an egg cell (from which the "native" nucleus has been removed), and obtains an embryo. By means of artificial cultivation, one brings it to the blastocyst stage, obtains embryonic stem cells, multiplies them to the required quantity, and introduces them into the individual from whom the original nucleus was obtained. The idea is attractive, but realising it requires overcoming a great many difficulties. Among these are the still-poorly-understood mechanisms governing the early stages of development characteristic of primates — our group of animals. With sheep and cattle, everything somehow works out far more simply.
If that is the case, why not insert a human nucleus into a cow egg cell deprived of its own genetic material? Recently, a British government oversight commission granted permission for such experiments to two research teams. What fears, associated with the creation of human-bovine monsters, had to be overcome for this! The British hope that such experiments with chimeric embryos will help elucidate the epigenetic (operating "above" the gene level) mechanisms governing the early stages of development. Once these mechanisms are understood, the experimenters’ capabilities will expand significantly. Of course, no one intends to raise to adulthood chimeras composed of human nuclei and bovine cytoplasm.
Nevertheless, there is hope of managing without cows. In mid-January, the small California-based company Stemagen announced that, by transplanting nuclei from adult male skin cells into egg cells, it had produced five human clones. After the clones had passed through the early stages of development, development was halted, and the clones were transferred to other organisations for independent verification (the story of the triumphant announcements by South Korean scientists that proved to be fraudulent is still fresh in everyone's memory). Thus far, preliminary assessments by experts confirm the study authors' conclusions.
So, it appears another milestone has been crossed. How Stemagen managed to "persuade" the intractable human egg cells, the company is for now keeping secret. The efficiency of their work is not very high: five embryos out of twenty-three egg cells survived to the blastocyst stage. A further five began to divide but did not reach even that stage. What guarantee is there that the embryos halted in their development would not have arrested on their own at subsequent stages of embryogenesis? Will the cells extracted from them acquire the "omnipotence" of natural embryonic stem cells? The future will tell.
And how one still longs for an elixir of youth, if only in the high-tech form of embryonic stem cells derived from cloned embryos!

Where Are Medicines Hiding?
In former times it was clear why animals and plants contain substances useful to us. The Creator had made this world for human use and populated it with organisms suited to satisfy our needs. Some could be eaten, others used for treatment, and still others simply admired… This interpretation is, of course, naïve by contemporary standards. The living creatures around us are not our servants but our relatives and neighbours. Yet situations in which substances useful for governing our organisms are suddenly discovered within them continue to astonish.
Can you picture fire-bellied toads (tailless amphibians of the genus Bombina) — small "frog-like" animals with cryptic dorsal colouration and bright patterns on their bellies? Throughout the summer, these anurans spend their time near shallow standing water, feeding on various small invertebrates, and generally making no attempt to hide when we approach. The skin secretion of these animals contains a polypeptide (a small "protein") of fourteen amino acids, named bombesin. In humans, bombesin is a regulator of the digestive system glands. After this substance was discovered in the skin secretions of fire-bellied toads, it was found in the brain and autonomic nervous system of humans and other mammals. In all likelihood, this component of the toad's venom enables fire-bellied toads to disrupt the digestion of their potential predators.
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In South America and the Caribbean lives an animal with the evocative name "paradoxical frog" (Pseudis paradoxus). The frog received this name for the beautiful pearlescent sheen of its body and for its enormous tadpoles, which vastly exceed in size not only the froglets into which they transform, but also the adults. As was recently established, the skin of these animals contains a polypeptide (naturally called pseudin) capable of stimulating insulin production by the human pancreas.
Type II diabetes, in which patients suffer from insulin deficiency, is a prevalent disease. Many patients depend on insulin, which they are compelled to inject on a defined schedule. A hope has now emerged that, instead of injected insulin, small doses of pseudin introduced into the body may serve the same purpose. Fortunately for the paradoxical frogs, both the natural substance extracted from their skin and its synthetic analogue proved equally active.
Why would the paradoxical frog need such a substance — to help diabetic patients? No, more likely, to prevent itself from being eaten by whatever comes along. This, however, should not diminish our gratitude to our remarkable relatives for their biochemical perfection.

D. Shabanov. Hello! Good Night! // Computerra, Moscow, 2008. – No. 5 (721). — P. 15
D. Shabanov. One Step from a Clone // Computerra, Moscow, 2008. – No. 6 (722). — P. 36–37
D. Shabanov. Where Are Medicines Hiding? // Computerra, Moscow, 2008. – No. 10 (726). — P. 14