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Chapter 2 - Digital Concepts in Molecular Medicine
- from Section 1 - Principles Of Cellular And Molecular Biology
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- By Barry V Mendelow, MB BCh, PhD, FCPath (Haematology), MASSAf, FRSSAf, Emeritus Professor, University of the Witwatersrand and National Health Laboratory Service, was formerly the founding Professor and Head of the Division of Molecular Medicine and Haematology at the School of Pathology and Executive Director (Research) for the University of the Witwatersrand.
- Edited by Barry Mendelow, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Michèle Ramsay, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Nanthakumarn Chetty, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Wendy Stevens, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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- Book:
- Molecular Medicine for Clinicians
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 04 June 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 October 2008, pp 15-18
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Arguably the most important conceptual foundation of modern biology is that genetic information is essentially digital in nature. As it happens, the information technology organisational paradigm, built as it is on the special semiconductor properties of silicon, is a convenient framework for a modern understanding of cell and molecular biology and biotechnology, based as they are on the special properties of carbon, and vice versa. Just as a strategic understanding of the basis of information and communication techno - logy (ICT) is becoming an essential life skill in modern society, so a strategic understanding of the conceptual basis of molecular medicine is becoming an essential life skill for virtually all medical practitioners. The analogy of computer viruses, which traces its origins to the 1970s, introduced a useful model for the understanding of both information technology in the language of biology and molecular biology in the language of information technology. The ICT analogy is also a useful conceptual framework for the understanding of disease in a wider setting, because many noninfectious diseases are also ultimately caused or driven by inherited or acquired abnormalities in sequences of digital information. Increasingly, practical use is being made of this concept in the diagnostic process, by applying a small set of tools to identify such disease-causing digital sequences across a wide variety of diseases, whether infectious or otherwise.
Multicellular organisms are each clones of a single cell, of which the genome, normal or abnormal, is effectively the digitally encoded design blueprint for the whole organism. The genome of any organism, be it a micro-organism, plant or animal, is the sequence of the fundamental digital units of information that constitute the specification for the construction and function, or in the case of inherited disease, dysfunction, of that organism. Disease caused by infectious microorganisms can be diagnosed by demonstrating digital sequences that define the presence of those organisms in a highly specific way that not only demonstrates the unambiguous presence of particular organisms, such as HIV, but also often contains the additional information that specifies drug resistance, virulence, etc.
Chapter 8 - Genomes and the Environment: An Overview of Molecular Pathology
- from SECTION 2 - MOLECULAR PATHOLOGY
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- By Barry V Mendelow, MB BCh, PhD, FCPath (Haematology), MASSAf, FRSSAf, Emeritus Professor, University of the Witwatersrand and National Health Laboratory Service, was formerly the founding Professor and Head of the Division of Molecular Medicine and Haematology at the School of Pathology and Executive Director (Research) for the University of the Witwatersrand.
- Edited by Barry Mendelow, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Michèle Ramsay, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Nanthakumarn Chetty, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Wendy Stevens, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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- Book:
- Molecular Medicine for Clinicians
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 04 June 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 October 2008, pp 123-125
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Chapter 1 - Introduction
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- By Barry V Mendelow, MB BCh, PhD, FCPath (Haematology), MASSAf, FRSSAf, Emeritus Professor, University of the Witwatersrand and National Health Laboratory Service, was formerly the founding Professor and Head of the Division of Molecular Medicine and Haematology at the School of Pathology and Executive Director (Research) for the University of the Witwatersrand., Penny Keene, MB ChB, FFPath (Haematology), is a consultant in the Division of Molecular Medicine and Haematology, University of the Witwatersrand.
- Edited by Barry Mendelow, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Michèle Ramsay, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Nanthakumarn Chetty, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Wendy Stevens, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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- Book:
- Molecular Medicine for Clinicians
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 04 June 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 October 2008, pp 1-5
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Summary
The explosion of public interest in the human genome, coupled with the revolution in information technology and widespread access to knowledge made possible by modern communication technologies, has created a public that is increasingly demanding that their medical professionals are experts in the diagnostic and therapeutic implications of applied molecular medicine. Moreover, the rampant march of HIV/AIDS, itself a quint essentially molecular disease that defies even rudimentary understanding without a firm foundation in the central paradigm of molecular biology, has reinforced the urgent need for reforms in medical student curricula. These changes are coming at a time when most medical schools in South Africa and abroad are adopting integrated problem-based learning for medical education. While such approaches are very effective in setting a relevant context for clinical medical education, there is the risk that basic sciences can be overlooked or under-emphasised. This introductory chapter reviews why it is necessary to devote special attention to the teaching and learning of molecular medicine in South African medical schools today.
The global explosion in molecular research
The history of scientific progress characteristically follows an uneven pathway, the pace and direction of which are very much dependent on the availability of technology appropriate to answer the questions of the time. Barriers to further progress are broken down by the development and deployment of new tools, which frequently do more than solve hitherto insoluble problems – they also tend to determine the character of the next generation of questions. An example of this principle in the history of biomedical science is the invention and deployment of the compound microscope in the seventeenth century. The revelation of tissues and cells that this tool enabled paved the way for a new pathology, spawning centuries of scientific endeavour characterised by an understanding of the cellular basis of disease and the whole science of microbiology. This new state of the art itself came to encounter impenetrable barriers to further progress towards the end of the twentieth century. Characteristically, further progress had to await widespread deployment of a new technology – that of molecular biology – before these barriers could be over - come and a new course set (Figure 1).
Keynote Essay 3: Human Cloning: Should We Go There?
- from SECTION 2 - MOLECULAR PATHOLOGY
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- By Barry V Mendelow, MB BCh, PhD, FCPath (Haematology), MASSAf, FRSSAf, Emeritus Professor, University of the Witwatersrand and National Health Laboratory Service, was formerly the founding Professor and Head of the Division of Molecular Medicine and Haematology at the School of Pathology and Executive Director (Research) for the University of the Witwatersrand.
- Edited by Barry Mendelow, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Michèle Ramsay, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Nanthakumarn Chetty, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Wendy Stevens, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
-
- Book:
- Molecular Medicine for Clinicians
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 04 June 2019
- Print publication:
- 01 October 2008, pp 203-207
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
About 13 000 years ago the human species, in what is today Turkey, took a bold step away from the natural practice of hunting and gathering for food, along the pathway towards the modern miracle of agriculture. It started with the unnatural selection of a species of grass with nutritional and utilitarian characteristics that were desirable for humans. The consequences of this massive technological leap have been reverberating ever since. Although its significance was certainly not evident at the time, this first step involved the deliberate, planned large-scale modification of the environment for the benefit of Homo sapiens, and indirectly a handful of other animal and plant species of immediate value to the human architects of this change, and to the disadvantage of virtually all other species. Other technological innovations have continued along this road, and modern debates concerning environmental degradation, genetically modified crops, nuclear technologies and global warming should all ask the question, ‘Should we have started along the road of technological progress at all, those 13 000 years ago?’ Once on this pathway, experience has shown that further progress(ion) is cumulative and unstoppable, simply because the benefits for humans, or at least for the vast majority of them, are undeniable. Given the limited natural ecological carrying capacity of the unmodified environment, a hunter-gatherer mode of existence was arguably capable of supporting a few hundreds of thousands of humans world - wide, perhaps even a few million, so the additional six billion or so humans alive today owe their very existence to technological progress. Sadly but not surprisingly, the rest of the biosphere has fared rather less well than this new growth that has emerged in its midst.
Today, humankind is poised at the brim of another possibly massive step in human development – the deliberate, planned modification of the human species itself by unnatural selection. The consequences for the bio sphere and humankind itself could exceed even those of that earlier step, 13 000 years ago. Should we go there?