Sixth DNA base discovered?
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Sixth DNA base discovered?
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Re: Sixth DNA base discovered?
#2"In the early 80s, to these four "classic" bases of DNA was added a fifth: the methyl-cytosine (mC) derived from cytosine."
How come any biology course or book I've ever seen, whether high-school or top-university level, only teaches about four bases?
Re: Sixth DNA base discovered?
#3"In the early 80s, to these four "classic" bases of DNA was added a fifth: the methyl-cytosine (mC) derived from cytosine." How come any biology course or book I've ever seen, whether high-school or top-university level, only teaches about four bases?
Methylation and other base modifications (there are 20+ last I checked) are taught in upper-level biology courses. I guess the people who write biology texts consider this advanced material.
Re: Sixth DNA base discovered?
#4What? This is blasphemy! This is madness!
Re: Sixth DNA base discovered?
#5Pet peeve: headlines phrased as questions.
"Possible Sixth DNA Base Identified", as just one example, would have been a phenomenally better headline that doesn't automatically invoke Betteridge's law.
Re: Sixth DNA base discovered?
#6"In the early 80s, to these four "classic" bases of DNA was added a fifth: the methyl-cytosine (mC) derived from cytosine." How come any biology course or book I've ever seen, whether high-school or top-university level, only teaches about four bases?
Methylation and other base modifications (there are 20+ last I checked) are taught in upper-level biology courses. I guess the people who write biology texts consider this advanced material.
I don't understand why you wouldn't set that sort of thing out at the basic level, even if it were accompanied with 'we understand ACGT quite well, the others are pretty mysterious and we're not sure if they matter as much.'
Seems a bit like teaching English by focusing only on spelling but omitting any mention of punctuation or grammar for the first few years. Of course we don't try to teach that all at once, but even very simple books use things like capital letters, commas, and periods so that kids get used to seeing them early on.
Re: Sixth DNA base discovered?
#7Pet peeve: headlines phrased as questions. "Possible Sixth DNA Base Identified", as just one example, would have been a phenomenally better headline that doesn't automatically invoke Betteridge's law.
I guess question mark is enough.
Re: Sixth DNA base discovered?
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Methylation and other base modifications (there are 20+ last I checked) are taught in upper-level biology courses. I guess the people who write biology texts consider this advanced material.
I don't understand why you wouldn't set that sort of thing out at the basic level, even if it were accompanied with 'we understand ACGT quite well, the others are pretty mysterious and we're not sure if they matter as much.' Seems a bit like teaching English by focusing only on spelling but omitting any mention of punctuation or grammar for the first few years. Of course we don't try to teach that all at once, but ev…
Because it's just not very important at that point. If you covered all the exceptions and special cases in biology, Bio 101 would never end. It'd be kind of like teaching string theory at the same time as F=M*A.
Re: Sixth DNA base discovered?
#9"In the early 80s, to these four "classic" bases of DNA was added a fifth: the methyl-cytosine (mC) derived from cytosine." How come any biology course or book I've ever seen, whether high-school or top-university level, only teaches about four bases?
I learned about methylation (not in any detail) from my mother. But not as a "fifth base" -- she told me that methylation was added to DNA strands and that it was how you could distinguish maternal from paternal DNA.
It's definitely not true that "we're not sure if base modifications matter much". We know they matter; you can get quite different results from the same genetic change in a maternal chromosome vs a paternal chromosome.
Anyway, I assume methylation was covered in her curriculum at some point, either as a biology undergrad or a med student. So your answer is either "because you're not reading the right books" or possibly "because methyl-cytosine is clearly a variety of cytosine, which is one of the four 'classic' bases".
Re: Sixth DNA base discovered?
#10"In the early 80s, to these four "classic" bases of DNA was added a fifth: the methyl-cytosine (mC) derived from cytosine." How come any biology course or book I've ever seen, whether high-school or top-university level, only teaches about four bases?
I learned about methylation (not in any detail) from my mother. But not as a "fifth base" -- she told me that methylation was added to DNA strands and that it was how you could distinguish maternal from paternal DNA. It's definitely not true that "we're not sure if base modifications matter much". We know they matter; you can get quite different results from the same genetic change in a maternal chromosome vs a pater…
> I learned about methylation (not in any detail) from my mother. But not as a "fifth base"
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I've heard about methylation before (frankly, I can't remember if we had this in high school, but I encountered the topic briefly later in life), but never in terms of a "fifth base".