Investment in science should be broad, as you never know what treasures may be discovered, a National Science Council (NSC) sponsored researcher said yesterday.
“In-depth biodiversity research should be encouraged,” said Grace Lo (羅竹芳), professor and dean at National Taiwan University’s College of Life Sciences.
Lo’s comments were based on her research on white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) in shrimps. In finding a cure for WSSV, Lo discovered a protein in the virus called ICP11 that could help kill tumor cells in humans.
The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December.
WSSV has caused serious economic losses, and can wipe out a whole pond of shrimps in a week. Lo’s team began to study WSSV, hoping to find a cure.
“The WSSV genome is composed of some 500 proteins. What is interesting about the virus is that most of these proteins are unique and therefore their functions are unknown. As such, it is globally acknowledged that these proteins merit research,” Lo said.
Lo’s team identified ICP11 as its first target, as the commonest protein in the WSSV genome.
Last year, Lo’s team joined forces with Academia Sinica vice president Andrew Wang’s (王惠鈞) lab. Wang contributed to a defining breakthrough when he identified ICP11 as a “DNA mimic protein,” meaning that it looked and functioned like DNA, Lo said.
“This finding alone is invaluable — to date, fewer than 10 DNA mimic proteins have been identified worldwide ... I began to ponder why ICP11 looks like DNA and what function it serves,” she said.
Lo found that in vitro, ICP11 binds with histones, proteins that enable the compaction of DNA strands into chromosomes and give chromosomes their shape.
In other words, ICP11 competes with cell DNA to bind with histones and, “without histones, DNA strands will unwind, and the cell will die,” Lo said.
While in vitro histone proteins have similar attributes to ICP11 and DNA strands, Lo said she suspects that in vivo ICP11 is capable of ripping off histone proteins that are already attached to DNA strands.
The finding could contribute to the development of a whole new variety of cancer drugs, as all tumor cells have DNA, and a drug that disassembles DNA would be deadly to all of them, Lo said.
Lo said her team was working on finding way to get ICP11 to function in the body, but her interest in WSSV will not end there.
“WSSV may be a treasure trove — we have identified another 10 proteins in it that are worth researching, just like ICP11,” she said.
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
RSS