Current strategies for dealing with cancer mainly involve killing cells and hoping enough healthy cells survive. The problem is that the healthy cells are often in various stages of being programmed into cancer cells by continued insults to the cellular environment and recurrence is problematic. Reprogramming the cells requires more sophisticated strategies. Initially, elimination of cancer associated pathogens is essential, while in the long term nutritional and lifestyle changes are mandatory.
At the most primary level, all molecular movement is electromagnetic in nature and manipulation of the electromagnetic environment of the cells can cause important effects.
Cracking the Cellular Code
MIT Technology Review
By Erika Jonietz, September 9, 2004
In the past few years, biologists have churned out the entire genetic sequence of dozens of organisms, including humans, dogs, mosquitoes, rats, and bacteria. But these strings of genes amount to the most basic molecular parts list, not much more helpful to deciphering how the genes combine to run a living cell than an array of microchips and wires would be for assembling a computer.
Researchers at MIT and at the MIT-affiliated Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have taken a major step toward understanding how those genes are organized to regulate cells. Refining a technique pioneered in geneticist Richard Young’s lab, the team has identified all of the controlling elements in the genome of baker’s yeast, a common laboratory microorganism.
“A parts list is nice, but in moving to an understanding of how a whole cell behaves, this is really the next step,” says Young, who headed the project with Whitehead fellow Ernest Fraenkel and MIT computer scientist David Gifford. “We’ve been able to identify an important part of the genome in a very precise way that is key to regulation of life.” Fraenkel and Gifford published their findings in the September 2 issue of the journal Nature.
Any cell, from yeast to human, uses multiple layers of control to coordinate which genes are switched on and off in response to stimuli such as temperature, nutrient availability, and outside chemical messengers. The central method of gene control, however, relies on proteins known as transcription factors. When these molecules attach to a region of DNA close to a particular gene, that gene is switched on; when the protein detaches, the gene shuts down. Mutations in transcription factors or in their binding sites on the genome are associated with many diseases, including hypertension, cancer, and diabetes.