Free the Radicals!
Free the Radicals!"What are radicals doing in biology? Maybe that title attracted you because you’re interested in politics. But, this is really about how radicals and the politics of science funding affect your life!
Now, you’re asking, “What the (fill in whatever comes to mind) is a radical?” I could give an esoteric answer that would send you to another site before you finish the next sentence. Instead, here’s the definition that anyone who knows that a water molecule is made of two hydrogens and one oxygen will understand.
Nature likes molecules to be like couch potatoes - happy to do nothing. Okay, then, you’ll point out that couch potatoes actually do something - occasionally get up from the couch to get a bag of chips or a beer. And so even the laziest molecule does have some potential to react if pushed hard enough. A radical (very often called a free radical) is a molecule that is usually more likely to be involved in reactions because it is unbalanced. No, not quite crazy, but they have a craving to either give or take an electron to another molecule. Electrons are those negatively charged things that fly around the nucleus of atoms . This craziness (actually reactivity) is because nature likes electrons to be in pairs and a free radical has an unpaired electron.
Now that you have gotten this far and know what a free radical is, I’ll assume you have enough interest to want to know how this affects your life. We’ll get to the politics stuff at the end. Some radicals are actually quite safe to have in your cells in low amounts. As explained in my last post, we wouldn’t be alive without nitric oxide, which is a radical. But, in general, cells do not do well with a lot of radicals around. One of them called hydroxyl radical, is so dangerous that it will immediately react with whatever it is next to. So, if hydroxyl radical is produced near your DNA, you will have a mutation. If it is produced next to a membrane, the membrane may not be able to hold the contents of the cell inside. This is a very simplified version of what happens in what we call oxidative stress and it is part of how many diseases including heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancers, and many others get started and develop.
You would think that funding to study these processes would be an important part of what the National Institutes of Health spends your tax dollars on. Fortunately, that is partially true. Congress wants the NIH to cure disease as though that is just a matter of putting together a table from Ikea. The problem is that, while we know many things about the nuts and bolts of radical chemistry and biology, we do not know exactly how they fit into the disease tables. Basic scientists are needed to write the instruction manual that can then be translated into prevention and cures by clinical science. The political solution is trying to have Congress understand why funding more basic science is essential to achieving their very admirable goal of having science cure and prevent diseases.
If you are interested in knowing how scientists like me are trying to help Congress reach it’s goals, post your questions here.
Now, you’re asking, “What the (fill in whatever comes to mind) is a radical?” I could give an esoteric answer that would send you to another site before you finish the next sentence. Instead, here’s the definition that anyone who knows that a water molecule is made of two hydrogens and one oxygen will understand.
Nature likes molecules to be like couch potatoes - happy to do nothing. Okay, then, you’ll point out that couch potatoes actually do something - occasionally get up from the couch to get a bag of chips or a beer. And so even the laziest molecule does have some potential to react if pushed hard enough. A radical (very often called a free radical) is a molecule that is usually more likely to be involved in reactions because it is unbalanced. No, not quite crazy, but they have a craving to either give or take an electron to another molecule. Electrons are those negatively charged things that fly around the nucleus of atoms . This craziness (actually reactivity) is because nature likes electrons to be in pairs and a free radical has an unpaired electron.
Now that you have gotten this far and know what a free radical is, I’ll assume you have enough interest to want to know how this affects your life. We’ll get to the politics stuff at the end. Some radicals are actually quite safe to have in your cells in low amounts. As explained in my last post, we wouldn’t be alive without nitric oxide, which is a radical. But, in general, cells do not do well with a lot of radicals around. One of them called hydroxyl radical, is so dangerous that it will immediately react with whatever it is next to. So, if hydroxyl radical is produced near your DNA, you will have a mutation. If it is produced next to a membrane, the membrane may not be able to hold the contents of the cell inside. This is a very simplified version of what happens in what we call oxidative stress and it is part of how many diseases including heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancers, and many others get started and develop.
You would think that funding to study these processes would be an important part of what the National Institutes of Health spends your tax dollars on. Fortunately, that is partially true. Congress wants the NIH to cure disease as though that is just a matter of putting together a table from Ikea. The problem is that, while we know many things about the nuts and bolts of radical chemistry and biology, we do not know exactly how they fit into the disease tables. Basic scientists are needed to write the instruction manual that can then be translated into prevention and cures by clinical science. The political solution is trying to have Congress understand why funding more basic science is essential to achieving their very admirable goal of having science cure and prevent diseases.
If you are interested in knowing how scientists like me are trying to help Congress reach it’s goals, post your questions here.
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