The interchangeability of regulatory genes protects against diseases

A cell is like a computer
Alexey Tymoshenko, GZT.RUBiologists have found that there are much more similarities between genes and computer networks than previously thought.

In both cases, the key elements of the systems are duplicated. This discovery will allow us to find vulnerable genes responsible for the development of diseases.

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University in the USA drew attention to a special class of proteins called "transcription factors". These proteins are unique – they do not just build the cell body and do not even act as providing chemical reactions of enzymes. Transcription factors act as switches for other genes: they can start or stop the synthesis of many proteins at once.

Molecular switches and intracellular computers

Ziv Bar-Joseph, under whose supervision the study was carried out, says that scientists were able to detect similarities between various transcription factors. The researchers suggest that this is not a coincidence, but a way to ensure the interchangeability of the genes necessary for the cell to work. A similar method of duplicating important network nodes is used in computer systems that conduct distributed computing on different computers.

With the support of colleagues from Israel and Spain, molecular biologists managed to divide molecular switches into two groups. Some scientists managed to find one or more alternatives, while others turned out to be unique and unlike any others.

Next, an experiment was conducted that may have important implications for medicine. In its course, the researchers showed that the breakdown of transcription factors of the first type practically does not affect the work of other genes. These switches are duplicated by their analogues, and only the failure of several genes at once can seriously affect the work of the cell. Such a scenario is extremely unlikely: the genetic material in the cell is reliably protected by several different systems for repairing damaged DNA.

But proteins that regulate the activity of many genes and at the same time have no analogues are critical for the functioning of the cell. Knowing the exact list of such proteins, doctors will be able to focus on their detailed study, because the "breakdown" of the genes encoding them can cause various diseases.

Distributed computing

A similar distribution of functions is used by programmers to create systems that allow for cumbersome calculations by distributing them across many computers. The failure or disconnection of individual nodes from the network (in cells, their role is played by switch genes) does not lead to the collapse of the entire system, and the size of the network can be practically unlimited.

The World Community Grid network, for example, unites over hundreds of thousands of computers using special software. By downloading and installing the program, any user of the world Wide Web can sacrifice the excess resources of his processor to solve various scientific problems. The method of distributed computing on the computers of volunteers calculates the molecules necessary for the treatment of HIV infection, the effects of global warming and even changes in proteins that will allow to obtain new, more productive varieties of rice.

Cancer, memory and genes

The discovery of scientists allows us to take a fresh look at many problems of medical and biological science. Molecular switches are multifunctional and are responsible for a variety of processes: for example, the c-Fos gene is associated with both the formation of cancerous tumors and with learning and memory formation. Earlier, back in 1989, neuroscientists discovered that a gene that was previously thought to be associated with the development of tumors begins to work in brain cells in rats immediately after training. Later, it was also possible to show that its mutation in mice leads to a deterioration in the intellectual abilities of rodents, but it was not possible to deduce a mouse completely devoid of memory at that time: scientists believed that the functions of the gene were duplicated.

In the light of the discovery of biologists from Carnegie Mellon University and the analogy with computing systems, such duplication seems quite natural. Such a vital function as memory, on the one hand, requires many genes, and on the other hand, the regulators of the work of all these genes are duplicated. A study describing how transcription factors duplicate each other has been published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology.