Open Village is a way of making an international community. In terms of Open care, maybe it is a way of making us more empowered and ultimately more healthy. I am a biologist, esp involved in an open science group called Hackuarium. Our cells are really important aspects of our health and the health of future generations. There are lots of things that we do that we could choose to do differently. Genomic integrity = DNA as dynamic (and in concert with all the molecules of cells)! not super fixed in stone. There’s damage and repair of DNA and reg of DNA expression, for example. At least half of all cancers could be prevented. Stem cells and mutations and cancer, because all of our cells have to mutate in different ways. Genomic integrity. The idea at Hackuarium is that there are simple methods to look at DNA damage that people could do with groups and with other people. With a toothbrush you could do a lot of inner cheek cells to look at! òne guy who was a smoker, and his nucleus even looked bigger than ordinary?? want to get lots of data to see if any observations really hold.Could contribute by trying to convince people to make our futures better. Hackuarium is totally volunteer, no one has extra money, we tend to mix engineers and biologists and designers, and therefore we have a really transdisciplinary practice. we prefer DIT, not DIY, getting more from learning continually…
Wow, @rachel, this is tantalizing, but I do not quite understand it. Is it normal or counterintuitive that a smoker’s cells have bigger nuclei? And: what do you mean by [quote=“rachel, post:1, topic:7512”]
Could contribute by trying to convince people to make our futures better.
[/quote]
?
the ‘big nuclei’ remark was really a one off observation from a workshop last spring. I really want to get everyone doing these expts on themselves, with good annotation and imaging one should be able to see if there is really any obvious difference in smokers…
Combustion products can result in extra molecules stuck on the DNA, termed adducts, especially of poly aromatic hydrocarbons, that one could imagine (with enough of them) to cause the nucleus to swell…
But, again this is just hypothetical. (but not really unexpected, perhaps)
Also, I just googled a bit, and see: Where cigarette smoking's damage is done -- down to your DNA | ScienceDaily
My particular contribution to thinking about Open Care, I think, was the idea from the quoted bit - to convince people that they can protect their cells’ dynamic processes (that I put together in the blanket term ‘genomic integrity’). If people took prevention more seriously, this could make all our futures better because it is not just a question of an individual’s risk of cancer or disease but of subsequent generations being more likely to have new lesions (and it is clear there are tons of these every generation, as a more recent study has shown!! Genome-wide meta-analysis associates HLA-DQA1/DRB1 and LPA and lifestyle factors with human longevity | Nature Communications ) and thus higher risks of new disease…
This of course impacts all of society needing to devote resources to the attempts to care for the diseased…
Thanks for probing!
Hope this make sense…