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Search for Cures Focuses on Biological Information

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Seek information, and you will find. The largest independent research organization in Scandinavia is called SINTEF. They consider themselves “Next generation problem solvers.” And here’s a big problem to solve: cancer. SINTEF has unveiled their approach:

Norwegian scientists are opening the gates of nature’s secret medicine factories, with the aim of giving us new weapons against cancers and resistant bacteria. [Emphasis added.]

This is significant, because it’s all about design, with apparently no need for evolutionary theory. There’s no indication of what position the researchers take on origins, but that’s beside the point. They are focused on genetic information. Could this be a growing trend in some research institutions?

For decades, bacteria have served society by producing antibiotics — the chemical compounds that can cure infectious diseases. However, it is possible that many natural microorganisms carry the recipes for the medicines of the future hidden in their genetic material, without this part of their genetic code being activated or “switched on.”

Here is an intriguing hypothesis. Why would any self-serving organism carry around recipes for medicine in the “switched off” state? These researchers apparently don’t care about natural selection. They view microbes as libraries of information.

However, in the hope of developing new medicines to fight cancer, and new antibiotics that act on resistant bacteria, scientists and the pharmaceutical industry have now begun to interest themselves in the genetic material that is NOT activated when bacteria are cultivated in the laboratory.

“Switched-off” microbial genes could be used to create useful bioactive substances that are unknown today. However, until now it has been very laborious to explore this genetic information, so scientists have been forced to search through a small number of genes at a time. “This is where our technology can be of help,” says Wentzel.

The Research Council of Norway is financing a four-year project that SINTEF will use to “enable scientists to search for useful substances simultaneously in a large number of samples” of marine microbes, where they suspect that genetic information to cure disease is waiting to be discovered. It’s a large, multidisciplinary effort.

Up to 99 percent of all the microorganisms found in nature cannot be cultured, we learn. SINTEF’s new techniques allow researchers to comb through their genetic libraries without having to find ways to grow them in the lab. They can do this by clipping out genes from unfamiliar marine microbes and inserting them in live culturable bacteria. This way, they can “switch on production” of new substances and test them under controlled conditions. Those that prove useful can be mass produced:

According to the SINTEF scientist, there is a significant likelihood that hidden in this huge pool of microorganisms, there exists “switched-off” genetic material that could produce chemicals that possess hitherto unknown structures and activities.

“It is not least for this reason that this project is so exciting. We may well find new medicines that could mean the difference between life and death for large numbers of patients in the future.”

Libraries and Recipes

It’s obvious that this approach assumes the existence of functional information. The article mentions “genetic code” and “genetic information” repeatedly. They’re on a puzzle-solving expedition, focusing on “cryptic genetic material” that has the instructions to build functional molecules with biological activity useful to humans: molecules that can attack cancer or defeat antibacterial resistance, for example. The new technologies in development “will make it easier to find — and exploit — these hidden and unutilised medicine factories in bacteria that exist in the natural environment.” The search is on — for information.

Perhaps this is the way intelligent design wins — not by rancorous debates, lawsuits, and court decisions (though debates and laws are necessary to provide clarity and support academic freedom). Instead, everyday scientists may just find it more “exciting” to look for information, to decipher codes, and to tinker with molecular machines.

They may find the allure of practical discovery a better use of their time than weaving evolutionary stories. As the Old Guard retires, the new generation may find themselves members of a design-focused scientific community by default.

Image credit: SINTEF/Thor Nielsen.

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