Laser-emitting cells and mutant humans: what's going on?

SMALL PRINT:SCANNING THE science headlines this week, one might be forgiven for thinking the world has come over all sci-fi. "We are all mutants", exclaims one. Meanwhile, several media outlets have been reporting on the unveiling of a living human cell which, by the power of a jellyfish protein and some tricks with mirrors, can generate a laser.

The mutant story comes from a study in Nature Geneticsthat combed through genetic details from two different families, spotting the new mutations (changes in DNA) in the child that arose in the sperm or egg of the parent.

And what they found in this small sample defied expectation: one child got over 90 per cent of those changes from Dad, while the other got a good dollop of mutations from both parents.

“This is a surprise,” said study co-author Matt Hurles from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. “Many people expected that in all families, most mutations would come from the father, due to the additional number of times that the genome needs to be copied to make a sperm, as opposed to an egg.”

Well that explains the mutants, but what about the lasers? Researchers modified human cells in a dish so they could produce a fluorescent protein from jellyfish that glows. When they arranged such cells between mirrors and fed in light, the cells emitted laser beams. And the cells didn’t even appear to be too put out by the light show: “Lasing cells remained alive even after prolonged lasing action,” write the researchers in Nature Photonics about their single-celled biological lasers.