Reading Day!

[kateorman]

Well, reading, doing my tax, and struggling pathetically with the housework day.

Right now I'm reading up on human pigmentation genetics for cluelessch1x0r. I want to be able to convert the technical stuff into English, but I'm not sure how much jargon I can get away with. So here's a straw poll:

Poll Skience jargonIn other news, I'm even more convinced that scientists would be

Comments

[neotoma]

If I told you a variant gene inactivated the receptor for a hormone, you would respond

This gene, instead of the one most people have, shuts down the switch that a hormone uses to make something happen; even though the proper hormone is present, the cells can't tell, because they are unable to get the signal that the hormone would be triggering if everything was working properly.

[mrteufel]

Er, what they said. But it's really chewey, so if the whole text was that thick I'd probably lose it while puzzling out the next chunk-o-science, and therefore lose the thread of the text. I'd be happier if it was spelled out a bit so I could read it more transparently.

[fred_god_of]

I think I understand but can't explain it though.

[elsaf]

Hormones are like keys, receptors are like keyholes. The genes cause the receptors to be produced. So a variant gene is producing keyholes that don't match the keys that were passed out. So the hormone can't attach itself and it's "task" doesn't get done.

[jenavira]

Hormones don't just float around in the body and do stuff; they get released from one bit and then plug into another bit and cause it to do something. Some special kind of gene turned off the part where the hormone plugs into, causing it to stop working, no matter how much hormone you have.

I'm vaguely surprised at how much of that I understood.