The evolution of a doctor's blog

Dr. Smith presents his research poster, which ranks the huge growth of his namesake blog, blogs of Dr. Smith's ECG. The blog is pretty much free to maintain, hosted by Google's Blogger.com service and will break the 1,000,000 page views this year. The site itself is a breathing, living and dynamic textbook: http://hqmeded-ecg.blogspot.com

Dr. Stephen w. Smith is a faculty physician in emergency medicine residency at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis, MN and an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Minnesota.

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The evolution of evolutionary molecular medicine

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This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Molecular Medicine on Evolutionary Molecular Medicine. The first paragraphs are below.

New technologies have always been the driving forces for major developments in science. Medicine is no exception. New sequencing technologies have enabled us to begin understanding the genomic and molecular origins of life and the reasons for disease; they are also transforming evolutionary biology into a new, precise, molecular science that has enormous promise for advancing medicine and public health [1]. This issue of the Journal of Molecular Medicine has invited papers to discuss this exciting development.

Evolution comes to medicine, genomics comes to evolution Medical doctors are trained to taking a detailed history from their patients, their personal history, a family history (and tree if indicated), and the time course symptoms and laboratory tests. Now we look back into the history of mankind and to the origins of life 3.5 billion years ago to understand why we get sick. The history-taking process has thus been extended from the individual to his phylogenetic ancestors. The transformation of medicine by genomics will eventually be recognized among the most significant in a long history of innovations. The beginnings of modern medicine were made…(see article for more)

Posted in evolutionary medicine

 

Emergence and evolution of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system

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The renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS) is not the sole, but perhaps the most important volume regulator in vertebrates. To gain insights into the function and evolution of its components, we conducted a phylogenetic analysis of its main related genes. We found that important parts of the system began to appear with primitive chordates and tunicates and that all major components were present at the divergence of bony fish, with the exception of the Mas receptor. The Mas receptor first appears after the bony-fish/tetrapod divergence. This phase of evolutionary innovation happened about 400 million years ago. We found solid evidence that angiotensinogen made its appearance in cartilage fish. The presence of several RAAS genes in organisms that lack all the components shows that these genes have had other ancestral functions outside of their current role. Our analysis underscores the utility of sequence comparisons in the study of evolution. Such analyses may provide new hypotheses as to how and why in today’s population an increased activity of the RAAS frequently leads to faulty salt and volume regulation, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases, opening up new and clinically important research areas for evolutionary medicine.

Posted in evolutionary medicine