>>A hallmark of apoptosis is fragmented DNA: that is, as a result of a cell's suicide 'program', its DNA becomes 'scrambled' into smaller pieces.<< >>I guess you can't tell me more about this 'scrambling'? Darci? Is this scrambling, and thus apoptosis, occuring b/c DNA repair enzymes get to far behind? Does "getting behind" lead to to much DNA damage resulting in mutation or cell death?<<
Unfortunately, I haven't followed the apoptosis literature for years, so I don't know what the current understanding is. From what I recall, there is a specific endonuclease that cleaves the DNA between nucleosomes, resulting in the regular sized fragments (and multiples thereof) that is referred to as the "ladder" when the DNA is run out on an agarose gel. As far as the nicked DNA that the TUNEL assay apparently detects, I don't know about this specifically, and whether this is also associated with the endonuclease activity. I'm not sure whether it's known what causes the endonuclease to become activated, whether it's damaged DNA or some other cellular event.
Okay, now to make this post relevent to this thread: I'm wondering what you all think of the number of shares traded on Friday, relative to the float. I don't know what the float is, but I think someone mentioned it in an earlier post. If the float is far less than 12 million, than does this indicate that there was either 1) alot of trading of the same shares back and forth or 2) a huge short position being taken. If it was 1), then I wouldn't expect too much immediate profit taking, as it would seem then that the early sellers were already taking profits. That is, I'm wondering what percentage of the shares out right now are actually shares bought at the $6-10 level. There are also probably still many holders who bought in January when the stock was in the teens. So maybe the fear of a rapid fall back is very unrealistic? Any comments?
Darci |
