Donated by the human whose cells those were, by someone else?
That Nature article seems to discuss both approaches, using both induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells — which of course are not donated by the human being which they once were part of.
Not entirely related to little tasks from meetings, but when I need to remember something eg. the next morning but I'm already in bed and dont want to get up to write it down etc, I find that a quick way to remind myself is to take something nearby, for example the book on my nightstand or just a crumpled tissue or two, and throw it on the ground where I'll see/stumble over it the next morning and think "why is this here" and then remember.
I'm glad you like it! It web scales indefinitely as long as you have new things to burn to increment the burn index. Want to remember two things the next morning? Burn your shirt and pants! Easy peasy.
people like to forget DNA has a 3D structure. A lot of the DNA that doesnt encode proteins might be involved, for example, in the association of 3D topological domains or conformational switches that impact chromatin accessibility. Interesting also is when sufficient factors bind to a local region of DNA to change the local chemistry and initiate phase separated domains where regulatory factors might preferrentially bind and thus drive the transcription of the few coding regions, and that's pretty cool too. Just to add some context to your bits-analogy.
that's not just true for viruses, it's true for pretty much anything. we've barely scraped the surface in terms of sequencing microbes, fungi, plants, birds, fish, ..., not to even consider variation at the population (or god forbid, somatic cell) level.
Back in the day, you only knew about microorganisms and viruses that you knew how to grow. And that apparently excludes about 99.9% of stuff.
In Biology 101, I recall that we cloned bacteria from sewage, and then cloned a bacteriophage. But the instructors were very careful that we cloned E. coli :)
as others have said, genetic therapies for these kinds of transmissible cancers are not so effective since the cells have already acquired the cancer phenotype. The usual regulatory mechanisms which prevent unchecked proliferation occur in each individual cell, and have already been circumvented by the time cells become cancerous.
I thought I would add that what makes the tasmanian case interesting is that though the body is generally pretty good about detecting and removing foreign cells (including viruses and bacteria), somehow these contagious cancers elude this detection and are allowed to proliferate [1]. It is likely that if the tasmanian devil's immune system were able to detect the intruder cancer cells as coming from another individual, it would eradicate them with ruthless efficiency. Why these cells are able to skirt the host immune system though is a different question.
