apalazzo
Posts by this author
December 29, 2007
The scientific finding of the year has to be the reprogramming of adult somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells). In reality the ground breaking work was published in 2006, however at that time it was not yet clear whether IPS cells were the real thing.
In 2007 IPS cells were…
December 27, 2007
Yesterday we arrived back in Boston. The 4 previous day my wife and I were celebrating Christmas up in Montreal with my giant "Italo-Canadese" family. Here are some pics of each night's festivities:
Night 1: My Parents host my father's side of the family. Lots of people, lots of food.
Here's a pic…
December 20, 2007
The scientific life is an interesting one. You work like a dog and have little to show for it. Nothing works and you don't have a clue why that is. Then one day you get that first result. You are happy, but a voice in the back of your head is telling you that this might be another dead end, another…
December 17, 2007
From Lawrence Krauss, in a discussion with Natalie Jeremijenko that is featured in the latest issue of Seed:
I think that's what makes science special. As a scientist and someone who tries, for better or worse, to extol the virtues of science in a society that doesn't appreciate many of those…
December 12, 2007
Reading in the NY Times about James Watson's genome I stumbled on to this:
Professor Church predicted that as the science of genetics advanced, fuzzy categories like race would become less important because genetic characteristics would point to factors like disease at an individual level.…
December 11, 2007
Since the discovery of IPS Cells, the stem cell field has exploded. Here's a few links on the latest developements.
First, two cool papers came out recently.
In the first from the Jaenisch lab, mouse IPS Cells were differentiated into erythrocytes and used to cure sickle celled anemia in a mouse…
December 11, 2007
Last week I had a cool result - but this week after looking at all the controls it would seem like that amazing result is an artifact.
Oh well ...
Instead of showing you that great result, I'll post the remains of another cell that exploded after microinjection. Note that quite a bit of the…
December 10, 2007
From Corie:
You're invited to a pub night for Boston-based scientists, hosted by Nature Network Boston ... the last one for 2007! (For newcomers to NNB, we host monthly, informal events at local pubs for Boston scientists to hang out, have a beer and chat.) It's a great opportunity to meet…
December 7, 2007
This week's mystery campus:
hint:It swallowed the pill-designers
(Lately it has been swallowing many RNA researchers). Since I'm about to leave for NYC for the weekend, I'll confirm any correct answers next week.
December 5, 2007
Yesterday, a postdoc from a neighbouring lab came by to hand over an aliquot of antibodies to baymate. Here's what happened:
me: it looks like Santa came early this year.
friendly neighborhood postdoc: Well actually my PI would be Santa. I'm more of a reindeer.
baymate: Nah, you're an elf. Remember…
December 4, 2007
Well I'll give you our "author's summary", a feature that accompanies every PLoS paper so that it can be better understood by the lay person:
In eukaryotic cells, precursors of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are synthesized and processed in the nucleus. During processing, noncoding introns are spliced out…
December 2, 2007
... and I'm not there. If there's anything noteworthy, please leave a comment.
P.S. This is one of the biggest science meetings of the year, but no press ever goes there and most pop-science journalists are unaware of the meeting's existence. In contrast, both Nature and Science are featuring the…
December 1, 2007
Wow! One of the biggest findings of the year! I'll have to read the article more carefully before I comment on it - previously, I wrote a post on the paper that led to this new discovery that was just published online in Science.
Switching from Repression to Activation: MicroRNAs Can Up-Regulate…
November 29, 2007
This week, I haven't had too much time to blog, but I would like to point out two posts written about a paper that I briefly mentioned in a post that appeared last week. It's on that that fabulous result concerning ribosomes from budding yeast.
Background: the S. cerevisiae genome underwent a…
November 27, 2007
(Yeah, I know, luck ... at least I feel better after staying in the lab until 9:00PM purifying DNA from 40 mini-preps and then preparing 40 DNA digestion reactions.)
November 25, 2007
I woke up yesterday, made myself a cup of coffee and sat down with the New York Times, and a left over piece of corn bread from Thanksgiving.
It was a beautiful morning and I was at peace.
Then I read this (I will try to be polite) by Paul Davies.
Apparently scientists operate on faith. Faith that…
November 23, 2007
This week we learned about the latest results from the emerging field of induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells). I just wanted to give a few links and my latest thoughts on the subject.
What this field has given us is the ability to study how cells are programmed and how they are deprogrammed.…
November 23, 2007
After skipping a week, it's back.
Here is today's mystery campus:
Hint:The other stem cell story.
This should be pretty easy, even for Northwestern alumni ...
November 21, 2007
Yesterday was an action packed day. I got to lab early and made a major discovery. Then last night we had an excellent NERD Club meeting. Then as I walked into the front door at 9PM last night, my wife asks me "Did you hear the news?" Sure enough they have been able to make induced pluripotent…
November 19, 2007
It's incredible. You finish with one project, and the next set of experiments pops up. No time to blog, no time to read papers ... although there are several interesting ones: transcriptional regulation by an endogenous antisense RNA in yeast, ribosomes composed of slightly different subunits…
November 17, 2007
Sorry about the lack of posts, I've been a bit busy as of late. On Thursday I had to look over the proofs for my upcoming paper: The Signal Sequence Coding Region Promotes Nuclear Export of mRNA. It is due to come out December 4th in PLoS Biology.
If also been busy with two other projects that have…
November 14, 2007
Bellow the fold:
Fellow science enthusiasts,
I am sending you this email to alert you that ACS has a plan in place if Open Access passes in Congress. I've been told by multiple colleagues that ACS executives are creating a bogus controversy that Open Access will impede scientists' copyright…
November 13, 2007
Here's a general email message that I just sent out for next week's New England RNA Data Club.
Hello All,
The next meeting of the New England RNA Club will take place Tuesday, November 20th starting at 6:00PM in the Cannon Room of Building C at Harvard Medical School. Our speakers will be:
- Caryn…
November 13, 2007
Friday, after Bora's visit, my wife calls me up and informs me that we are off to NYC for the weekend. So we spent Saturday and Sunday roaming around our old stomping ground, looking for stimulation (Soho, PS1, some off-off Broadway theatre, Central Park ...) Fortunately Terri and Matt, had made…
November 11, 2007
There is one small event from the conference (Publishing in the New Millennium: A Forum on Publishing in the Biosciences) that I would like to share with you. I asked Emilie Marcus, head editor of Cell, a few questions. But before we go there I'd like to delve into one aspect of the whole open…
November 9, 2007
This week's mystery campus. What could it be?
hint:1) Husband and wife team.
2a) Husband and wife team.
2b) .ma et ef iw d na dna bs uH
Know what this means? I'll confirm any correct answers by tomorrow.
November 8, 2007
A micrograph of some wacky crystals I found.
Sometimes even crap looks cool.
November 7, 2007
Bora (from A Blog Around the Clock) will be in Boston tomorrow. If anyone is interested you can meet us at the Miracle of Science Bar - we'll try to get there by 8PM. Friday, Bora will be discussing the future of science communication at the mini conference entitled Publishing in the New Millennium…
November 7, 2007
If you have the time, pick up a copy of the latest Nature. There is a paper that describes how a lab, based here at Harvard Medical School, used a random gene splicing strategy to express various fluorescent proteins in each neuron inside of the brain of a transgenic mouse. As a result of the…