Genetics:
It takes 38 minutes for the E.coli genome to replicate. Yet, E.coli can bo coaxed to divide in a much shorter time: 20 minutes. How is this possible? Larry poses the riddle and provides the solution. The key is that...
Posted on May 11, 2008 4:11 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The genome of the Platypus has been sequenced: The first analysis of the genome sequence of the duck-billed platypus was published today by an international team of scientists, revealing clues about how genomes were organized during the early evolution of...
Posted on May 7, 2008 3:50 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Considering this I am kinda baffled by this. There is tons of microbial metagenomics and genomics in PLoS journals....
Posted on May 7, 2008 9:49 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Imagine: An Interview with Svante Paabo: Svante Paabo works on the edge of what's possible. He ignites our imagination, unlocking tightly held secrets in ancient remains. By patiently and meticulously working out techniques to extract genetic information from skin, teeth,...
Posted on March 28, 2008 5:52 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Or, perhaps, the truth is more complicated, as revealed in the comments of that post....
Posted on March 5, 2008 10:25 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Excitement on science blogs! Karen James of the Beagle Project Blog has just today published a paper in PLoS ONE: Diversity Arrays Technology (DArT) for Pan-Genomic Evolutionary Studies of Non-Model Organisms: Background High-throughput tools for pan-genomic study, especially the DNA...
Posted on February 26, 2008 10:27 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Brendan Bohannan, Richard W. Castenholz, Jessica Green and their students and postdcos at the Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Oregon are currently doing a Journal Club on the PLoS ONE article The Sorcerer II Global Ocean...
Posted on February 20, 2008 6:53 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I tried to understand what DNA barcoding is, as everyone is talking about it. And I tried reading a couple of papers about it - I am a biologist, so I should have understood them, but nope, I was still...
Posted on February 19, 2008 9:08 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Someone did it. Get a prize if you correctly identify which one is intelligently designed. In both cases, the designer was an intelligent.....human. Of course. No media reports yet of bioengineering labs run by chimps, dogs, elephants or dolphins....
Posted on January 31, 2008 2:31 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Olivia Judson wrote a blog post on her NYTimes blog that has many people rattled. Why? Because she used the term "Hopeful Monster" and this term makes many biologists go berserk, foaming at the mouth. And they will not, with...
Posted on January 26, 2008 3:40 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I had no time to read this in detail and write a really decent overview here, perhaps I will do it later, but for now, here are the links and key excerpts from a pair of exciting new papers in...
Posted on January 7, 2008 8:14 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Two grape genomes were published this year, one in Nature, the other in PLoS ONE. Larry Moran explains the methodologies and results of both and discusses the trustworthiness of each. The Nature paper is explained in The Grapevine Genome, and...
Posted on December 29, 2007 12:39 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
When Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word "gene" back in 1909 (hmmm, less than two years until the Centennial), the word was quite unambiguous - it meant "a unit of heredity". Its material basis, while widely speculated on, was immaterial for...
Posted on November 28, 2007 2:44 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Another thing I will also have to miss - the Inaugural Event of the 2007-2008 Pizza Lunch Season of the Science Communicators of North Carolina (SCONC), on October 24th at Sigma Xi Center (the same place where we'll have the...
Posted on October 9, 2007 6:09 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
My former SciBling David Dobbs regularly posts on the SciAm Blog, usually bringing in guest contributors highlighting novel research in neuroscience. Today, he invited Charles Glatt to review an interesting study on the interaction between genes and environment in development...
Posted on October 9, 2007 11:54 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Earlier studies have indicated that a gene called FOXP2, possibly involved in brain development, is extremely conserved in vertebrates, except for two notable mutations in humans. This finding suggested that this gene may in some way be involved in the...
Posted on September 20, 2007 3:47 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
...that is, if you still think that a genome sequence tells all secrets about someone's success in science etc. ;-) But the new paper actually uses Venter's personal genome to do some nifty stuff, as this is the first time...
Posted on September 3, 2007 9:20 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If you are a bird, yes. If you are a human, perhaps. Stay tuned....
Posted on August 21, 2007 6:48 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Lots of new papers just got published in PLoS-Genetics and PLoS-Computational Biology. Here are a couple of papers that caught my eye: From Morphology to Neural Information: The Electric Sense of the Skate: The electric sense appears in a...
Posted on June 30, 2007 9:56 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Remember when we discussed the mammal vs. bird survival at Chernobyl the other day? Well, I learned today that someone is about to go and study the humans there as well. I am not exactly sure what kind of reserch...
Posted on June 22, 2007 5:12 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Microarrays have been used in the study of circadian expression of mammalian genes since 2002 and the consensus was built from those studies that approximately 15% of all the genes expressed in a cell are expressed in a circadian manner....
Read on »
Posted on June 15, 2007 3:51 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Evolution of direct development in echinoderms It's been several years since I last heard Rudolf Raff talk about his work and apparently he's been busy in the meantime. The new stuff is exciting, and PZ knows how to explain it...
Posted on June 2, 2007 2:55 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Larry just won the Triple Crown (or a trifecta, betting on the Triple Crown) with the third post in a trio of posts on a very important topic: Facts and Myths Concerning the Historical Estimates of the Number of Genes...
Posted on May 26, 2007 10:16 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Back in the late 1990s, when people first started using various differential screens, etc. looking for elusive "genes for sleep", I wrote in my written prelims (and reprinted it on my blog several years later): Now the sleep researchers are...
Posted on May 26, 2007 7:11 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Review of some very cool new papers on Drosophila circadian clocks
Read on »
Posted on May 19, 2007 12:56 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Shackleford ponies are often in the media around here. Some love them, some hate them, some want to preserve them, some to exterminate them, and it is not easy to get all the surplus horses adopted each year. Perhaps the...
Posted on May 12, 2007 10:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As you know, the last several days saw quite a flurry of blog posts about framing science. I posted my thoughts here and I keep updating my post with links to all the new posts as they show up (except...
Posted on April 11, 2007 11:44 PM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Here, have a go at it. Even better, if you can get the actual paper and dissect it on your blog, let me know so I can link to that. Have fun! Good Behavior, Religiousness May Be Genetic: A new...
Posted on April 8, 2007 2:55 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
On The Scientist website you can find their new experimental feature - an article with questions to the public that will be used in forming the articles for the print version of the magazine next month. Go see Special Feature:...
Posted on March 29, 2007 10:52 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
About a year ago, there was a great paper about polyphenism in moth caterpillars. Now, in the new issue of Seed Magazine, PZ Myers uses that example to teach you all about it. Cool reading on one of my favourite...
Posted on March 16, 2007 9:31 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Today is a big day on Plos-Biology for the Oceanic Microbial Diversity Genomics. Last night they published not one, not two, but three big papers chockfull of data. Accompani\ying them are not one, not two, not three, not even four,...
Posted on March 14, 2007 9:42 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
...when painted base-by-base....
Posted on February 12, 2007 8:56 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Just got this exciting news by e-mail: Data on Equine Genome Freely Available to Researchers Worldwide BETHESDA, Md., Wed., Feb. 7, 2007 - The first draft of the horse genome sequence has been deposited in public databases and is freely...
Posted on February 7, 2007 9:56 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Just quickly for now without commentary: Totally cool paper in the last Science: S. Libert, J. Zwiener, X. Chu, W. VanVoorhies, G. Roman, and S.D.Pletcher Regulation of Drosophila lifespan by olfaction and food-derived odors: Smell is an ancient sensory system...
Posted on February 5, 2007 2:27 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In the series of "Basic Concept And Terms" (yup, I know, John is well known for misspelling people's last names, including mine), several people have already chimed in with their own definitions of the "gene", demonstrating how unclear this concept...
Posted on January 29, 2007 12:31 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Food From Cloned Animals Safe? FDA Says Yes, But Asks Suppliers To Hold Off For Now: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued three documents on the safety of animal cloning -- a draft risk assessment; a proposed...
Posted on January 1, 2007 12:59 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Perhaps. But we do other stuff just like chicken (December 09, 2004):...
Read on »
Posted on December 27, 2006 10:57 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Scientists building a better mosquito: Without mosquitoes, epidemics of dengue fever and malaria could not plague this planet. The skin-piercing insects infect one person after another while dining on a favorite meal: human blood. Eliminating the pests appears impossible. But...
Posted on December 12, 2006 1:00 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Mendel's Garden #9: Gene-gle Bells Edition is up on Salamander Candy...
Posted on December 3, 2006 11:18 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The honeybee genome project has been finished and a bunch of papers are coming out tomorrow. As soon as they become available online I will comment, at least on the one paper that shows that the molecular machinery of the...
Posted on October 25, 2006 9:36 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Razib and commenters are commenting on this article which appears to be 19th century SF-fantasy repackaged as "serious science" about the future evolution of the human species. Actually, the article is so silly, Razib does not even want to waste...
Posted on October 17, 2006 9:24 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Mendel's Garden #8: Harvest Edition is up on Discoverying Biology in a Digital World....
Posted on October 15, 2006 4:18 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In the light of this years' Nobel Prizes in Physiology and Chemistry (all RNA all the time), it would be interesting to think how would transcription, translation, gene regulation and replication work if DNA has evolved to be like this!?...
Posted on October 4, 2006 10:29 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
For easy-to-understand quick look at the evolution of vision I have to refer you to these two posts by PZ Myers, this post of mine, and these two posts by Carl Zimmer. Now, armed with all that knowledge, you will...
Posted on October 4, 2006 9:55 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As you have probably heard already, Andrew Fire and Craig Mello have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of RNA interference. Jake Young explains what RNAi are and what they do and why is this so revolutionary....
Posted on October 3, 2006 7:08 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A really cool new study: DailyScience: How Butterflies Got Their Spots: A 'Supergene' Controls Wing Pattern Diversity: To explore the genetic backgrounds of each of these species, the authors crossed different races of each species and genotyped the offspring in...
Posted on September 27, 2006 4:25 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Fruit Fly Aggression Studies Have Relevance To Humans, Animals: Researchers in the North Carolina Sate University genetics department have identified a suite of genes that affect aggression in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, pointing to new mechanisms that could contribute...
Posted on September 25, 2006 10:03 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A Community Genetics Forum 2006: Finding the Genome is a 3-day conference here in the Triangle. I will try to go to the third day events on Saturday, 10am - 3pm. It is a very medically oriented meeting, so I...
Posted on September 15, 2006 9:54 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Remember this post from a couple of weeks ago? It was quite popular on tagging sites like Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon. It was about endogenous retroviruses and their role in the evolution of placenta (which made the evolution of other...
Posted on September 12, 2006 1:52 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Mendel's Garden #5 is up on Evolgen....
Posted on September 4, 2006 12:59 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Now, this is the gene that was meant to be named "hairy" instead of this one: Hirsute-s You, Sir! Could Super Furry Animals Provide Clues For Baldness?: The team found that cells given the genetic command to become hair follicles...
Posted on August 31, 2006 1:42 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Not really a review of Greg Bear's "Darwin's Radio" and "Darwin's Children" but musing (practically SF itself) on the topic of these books (from April 20, 2005):...
Read on »
Posted on August 23, 2006 10:58 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Several ScienceBloggers are reviewing Coming To Life today (see reviews by Janet, Shelley, RPM, Nick and PZ Edit: Razib has also posted his take), each one of us from a different perspective and looking from a different angle, so go...
Posted on August 21, 2006 4:59 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Mendel's Garden #4 is up on The Innoculated Mind...
Posted on August 19, 2006 10:51 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Archy is on top of the story, as usual when the story is about people trying to resurrect mammoths!...
Posted on August 15, 2006 2:50 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I hope PZ will comment on this study: A humble aquarium fish may be the key to finding therapies capable of preventing the structural birth defects that account for one out of three infant deaths in the United States today.That...
Posted on August 10, 2006 10:37 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A short post from April 17, 2005 that is a good starting reference for more detailed posts covering recent research in clock genetics.
Read on »
Posted on August 7, 2006 10:58 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Bio::Blogs #2 is up on Neil Saunder's blog....
Posted on August 1, 2006 3:03 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Mendel's Garden, the carnival of genetics, is up on Viva La Evolucion....
Posted on July 21, 2006 9:59 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I had lunch with Anton yesterday. We talked about the upcoming busy blogging Fall and he showed me his new book. We ate in my neck of the woods, at Town Hall Grill in Southern Village in Chapel Hill. Anton...
Posted on July 21, 2006 9:30 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Sometimes a metaphor used in science is useful for research but not so useful when it comes to popular perceptions. And sometimes even scientists come under the spell of the metaphor. One of those unfortunate two-faced metaphors is the metaphor...
Posted on July 19, 2006 11:30 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Archy has the answer....
Posted on July 8, 2006 8:56 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A broad look at the new paper on the way Tau mutation works in the mammalian circadian clock.
Read on »
Posted on July 4, 2006 9:59 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In the beginning, there was period. Before 1995, the only known circadian clock genes were period (Per) in Drosophila melanogaster (wine fly) and frequency (Frq) in Neurospora crassa (bread mold). Some mutations, though not characterized at the molecular level,...
Posted on June 26, 2006 11:59 AM • 0 Comments • 2 TrackBacks
Pedro Beltrao, who blogs on Public Rambling is starting Bio::Blogs, a carnival of bioinformatics and computational biology....
Posted on June 20, 2006 12:33 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The very first edition of Mendel's Garden, the carnival of genetics, is up on The Force That Through.... Pediatric Grand Rounds, Volume 1 Edition 5, is up on Unintelligent Design....
Posted on June 18, 2006 12:39 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
