Discovering Biology in a Digital World

It's been quite a year since I joined ScienceBlogs in June and there've been many interesting things to write about.

Here's a sampling of your favorites (and some of mine) from month to month.

June:

• Hello Kitty! or Don't Eat Me, I Study Genetics!
  The story of the endangered Florida Panthers and the danger of getting confused between preserving the signs of inbreeding and preserving a species.
• I also gave a workshop for teachers in June at the Bio-Link conference. So, June has quite a few posts about Bio-Link.

July:

• Am I really related to Cleopatra? Qualitatively measuring DNA sequence quality.
  In which we explore geneaology, mitochondrial sequencing, and interpreting DNA sequencing results.
• Digital Biology Fridays were also a big hit in July and throughout the year. Each Friday, I demonstrate educational activities that students can do to to learn how to use bioinformatics tools and databases. These dropped off for a bit in November and December but will resume shortly.

August:

• Waxing lyrical about that stuff in our ears
  Truly a human interest story. This post presents the polymorphisms behind the consistency of ear wax and discusses the genetics of race.
• Using HIV to understand evolution
  In which we use HIV to demonstrate how evolution can be witnessed in just a few short weeks.

September:

• White people are mutants
  Insights about human genetics race learned from mutant zebrafish.


• It's not the subject, it's the teaching discusses the lack of teacher preparation at the college level. This post led to a series of posts on science teaching which will be continued in 2007. Just like Orac is interested in evidence-based-medicine, I am interested in seeing more evidence-based teaching.

October:

• Tales from the lab
  I went a little crazy on Halloween, what can I say?
• Will the real jellyfish please stand up?
  Do science journalists and the companies that sell educational materials have a responsibility to portray science accurately? This post discusses the case of green fluorescent protein and jellyfish.

November:

• What's that taste?
  Never leave Streptomyces cultures in your refrigerator at home!


• Thanksgiving Leftovers: Under the Microscope
  Would you recognize your leftovers at 40X magnification?

December:

• Just in time for Christmas: a virgin birth!
  How genotyping was used to prove that Flora, the Komodo dragon, was indeed, truly a single mom.


• The science behind Benghazi
  Molecular epidemiology in action. See why the scientists were convinced.