My thoughts on biology, teaching, life, and exploring the living world via the digital one. Only my opinions are represented by these postings, they do not represent the viewpoints of any funding agency or Geospiza, Inc.
I am a microbiologist and molecular biologist turned tenured biotech faculty turned bioinformatics scientist turned entrepreneur. My passion is developing instructional materials for 21st century biology (Geospiza Education).
e-mail digitalbio at gmail.com
September 26, 2007
Category: Microbiology
For the record: Chlamydia is NOT a virus. I am bummed. I like the little MicrobeWorld radio broadcasts, and the video podcasts are even more fun. But I was perusing the archives and I found this:...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 11:42 AM • 7 Comments •
September 25, 2007
Category: Science education
Why I love Nature podcasts
Posted by Sandra Porter at 12:53 PM • 14 Comments •
September 20, 2007
Category: women in science
The-Scientist could learn from a lot from Dr. Seuss.
Posted by Sandra Porter at 12:13 PM • 13 Comments •
September 19, 2007
Category: Genetics & Molecular Biology
But I'm certain that you will find some interesting things....
Posted by Sandra Porter at 2:25 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Miscellany
At least this is what I imagine it's like to live with someone who has bipolar disorder. Tonight - Sept. 19th, between 7-8 pm EDT, there will a "blogger's conference with the experts," discussing this very thing. The transcript will be posted and you can learn more about the event here....
Posted by Sandra Porter at 1:53 AM • 2 Comments •
September 16, 2007
Category: Humor
Can you tell the difference between the sort of person who would write a programming language and a serial killer?...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 7:33 PM • 20 Comments •
September 13, 2007
Category: Biology (Macroscopic )
A reader from the UK sent me these lovely photos that he took of a jellyfish and asked for my help in identifying it. Unfortunately, while I'm pretty good with bacteria, plants, and tropical fish, my taxonomy skills don't go much farther unless I have a sample of DNA. These photos were taken at La-Manga off the coast of southern...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 11:34 AM • 4 Comments •
September 11, 2007
Category: molecular structures
Fun with molecular models!
Posted by Sandra Porter at 11:46 AM • 3 Comments •
September 10, 2007
Category: Evolution
One of the places that I've always wanted to visit in Portland, OR, is Powell's City of Books. Powell's is the kind of bookstore that people in Seattle discuss in the same reverent tones that they use when they're describing Cody's in Berkeley or City Light in San Francisco. It's not just a bookstore. It's a destination. I guess that's...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 8:30 AM • 6 Comments •
September 9, 2007
Category: Announcements
If you haven't, then hustle over to Mendel's Garden for a wonderful story about the monk and his life as a scientist, check out Gene Genie for best drawing of Craig Venter that I've ever seen; and if you're into computers, take a good long look at the lightning edition of Bio::blogs. I've visited them all out myself and I...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 10:37 PM • 0 Comments •
September 8, 2007
Category: Science education
Bertalan Meskó shares his strategies for keeping up and gives instructions so you can do the same. He shows how you can save your favorite PubMed searches and have NCBI send you e-mails about new papers. He describes some third party PubMed tools that make pretty graphs. Last, he discusses RSS readers, Connotea, and BioWizard. It's all very helpful and...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 11:14 AM • 3 Comments •
September 7, 2007
Category: Digital Biology Fridays
During the past few Fridays (or least here and here), we've been looking at a paper that was published from China with some Β-lactamase sequences that were supposedly from Streptococcus pneumoniae. The amazing thing about these particular sequences is that Β-lactamase has never been seen in S. pneumoniae before, making this a rather significant (and possibly scary) discovery. If it's...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 8:43 AM • 5 Comments •
September 6, 2007
Category: Miscellany
Yes, indeed. I got the Red Hot blog of the Day award from RedOrbit. Not for science, though; it's for showing why genome sequencing is expensive. Sigh....
Posted by Sandra Porter at 3:45 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Ask Dr. Science
Adding the costs and doing the math.
Posted by Sandra Porter at 12:16 PM • 13 Comments •
September 5, 2007
Category: Genetics & Molecular Biology
If you've read any of the many stories lately about Craig Venter or Jim Watson's genome, you've probably seen a "SNP" appear somewhere. (If you haven't read any of the stories, CNN has one here, and my fellow bloggers have posted several here, here, here, here, here, and here.) You may be wondering, and rightly so: just what is a...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 10:35 AM • 4 Comments •
September 4, 2007
Category: Genetics & Molecular Biology
We were all thrilled last spring when the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act passed the House by a vote of 420 to 3. When GINA gets through the Senate, this act will protect individuals against discrimination based on their genetic information with health insurance and employment. The promise of genomic project won't ever be achieved until individuals (besides Watson and Venter)...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 10:11 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Genetics & Molecular Biology
"Come quickly, Watson," said Sherlock Holmes, "I've been asked to review a mysterious sequence, whose importance I'm only now beginning to comprehend." The unidentified stranger handed Holmes a piece of paper inscribed with symbols and said it was a map of unparalleled value....
Posted by Sandra Porter at 12:42 PM • 11 Comments •
September 3, 2007
Category: web resources
The Capitol Hill Seattle blog has a great set of lunar eclipse photos on flickr....
Posted by Sandra Porter at 1:12 PM • 0 Comments •
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