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
April 27, 2008
Category: viruses
A potential link between lung cancer and human papilloma virus may make parents even more glad about vaccinating their children with Gardasil®. Not only are the children protected against viruses that commonly cause cervical cancer, they may be protected against some forms of lung cancer as well. The April 25th version of Nature News reports (1) that two viruses, HPV...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 5:50 PM • 10 Comments •
April 26, 2008
Category: molecular structures
How to compare mutant and normal protein structures.
Posted by Sandra Porter at 1:21 PM • 2 Comments •
April 24, 2008
Category: Genomics
Bill Gates, Eric Lander, Maynard Olson, Leena Peltonen, and George Church fielded questions last night at a fascinating panel discussion on personal genomics at the University of Washington. We were fortunate to be in the audience. I'll share some of the questions and answers, in some cases shortened and paraphrased....
Posted by Sandra Porter at 10:41 AM • 9 Comments •
April 22, 2008
Category: Bioinformatics
One of my favorite web 2.0 technologies is the webinar. When you work at a company and not a University, with constant seminars, it gets a bit harder to hop on a bus and travel across town to learn about new things. Webinars are a good way to fill that gap. I grab my coffee cup, put on my headphones,...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 3:36 PM • 2 Comments •
April 17, 2008
Category: sequence analysis
In the class that I'm teaching, we found that several PCR products, amplified from the 16S ribosomal RNA genes from bacterial isolates, contain a mixed base in one or more positions. We picked samples where the mixed bases were located in high quality regions of the sequence (Q >40), and determined that the mixed bases mostly likely come from different...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 8:00 AM • 2 Comments •
April 16, 2008
Category: molecular structures
Ribosomes are molecular machines that build new proteins. This process of synthesizing a protein is also known as translation. Many antibiotics prevent translation by binding to ribosomal RNA. In the class that I'm teaching, we're going to be looking at ribosome structures to see if the polymorphisms that we find in the sequences of 16S ribosomal RNA are related antibiotic...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 7:54 PM • 2 Comments •
April 11, 2008
Category: Bioinformatics
Can you solve this puzzle?
Posted by Sandra Porter at 8:23 AM • 0 Comments •
April 9, 2008
Category: Genetics & Molecular Biology
You can find out. Blaine Bettinger, the Genetic Genealogist has a fun little quiz....
Posted by Sandra Porter at 5:30 PM • 0 Comments •
April 8, 2008
Category: molecular structures
I love using molecular structures as teaching tools. They're beautiful, they're easy to obtain, and working with them is fun. But working with molecular structures as an educators can present some challenges. The biggest problem is that many of the articles describing the structures are not accessible, particularly those published by the ACS (American Chemical Society). I'm hoping that the...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 2:01 PM • 11 Comments •
April 4, 2008
Category: Ask Dr. Science
And so do you.
Posted by Sandra Porter at 12:45 PM • 21 Comments •
April 3, 2008
Category: Pivot tables
Goodbye desktop, we're off to see the web. Both my students and I have been challenged this semester by the diversity of computer platforms, software versions, and unexpected bugs. Naturally, I turned to the world and my readers for help and suggestions. Some readers have suggested we could solve everything by using Linux. Others have convincingly demonstrated that Open Office...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 12:40 PM • 6 Comments •
April 2, 2008
Category: Genetics & Molecular Biology
A few months ago I posed some questions about the regulations that might oversee personal genomics companies (Who's your Daddy? and Step right up, get your very own DNA profile). Why?...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 1:59 PM • 6 Comments •
April 1, 2008
Category: molecular structures
I added the spring colors....
Posted by Sandra Porter at 6:02 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Bioinformatics
Is it real or is it April Fools?...
Posted by Sandra Porter at 8:18 AM • 3 Comments •
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