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Discovering Biology in a Digital World

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.

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Sandra Porter 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 (Digital World Biology).

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Genetics:

Mendel's Garden #8: Harvest Edition

Welcome to the October 15, 2006 edition of Mendel's Garden. Join me as we walk through the fields and admire the harvest....

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

Why is an eye, an eye and a nose, a nose? Why do different cells create different kinds of tissues when all the cells in a single organism start out with the same set of instructions (aka DNA)?...

Time to Submit: Mendel's Garden Blooms Here on Sunday

Mendel's garden in Bruno, CZ, may be too far for physical travel, but you can still imagine what Mendel might have thought if he'd gotten a look at this version of his vision. Maybe I'm taking alliteration a little too...

White people are mutants

Razib inspired me to share some of the story behind why white people are considered derivatives. Reposted from the Classic Digital Bio. No red herrings, here! Lamason et. al. found a single gene that controls human skin color while studying...

Digital Biology Friday: The importance of being aerobic

If we compare sections 1, 2, and 3, we see that section 2 matches very well in a number of different samples, and that there are differences between the sequences in sections 1 and 3. We also learn something about...

Digital Biology Friday: All mutations are not alike

Like biology, all bioinformatics is based on the idea that living things shared a common ancestor. I have posted, and will post other articles that test that notion, but for the moment, we're going to use that idea as a...

Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part IV

Did HIV become resistant to Atazanavir because of a genetic change? Was that genetic change inherited? Did HIV evolve? Can we explain why genetic changes at specific sites might help HIV escape the effects of the drug? Let's find out....

Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part III

In which we see the results and come to our own conclusions. If you want to let other people tell you what's right and what's wrong, they will surely do so. Turn on the TV and hordes of happy actors...

A lovely Sunday in the garden

August is the time when gardens look their best. Fruit becomes showy, flowers abound, and plants are large and plentiful. Mendel's Garden #4, currently blooming at The Inoculated Mind, is no exception. Evolgen pointed this out, so I had to...

Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part II

Let the experiment begin....

Digital Biology Friday: Monkeying around with mitochondrial DNA

The past few Fridays, we've been comparing human mitochondrial DNA with the mitochondrial DNA of different apes. We started doing this here, where you can find directions for getting started. And, we've found some interesting things....

Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part I.

When can a really bad virus be used to do something good? When we can use it to learn. The human immunodeficiency virus, cause of AIDS, scourge of countries, and recent focus of ScienceBlogs; like humans, evolves. As one of...

Digital Biology Friday: How similar are apes and humans?

During these past couple of weeks, we've been comparing mitochondrial DNA sequences from humans and great apes, in order to see how similar the sequences are. Last week, I got distracted by finding a copy of a human mitochondrial genome,...

Waxing lyrical about that stuff in our ears

It's hard sometimes when you're out of synch with the rest of the world. While my fellow ScienceBloggers have been obsessing about breasts, I've been really amused by the genetics of ear wax. Eh, what's that you say? Yes, it's...

Digital Biology Friday: Hey, who moved my DNA?

Last week, we decided to compare a human mitochondrial DNA sequence with the mitochondrial sequences of our cousins, the apes, and find out how similar these sequences really are. The answer is: really, really, similar. And you can see that,...

Digital Biology Friday: That was no ape, that was my brother!

We've had a good time in the past few last weeks, identifying unknown sequences and learning our way around a GenBank nucleotide record. To some people, it seems that this is all there is to doing digital biology. They would,...

Hang on, just let me make a quick clone fall

I mean phone call. Because, if I thought he remembered me, I would call and say "thank you." Because of the time I spent in his lab, I know that cloning started long before Dolly. The first vertebrate animal was...

Digital Biology Fridays: It begins with a BLAST

My colleagues have come up will all kinds of interesting bloggy things to use as an excuse for Friday celebrations. Adventures in Ethics and Science has Friday Sprog Blogging for cute stories about her kids. A Blog Around the Clock...

People who look like their dogs

Past Favorites for the holidays: Now that the dog genome is done, maybe we need a new project in genetic variation. What genotypes make people look like their dogs? technorati tags: dogs, humor dog genome...

Entertain your brain with a walk in the garden

Mendel's Garden, that is. Enjoy a quiet mental stroll among the shady trees where Hsien Hsien Lei from Genetics and Health has compiled perennial favorites and annual suprises. Even though the season is young, Mendel's Garden is clearly growing. This...

Hello Kitty! or Don't Eat Me, I Study Genetics!

Genetics textbooks abound with stories of European royalty and the hazards of having children after you've married one of your cousins. It struck me as an interesting parallel that the lion is such a popular symbol in so many royal...

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