Now on ScienceBlogs: Oxytocin: Starting with the basics
Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NYC getting a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience. He holds a BS and MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. If a volcano were to erupt Pompei-style in Central Park, his body would be preserved in a scoliotic posture over his lab desk. Archeaologists would later conclude that he spent most of his day training rats to perform tricks, until he went blind building electrical equipment by hand using a dissecting microscope. But, still, he died happy...because science is cool.
Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.
DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision-making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments I currently attend or attended in the past.
Category: Cell Biology
You have got to see this video. Sakaue-Sawano et al. may have created the coolest molecular biology video I have ever seen. They developed a system of reporters to watch the cells transition between the different stages of the cell...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 4:18 PM • 4 Comments •
If you remember back from when I was at the Society for Neuroscience, I saw a talk by Bruce Appel where he showed videos of oligodendrocytes migrating and myelinating in the zebrafish. Oligodendrocytes are the myelin forming cell in the...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 10:51 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Scientists have discovered a bacteria the survives with an incredibly small number of genes: The tiniest genomes ever found belong to two types of bacteria that live inside insects, researchers have announced. One of these types of bacteria, Carsonella ruddii,...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 12:10 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Biology
Andrew Fire and Craig Mello have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of RNA interference: Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for discovering a powerful way...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 9:21 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Cell Biology
Check out this awesome molecular biology animation by XVIVO. My favorite is the depiction of actin and microtubule assembly and the movement of a kinesin molecule tethered to a vesicle. Apparently, Harvard has contracted out with this company to provide...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 8:05 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Neurodegenerative disease
Neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's, were for many years regarded as exclusively diseases of molecular crud. You would look at brains of patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients and notice that there were all these aggregates of protein crud forming in...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 1:22 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Cell Biology
I remember for a couple years, it was "lipid rafts this" and "lipid rafts that." The idea of the lipid rafts -- for the uninitiated -- was that there were microdomains in the plasma membranes of cells defined by their...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 3:16 AM • 1 Comments •
