apalazzo
Posts by this author
October 5, 2006
OK now that the Science Nobels have been distributed it's time for the real awards to begin, the Ig Nobels.
How big is the Ig Nobel? It's janitor won last year's Nobel for Physics!
If you're in the Boston area, good luck getting tickets. If you can't get tickets or if you're outside the Boston…
October 4, 2006
Yesterday someone on our floor announced "I see Jesus!"
Really?
Then we saw his image on the left side of a silver-stained polyacrylamide gel:
Upon closer inspection it looked like his face was partially obscured by some proteins.
We could kinda make out a nose, a mouth and a beard. But where…
October 4, 2006
If you need to know ANYTHING about biology remember: DNA =(transcription)=> RNA =(translation)=> Protein.
Well today the Nobel Prize went to Roger Kornberg of Stanford for the structure of the first process.
The Nobel's press release (pdf).
It's official, RNA is the molecule of the year.
(PS…
October 3, 2006
Here is the annual list from The Scientist. (Click here for the article.)
The top 15 US academic institutions are:
1. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
2. The J. David Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, CA
3. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
4. Vanderbilt University, Nashville…
October 3, 2006
It's not as deranged as the last one. It must be for biotechs and pharma as "Get Promoted" and "Batch Released" do not really apply to this lab.
October 2, 2006
OK a breif history of RNA interference.
1990 Rich Jorgensen at the University of Arizona wanted to make petunias a deeper purple. His group tried expressing extra copies of the same gene and ... he got white flowers. The very gene he wanted to overexpress got turned off. This effect was named "…
October 2, 2006
About a month ago I wrote an entry on centrosomal RNA. Turns out that the work was not "out of Bob Palazzo's lab" as I asserted but from Mark Alliegro's Lab.
His lab has been working on this project for quite a while and he tells me that more's on the way. (In fact from the little note he sent me…
October 2, 2006
We all thought that it was a bit early, but VERY deserved. Also can I add this:
The Daily Transcript 1: Thomson Scientific 0.
For anyone not in the basic biomedical sciences, the two biggest revolutions in the past 10 years have been RNA interference (RNAi) and fluorescent protein technology. The…
September 30, 2006
A lesson of what not-to-do from Joseph Schlessinger (the "signaling guy" and head of Pharmacology at Yale) at the Yeda vs. ImClone Patent trial. Yeda provided detailed records of their development of Erbitux, ImClone provided no records, only Joseph Schlessinger's account of a twenty year old…
September 29, 2006
An easy one this week:
Click here to listen to your hint.
What could it be? Leave your answers in the comment section. I'll confirm any correct answer over the weekend.
September 28, 2006
Here is an illustration from a recent PLoS Biology paper:
Two complexes:
1- miRNA. Imperfect base pairing between the small RNA and the target. This complex sorts the RNA to p-bodies (processing bodies) where other proteins join in. The mRNA is either destroyed or stored.
2- siRNA. Perfect base…
September 28, 2006
Wow - a creationist was appointed to high level position in the Conservative government back home. On the other side of the line Richard Dawkins has set up a foundation to promote acceptance of atheists (Richard, you better open a franchise in Ottawa.)
Speaking of the RDF (Richard Dawkins…
September 27, 2006
Someone yesterday asked whether there were online odds for the upcoming Nobels? Well Thomson Scientific (producers of ISI and other citation indices) have their own predictions and a poll too (although they only give 3 choices???)
Medicine & Physiology predictions (by Thomson Sci):
For more…
September 27, 2006
Newest from PLoS Biology:
Raj A, Peskin CS, Tranchina D, Vargas DY, Tyagi S
Stochastic mRNA Synthesis in Mammalian Cells.
PLoS Biol (2006) 4(10): e309
The authors genomically incorporated a gene with
32 tandem copies of a 43-base-pair probe-binding sequence at the 3â² end of a coding sequence for…
September 26, 2006
Who will win this year?
Some guesses for the Medicine & Physiology (or perhaps Chemistry) below the fold. Warning - the guesses presented here are highly biased towards cellular physiology.
Membrane Traffic. James Rothman and Randy Schekman. Maybe you could throw in Peter Novak.
There's a…
September 26, 2006
(What follows was started at The Sunburnt Cow, an Australian Bar/Restaurant in Alphabet City - over a brunch that included unlimited Mimosas, Bloody Marys, Fosters and Vegemite.)
Here is the hypothetical situation:
It's the end of the world. You are barricaded in your lab. You have unlimited access…
September 25, 2006
Just came back from New York. As usual we met up with the old crew and had a blast. On Saturday we stopped by Korea Town (32nd Street) for some kimchi. Sitting down, we saw this:
Kimchi from GMO bacteria!
Kimchi, for those of you who don't know, is produced by the fermentation of various…
September 23, 2006
Why? You can find treasures there. I once owned this book, then lent it to a friend who is now studying place cells in Bristol, UK. (Bruno you can keep the book.)
September 22, 2006
Well I'm back in NYC, visiting old friends and my thesis advisor. Since I'm writing about my intellectual roots, here is this week's "mystery campus":
hint:
The unexamined life is not worth living.
This one should go quickly! Place your answers in the comments.
(PS Thanks Claudia for letting me…
September 21, 2006
OK it's been a while since I've really gone off and wrote about ... art, food, music, city life and other mental stimuli ...
(I've been persuaded to even start a category)
But here we go ...
I've learned that Jean LeLoup, the musical genius that is virtually unknown outside of Quebec and France (…
September 20, 2006
There is a nice post by Coffee Mug at Gene Expression on non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). This post was provoked by a paper in Annual Review of Neuroscience. In light of my post on the recent Eric Lander and David Spector's talks, here's a snippet:
There are more ncRNAs than you thought:
- Half of the "…
September 20, 2006
In yesterday's NY Times, James Gorman laments that lingo from molecular biology and cell biology hasn't yet permeated society. As Gorman states:
Molecular biology is the science of this century. We should be able to build some great clichés on it.
This topic reminds me of a conversation that I…
September 19, 2006
For those who don't know, John Yates is one of the most important mass spec (or "proteomics") guys out there (i.e. applying mass spectrometry to identify what protein you are analyzing). He developed tandem mass spec and is at the forefront of new technologies in this area. Yesterday he was in the…
September 19, 2006
Biology is filled with feedback loops and other natural buffers to promote homeostasis. In the latest Nature, there is a ... cute ... paper about how the RNA export factor Tap (aka NXF1) mediates the nuclear export of an alternatively spliced form of it's own mRNA transcript. (For more background…
September 18, 2006
Well it looks like Stew has been souping-up his Science blog clearing warehouse, PostGenomic. A valuable source for searching the scientific blog-o-sphere (i.e. wasting time).
Interestingly there are stats for manuscripts floating round the blog-o-sphere and for many science blogs. Apparently The…
September 18, 2006
So Friday I posted a photo of an ad that went up in our lunchroom. The feedback was very indicative of the current mood of postdocs within the life sciences: frustration.
It all started with this ad:
And it sparked an interesting series of comments. The type of discussion that our profession needs…
September 16, 2006
From today's NYTimes:
Killing Off the American Future
America's domination of the global information economy did not come about by accident. It flowed directly from policies that allowed the largest generation in the nation's history broad access to a first-rate college education regardless of…
September 15, 2006
Someone posted this "ad" in our lunchroom.
Do I have to say anything?
September 15, 2006
OK here is this week's mystery campus:
Hint:
Looking for the nugget in gold.
If you know the place or the event, leave a comment.
September 15, 2006
Looks like this season's lecture series has started.
Yesterday evening I saw a talk by Eric Lander, head of the Broad Institute. Now normally I do not blog about my results and I do not blog about what I hear at seminars. It just doesn't feel right. Scientists work very hard at obtaining results…