clock | May 21, 2008There are 61 articles published in PLoS ONE this week. Here are some of the highlights, look around for more and please comment, rate, and send trackbacks:
Adaptive Evolution and Functional Redesign of Core Metabolic Proteins in Snakes:
Adaptive evolutionary episodes in core metabolic proteins are uncommon, and are even more rarely linked to major macroevolutionary shifts. We conducted extensive molecular evolutionary analyses on snake mitochondrial proteins and discovered multiple lines of evidence suggesting that the proteins at the core of aerobic metabolism in snakes have undergone…
clock | May 21, 2008I got several e-mails yesterday about a new study about the molecular mechanism underlying circadian rhythms in mammals ("You gotta blog about this!"), so, thanks to Abel, I got the paper (PDF), printed it out, and, after coming back from the pool, sat down on the porch to read it.
After reading the press releases, I was in a mind-frame of a movie reviewer, looking for holes and weaknesses so I could pounce on it and write a highly critical post, but, even after a whole hour of careful reading of seven pages, I did not find anything deeply disturbing about the paper. Actually, more I read…
clock | May 20, 2008Sometimes when I look at all my children, I say to myself, Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.
- Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter (1898-1983)
clock | May 20, 2008What it really means when we are talking about babies "sleeping through the night" (from September 22, 2005)
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Trixe Update is a blog that is very unusual. First, just looking technically, the posts go from top to bottom instead of the latest post being on the very top. Second, the whole blog is devoted to the day-by-day growth and development of Trixie, from birth until about the age of two.
The graph on the right (and there are many different graphs there) shows the sleep-wake cycle. Unfortunately, the first four months - the most interesting months…
clock | May 20, 2008Fifth in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria, covering more politics than biology (from May 17, 2006):
In the previous posts in this series, I covered the circadian clocks in Synechococcus, potential circadian clocks in a couple of other bacteria, and the presence of clock genes (thus potentially clocks) in a number of other bacteria. But what happened to the microbiological workhorse, the Escherichia coli? Does it have a clock? Hasn't anyone checked?
Believe it or not, this question is colored by politics. But I have to give you a little background first. Latter half of the 19th…
clock | May 19, 2008The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more.
- Woody Allen
clock | May 19, 2008Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait:
We advance this long tradition of surveying teachers with reports from the first nationally representative survey of teachers concerning the teaching of evolution. The survey permits a statistically valid and current portrait of US science teachers that complements US and international surveys of the general public on evolution and scientific literacy [2,24] and on evolution in the classroom [3,25]. Between March 5 and May 1, 2007, 939 teachers participated in the study, either by mail or by completing an identical…
clock | May 19, 2008
PLoS ONE just published a very exciting paper - a regulatory sequence from the genome of a preserved Tasmanian wolf was inserted into a mouse and shown to have the same function:
Resurrection of DNA Function In Vivo from an Extinct Genome:
There is a burgeoning repository of information available from ancient DNA that can be used to understand how genomes have evolved and to determine the genetic features that defined a particular species. To assess the functional consequences of changes to a genome, a variety of methods are needed to examine extinct DNA function. We isolated a…
clock | May 19, 2008The fourth part of a four-part series on the topic, this one from April 02, 2006....
This being the National Sleep Awareness Week and on the heels of the recent study on sleep of adolescents, it is not surprising that this issue is all over the media, including blogs, these days.
I have written about it recently several times. I present some science and some opinion here and add a little more science and much more opinion here.
You can look at media coverage here and listen to an excellent podcast linked here. Some basic underlying science is covered here.
All of this targets highschoolers…
clock | May 19, 2008As you know, I am currently in Florida, at the 20th Anniversary meeting of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, that is, my own society. I have not been since 2002, so I am surprised to see how many people remember may face and are happy to see me.
I am also surprised to hear how many people in the field read this blog - some more some less regularly - and even use the ClockTutorials and some other Chronobiology posts in teaching their courses on Biological Clocks. I would have know this before if they would just post comments here!
What I am not surprised, yet am pleased, is…
clock | May 19, 2008Fourth in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria (from April 30, 2006):
For decades, it was thought that prokaryotes did not have circadian clocks. Then, a clock was discovered in a unicellular cyanobacterium, Synechococcus (later also in Synechocystis [1] and Trichodesmium [2]) which quickly became an important model in the study of circadian rhythms in general. Still, it was thought, for ten years or so, that no other prokaryotes had a circadian clock. Recently, the clock genes were found in filamentous (chain-forming) cyanobacteria, as well as a whole host of other bacteria and…
clock | May 18, 2008The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
- Winston Churchill
clock | May 18, 2008This is the third part of the series on the topic, from April 01, 2006...
This being the National Sleep Awareness Week and in the heels of the recent study on sleep of adolescents, it is not surprising that this issue is all over the media, including blogs, these days.
I have covered this issue a couple of times last week, e.g., here, here and here. Recently, Lance Mannion wrote an interesting post on the topic, which reminded me also of an older post by Ezra Klein in which the commenters voiced all the usual arguments heard in this debate.
There are a couple of more details that I have not…
clock | May 18, 2008The third installment in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria (from April 19, 2006):
As you probably know, my specialty are birds, so writing this series on clocks in microorganisms was quite an eye-opener for me and I have learned a lot. The previous two posts cover the clocks in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus, the first bacterium in which circadian rhythms were discovered and, thus, the species most studied to date.
The work in Synechococcus has uncovered a cluster of three genes - kaiA, kaiB and kaiC - that are essential for circadian rhytmicity in this species. kaiA…
clock | May 17, 2008I just had nice seafood dinner while watching the sunset over the water with this guy, down in sunny Florida. Readers of this blog have met him before, here and here.
I also saw Erik Herzog, who is familiar to all of you from, e.g., here, here, here and here. I heard him give a presentation about the ways to get an NSF grant in the circadian field.
I am about to see Chris Steele as well.
I attended a Memorial Symposium on Melatonin in honor of Aaron Lerner.
And talked to several people about PLoS already - I am REALLY doing my job.
I am suprised how many people recognize me and are happy to…
clock | May 17, 2008
Earlier this year, during the National Sleep Awareness Week, I wrote a series of posts about the changes in sleep schedules in adolescents. Over the next 3-4 hours, I will repost them all, starting with this one from March 26, 2006. Also check my more recent posts on the subject here and here...
I am glad to see that there is more and more interest in and awareness of sleep research. Just watch Sanjay Gupta on CNN or listen to the recent segment on Weekend America on NPR.
At the same time, I am often alarmed at the levels of ignorance still rampant in the general population, and even…
clock | May 17, 2008Second post in a series of five (from April 05, 2006):
In the previous two posts, here and here, I have mentioned how the discovery of circadian clocks in Cyanobacteria changed the way we think about the origin and evolution of circadian clocks. Quite soon after the initial discovery, the team from Carl Johnson's laboratory published two papers [1,2] describing a more direct test of adaptive function of circadian clocks in the Synechococcus elongatus.
Wild-type and various clock-mutants in Synechoccocus, when raised in isolation in light-dark cycles, have comparable reproductive rates.…
clock | May 16, 2008Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
- William Shakespeare
clock | May 16, 2008'Mitochondrial Eve' Research: Humanity Was Genetically Divided For 100,000 Years:
The human race was divided into two separate groups within Africa for as much as half of its existence, says a Tel Aviv University mathematician. Climate change, reduction in populations and harsh conditions may have caused and maintained the separation.
Simple Artificial Cell Created From Scratch To Study Cell Complexity:
A team of Penn State researchers has developed a simple artificial cell with which to investigate the organization and function of two of the most basic cell components: the cell membrane and…