evolgen | October 16, 2006I've said it before. I'll say it again:
The best way to get your paper into a high profile journal like Science or Nature is to find the biggest of something, the smallest of something, or something that fucks funny.
This paper further supports my point.
evolgen | October 15, 2006We're not a big fan of Francis Collins around these parts. He's done some good science and helped lead one of the most important research projects in history. He also has a habit of contradicting or ignoring science when he pontificates on his faith. We don't dig that. Over at Talk Reason, Gert Korthof takes Collins to task for arguing that Moral Law is a divine gift (scroll down to "The Irreducibly Complex Moral Law").
evolgen | October 15, 2006Little Lord Sweater Vest teaches photosynthesis at the Ohio State University. Seriously. Watch below:
(Via Deadspin.)
evolgen | October 15, 2006
Sandy has posted the eight edition of Mendel's Garden at Discovering Biology in a Digital World. Go read the best genetics blogging from the past couple of weeks. If you have written something about genetics and would like to be included in the next edition of the carnival, you can submit your work here.
evolgen | October 12, 2006The most important nail was hammered in by this article -- a symbolic slap across the face to anyone who uses mtDNA, and mtDNA only, to study demography. An upcoming article in BMC Biology lays down another nail:
A study published today in the open access journal BMC Biology reveals that fewer than 10% of African American mitochondrial DNA sequences analysed can be matched to mitochondrial DNA from one single African ethnic group. There has been a growing interest in the use of mitochondrial DNA to trace maternal ancestries, and several companies now offer to analyse individuals'…
evolgen | October 12, 2006Ralf Neumann has interpreted my fascination with -omics as distaste for neologisms:
A blogger named "RPM" reacted even more drastically to the methylome-paper on his weblog "evolgen" (http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen) in a post entitled "Yet Another '-ome'". "We can thank Andrew Feinberg for introducing the term methylome, which he defines as 'a neologism that describes the complete set of DNA methylation modifications of a cell'. Check out this definition of neologism: 'A meaningless word used by a psychotic.' Exactly. Enough with the -ome already." It seems as if more and more researchers…
evolgen | October 12, 2006One of the greatest developments of the post-genomic era has been the refinement of the concept of the 'gene'. The central dogma states that genes encode RNA transcripts which are translated into the amino acid sequence that makes up a protein. But protein coding genes make up a small fraction of many genomes, so what does the rest of the genome do? Some say it's junk. Others say that it's involved in regulating the transcription of the other regions. And even others say that it's transcribed, but not translated. (Note: most think it's some combination of the three.)
We're now discovering…
evolgen | October 11, 2006Busting my balls, indeed. Check out this headline:
Intelligent design gets political
Geoff Brumfiel
Teaching creationism becomes an election issue in Michigan.
Intelligent design didn't get political in Michigan. Intelligent design is politics. Intelligent design isn't science; it's a political movement. And they sure as hell ain't offering anything new in the philosophy front (Paley is so last millennium). And my religious friends tell me that it's not even satisfying for the faithful. Intelligent design is just a well funded campaign to destroy science education. Can't get any more…
evolgen | October 11, 2006Don't worry, this one has nothing to do with mtDNA.
There's been a bit of a hubbub recently in the ScienceBlogs community about science journalism. Sometimes we're a bit too hard on the journalists. In this week's issue of Nature, Robert Barton takes the journal to task for their coverage of the Pollard et al paper describing a rapidly evolving non RNA gene. Barton makes a good point at the beginning of his letter:
You state in your News story on genetic differences between humans and other species . . . that research is beginning to pin down genes that "evolved rapidly during the transition…
evolgen | October 11, 2006
Sandy at Discovering Biology in a Digital World will be hosting the upcoming edition of Mendel's Garden. If you have written something about genetics, consider submitting it to this blog carnival. You can email Sandy or use the blog carnival submission page. The deadline for submission is Saturday afternoon (she may even let you wait until Sunday).
evolgen | October 9, 2006I'm looking for a good recent review of DNA double-strand break repair. The review should focus on more than just humans and mammals, but it shouldn't be on just yeast either. Ideally, it would show schematics of different ways to repair and resolve double-strand (and, possibly, single-strand) breaks. I don't want something that just lists the known gene products involved in different repair mechanisms. And it should be from the last couple of years.
If anyone reading this blog knows about this area of research, please lend a hand. To provide some incentive, the person who suggests the best…
evolgen | October 9, 2006Dr. Rob weighs in on the lack of a relationship between mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) polymorphism and population size. To recap: DNA polymorphism should predict population size -- larger populations will have more polymorphism than small populations. Additionally, comparing different measures of polymorphism allow us to infer ancient demographic events. But natural selection can also shape DNA polymorphism. Positive (or Darwinian) selection will drive an advantageous allele to fixation, taking linked neutral variants along with it. This selective sweep will decrease polymorphism in a region…
evolgen | October 8, 2006The University of Oregon football team continues to impress cause distress with the ugliest uniforms in college sports. Whatever the disease that causes such disgusting public displays of bad taste, it appears to be infectious. The University of California football team has contracted said disease, as evidenced by their current display of fashion faux paux: yellow jerseys. During my freshman year of high school, our football team wore yellow jerseys (with yellow pants and blue helmets). We looked like giant bananas. Cal looked equally as stupid last night.
evolgen | October 7, 2006People like dogs. They're man's best friend, after all. There are tons of different breeds, many of which could be classified as unique species if we didn't know better. Our interest in dogs has led to lots of studies into dog breeding, figuring out which genes gave rise to the different morphologies, and determining the evolutionary history of dogs.
The history we're most familiar with is that of domesticated wolves. That is, thousands of years ago, human populations tamed wild wolves, and those animals eventually gave rise to the dogs we know today. I'll admit, I thought that's where the…
evolgen | October 6, 2006Any department at a university will have tons of bureaucratic procedures one must complete in order to do anything from hang a message board in the hallway to purchase an expensive piece of equipment. My department is no different, although the bureaucracy is tolerable. That doesn't mean there aren't times when you need to thumb your nose at the whole system. For instance, when requesting that a purchase be paid for by grant money, we are required to provide both a description of the product purchased and the purpose of the product. Sometimes the description pretty much sums up the purpose.…
evolgen | October 5, 2006Nick Wade thinks there's a race to decode genomes. CNN thinks there's a race to map the human genome:
$10 million prize for mapping human genomes
Sturtevant mapped genomes. The contest is to sequence and assemble a genome. Well, that's what we think the contest is. And it's pretty unclear how they will measure accuracy.
evolgen | October 5, 2006Nicholas Wade is up to his old antics, blabbering about a contest to award $10 million to the first person to decode 100 genomes in 10 days. Only he means 'sequencing' rather than 'decoding'. But he still thinks they're synonyms:
"The announcement of the prize brought together two former rivals, Drs. J. Craig Venter of the Venter Institute and Francis S. Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, which financed the government project to sequence, or decode, the genome."
The 100 genomes in 10 days contest is brought to you buy the people who gave away $10 million to the…
evolgen | October 3, 2006
I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: humans are apes; apes, old world monkeys, and new world monkey are primates; and humans are primates. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
So you can guess how I reacted when I saw this advertisement as I was perusing the latest issue of Nature. Here is what they're pimping, an "Omics Gateway". You know how much I love -omics. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) tells us, "The Omics Gateway provides life scientists a convenient portal into publications relevant to large-scale biology from journals throughout NPG." It's a veritable omeome.
But they…
evolgen | September 30, 2006Thomas Huxley was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his many public defenses of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Richard Dawkins has been labeled "Darwin's Rottweiler", drawing a parallel between Dawkins's current role as a popularizer of science (and defender of reason) and Huxley's as a public face for Darwin. All that is well and good, and you probably knew it already. But when can we start calling PZ Myers "Dawkins's Pit Bull"?
evolgen | September 30, 2006Via Yann Klimentidis come this paper comparing patterns of polymorphism in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosomes from Native American populations. The premise is that mtDNA reveals the maternal demographic history (because mitochondria are only passed from mother to child) of a population and the Y chromosome reveals the paternal history (Y chromosomes are only passed from father to son). But we know that mtDNA is not a good marker for studying demographic history because there is no recombination in the mitochondrial genome. That means that evidence of demographic events will be swept…