evolgen | September 17, 2006The Disgruntled Chemist was in Minnesota last week. He went out to a few local bars, and wrote about his encounters. Check out this one where met a girl who had martini olives in her beer. She claimed the olives were a substitute for the salt she normally put in her beer. Yeah, salt. SALT! In her beer. Salt. In. Beer. What's up with that?
I was intrigued. Now, this practice wasn't entirely new to me; one time when I went out to dinner with family I saw a guy pour salt in his Budweiser. I've been trying to figure out why he would do that ever since. So, I did some research*. Here's what the…
evolgen | September 15, 2006I've told you before that I once dreamt of becoming a conservation geneticist. I major turning point for me occurred after I had completed rotations during my first year of grad school. I had to decide between two different labs: in one I would use molecular markers to study the demography of a species of tree and in the other I would study the evolution of Drosophila genomes. I chose the Drosophila lab (for reasons I won't get into here or now), and the rest was history.
It turns out I could have been a coauthor on a Science paper if I had chosen the tree lab. My potential advisor in that…
evolgen | September 15, 2006The sixth edition of Mendel's Garden has been posted at The Voltage Gate. Like Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy-E, this one's straight outta Compton. Go check it out to see what NWA gots to do with genetics blogging. I know I'm pimpin' my Raiders hat over a Jheri curl right now.
evolgen | September 15, 2006A few weeks ago I introduced the tree of life, albeit to some criticisms. The following week I zoomed in on one branch of that tree, the eukaryotes. I pointed out that animals were a mere twig in the eukaryotic tree, yet they have been the focus of a large amount of biological research. This disproportionate attention is due in part to our ignorance regarding the majority of eukaryotic taxa. We have only become aware of many of the eukaryotes recently, so we have a lot of catching up to do in order to understand their evolutionary relationships.
Because animals are the best studied eukaryotes…
evolgen | September 14, 2006Read this (via The Panda's Thumb). Here's a taste:
TO THE CHAGRIN OF BAYLOR football fans, once steeped in the steady success of Grant Teaff during his Hall of Fame coaching career that concluded in 1992, their East-Central Texas school is now better known for its controversial role in the dubious effort to move the study of creationism, typically limited to philosophy and religion classes, into the arena of science.
It's an article that rags on creationists in the context of college football. I think I need to change my underpants.
P.S. Fight on!
evolgen | September 14, 2006This is old news, but I just heard about it. A microbiology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin has a blog. He finished his rotations and chose a lab. His to be advisor found out about the blog and read it. After concluding that the student did not really want to be in grad school, he decided to not accept the student into his lab. The grad student got dooced:
Yesterday I received an email from my (former) PI, a Dr. WH, that I can no longer join his lab, despite having already joined about a week and a half ago. Needless to say I was perplexed...
I frantically emailed my (former)…
evolgen | September 13, 2006My last post was rather negative, and I tried my damnedest to not come across as an asshole. I think it's important to realize, however, that as cool as evo-devo is, it won't revolutionize evolutionary biology until it can be extended beyond animal body plans. Carl Zimmer commented that studies on social microbes may just make that extension. Lo and behold, PLoS Biology has published an essay on cooperation among microorganisms. It's very accessible to a general audience and open access, so you have no excuse not to read it.
The article is so readable (without requiring expertise in…
evolgen | September 13, 2006Doc Myers has another evo-devo post up; this one is on conserved dorsal-ventral patterning in the vertebrate and arthropod nervous systems. This stuff is fascinating, and Myers does a great job of explaining the research for a general audience. I'd imagine he's an amazing teacher, as well. The entire field of evo-devo is really increasing our understanding of the evolution of animal body plans, with many more interesting discoveries on the horizon.
But it doesn't really do much to explain evolution on a broader scale. Work in the field of evo-devo is mostly limited to animals, with some stuff…
evolgen | September 11, 2006Seed has published an interview with Bruce Lahn. It's not all that interested, and, frankly, the boys at Gene Expression could have done much better. Given their obsession with Lahn, I wouldn't be surprised to see him show up in the 10 questions series.
The title of this post is both a play on the name of the magazine and a reference to Lahn's status as one of Chicago's 10 most eligible bachelors.
evolgen | September 11, 2006
DonorsChoose is a non-profit organization that helps teachers in the United States get funding for in-class projects. ScienceBlogs readers and Seed Media Group raised over $30,000 to support educational programs through the DonorsChoose program earlier this year. DonorsChoose is now making a push to raise over $1 million by September 30. To participate in the Back to School Challenge, click on the banner above, on the Donors Choose link on my sidebar, or here. I have a list of projects that I found interesting here.
evolgen | September 10, 2006Janet's little nerd meme is hot shit at ScienceBlogs. Everyone's bragging about their nerd score. Well, everyone but those of us that are that the bottom of the nerd totem-pole (like me).
All this nerd talk has gotten all the science dorks up in a tizzy -- so much so that they're getting sloppy with their diction. The real nerds in the hizzy know that nerdiness is not synonymous with geekiness. In our little back-channel for ScienceBlogs bloggers, Janet promised us a geeky limerick. Here's what she delivered. Hardly geeky. Definitely nerdy and dorky. But not geeky. This is a geeky limerick…
evolgen | September 9, 2006You wanna know the best way to predict the quality of undergraduates at a college or university? It's not SAT scores or high school GPA. It's the quality of the school's ultimate team. From the press release:
A study (slated for release September 1) by Dr. Michael Norden shows that among all 86 private national universities, those ranking in the top half for Ultimate have a graduation rate of over 85%, while those in the bottom half graduate just 60%. The difference in the totals of Rhodes scholars and Marshall scholars among their graduates during this decade is even more dramatic -- 208…
evolgen | September 9, 2006As I was rollin' down the street this morning (with my alma mater proudly displayed on my license plate holder) on the way to the ole' grocery store, an older couple pulled up alongside of me at a stop light. The husband was driving, and he busted out the "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon" window roll down. His wife was sitting in the passenger seat with a map spread out in front of her. I assumed the husband would be asking me for directions.
Flashback: A few months ago I was in the supermarket, sporting my alma mater on my hat. While in the produce section, an older gentleman walked…
evolgen | September 9, 2006It's Saturday on the second weekend of the college football season. Tomorrow (Sunday) marks the opening of the NFL season (okay, the season really kicked off Thursday night). Also, we're hitting the home stretch of the major league baseball season, and the playoffs are just around the corner. With all of that in mind, this marks a good time to ask, How good is my city when it comes to sports?
If you live in Cleveland, you don't need any scientific study to tell you you've suffered through some miserable seasons. But what about the rest of the United States and Canada? The blog Urban Sports…
evolgen | September 8, 2006A few months ago I wrote the following:
I should point out that the mammalian Y chromosome is an anomaly in origin and sex determination. In fact, every single sex determination system and sex chromosome system that I know of differs from all of the others in some manner. It looks like I'm going to have to write an entry on the evolutionary genetics of sex determination in everything other than mammals.
I never did get around to writing that review of sex chromosomes. All is not lost, however, as the most recent issue of Current Biology is devoted to the evolution of sex. There is even an…
evolgen | September 8, 2006A letter to Nature published this week asks when journals will begin to allow multiple last, or senior, authors. The letter is short, sweet, and to the point:
The correspondence mentioned in this letter wonders how the author list should be organized:
I thought I understood the guidelines for determining scientific authorship: the individual making the greatest intellectual contribution is the lead author, followed sequentially by those making progressively lesser contributions. In addition, the final-author slot is sometimes reserved for a lab head or project initiator, who may have made…
evolgen | September 8, 2006And they're doing it open access style.
Jonathan Eisen and Michael Eisen have each published papers in the PLoS journals using newly available genome sequence data. Jonathan is lead on author on the paper describing the genome sequence of the ciliate, Tetrahymena thermophila. He has blogged about the publication here and provides a wrap-up of a bunch of the coverage here. This single celled eukaryote is a model organism for cell biology, although not at the same level as Saccromyces cerevicea.
Michael Eisen's lab is heavily involved in the Drosophila genomes project. He is the senior author…
evolgen | September 7, 2006Alfred Russel Wallace, the other guy who came up with the theory of natural selection, was quite the Renaissance man Victorian Era Superscientist. An essay in this week's issue of Nature reports the discovery of a letter from Wallace to William Talbot on a way to improve the mirrors used in telescopes. You can read the letter here. I won't touch on the science, but apparently Wallace mastered optics by the age of 20. Not bad for a guy who also happens to be known as the father of biogeography.
evolgen | September 7, 2006Nobel Intent has an excellent summary of a paper in the PNAS pipeline on the origin of new exons in the human genome. The authors compared genes between humans and seven other vertebrates to identify newly arisen exons. They found that many new exons are composed of repeat sequences, such as transposable elements. Also, recently evolved exons are more likely to be alternatively spliced, suggesting there is a "trial period" for a new exon before it can be fully incorporated into the protein coding sequence of a gene.
evolgen | September 7, 2006
Janet has a declared a nerd-off, and all the ScienceBlogs bloggers are bragging about their nerdiness. They're showing off scores on nerd quizzes. As you can see I'm not so nerdy (compared to the other bloggers here). My standing as a "Low-Rank Nerd" might qualify me for excommunication from the ScienceBlogs society. I'm a remedial programmer. I have a mediocre understanding of the periodic table. I was never into Star Trek, reading books, or playing Dungeons and Dragons. I like sports.
While I may not be a nerd, I do have a surprise for you below the fold.
I am (or rather was) a geek. You…