Molecular Biology
grrlscientist | December 31, 2009tags: Corn: The Dynamic Genome, corn, agriculture, genomics, food science, technology, streaming video
This is a beautifully written and produced science video about corn: where it came from, what it originally looked like, the technology we are using to learn the functions of individual corn genes, and future directions for research into corn genetics.
Plant genome research is already revolutionizing the field of biology. Currently, scientists are unlocking the secrets of some of the most important plants in our lives, including corn, cotton and potatoes. Secrets of Plant Genomes: Revealed…
pharyngula | December 23, 2009
Perhaps your idea of the traditional holiday week involves lounging about with a full belly watching football — not me, though. I think if I did, I'd be eyeing those muscular fellows with thoughts of muscle biopsies and analyses of the frequency of α-actinin variants in their population vs. the population of national recliner inhabitants. I'm sure there's an interesting story there.
In case you're wondering what α-actinin is, it's a cytoskeletal protein that's important in anchoring and coordinating the thin filaments of actin that criss-cross throughout your cells. It's very important in…
pharyngula | November 4, 2009Last week, I described the lectures I attended at the Chicago 2009 Darwin meetings (Science Life also blogged the event). Two of the talks that were highlights of the meeting for me were the discussions of stickleback evolution by David Kingsley and oldfield mouse evolution by Hopi Hoekstra — seriously, if I were half my age right now, I'd be knocking on their doors, asking if they had room for a grad student or post-doc or bottle-washer. They are using modern techniques in genetics and molecular biology to look at variation in natural populations in the wild, and working out the precise…
pharyngula | October 30, 2009Lander began by saying he wasn't an evolutionist — an interestingly narrow definition of the term. He's a fan of the research, but considers himself a biomedical geneticist, as if that was something different.
Having entire genomes of many species available for quantitative analysis is going to lead to a qualitative change in the science we can do.
He gave a pocket summary of the human genome project. Mouse genome followed, then rat and dog, and now have sequence (to varying degrees of completeness) of 44 species, out of 4600 mammals. Within Homo, there's the hapmap project and the 1000…
grrlscientist | October 16, 2009tags: Lab Trash, recycle, molecular biology, cell biology, streaming video
I've been telling you about the perils of plastics, but some of the worst plastics offenders are molecular and cell biologists. Nearly every experiment that we do uses incredible amounts of plastics. In cell biology or molecular biology labs the emphasis is on working sterile, quickly and reproducibly. So companies have been selling all these incredibly useful products to life science labs: sterile plastic tubes of all shapes and sizes, single wrap multi-well tissue culture plates, sterile plastic dishes, sterile…
pharyngula | October 13, 2009Perhaps you are a scientist. And perhaps you have wondered how badly the popular press could possibly mangle your research. Wonder no more: we have discovered a new maximum.
Behold this research summary in The Daily Galaxy, and be amazed!
It's about a paper in the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry B. It's straightforward physical chemistry using some cool tools to image the formation of double helices of DNA: it's simply addressing the question of how complementary strands align themselves in solution. It's physical chemistry, OK? It's about tiny molecular interactions…until the Daily Galaxy…
grrlscientist | October 5, 2009tags: Tree of Life, conservation, biodiversity, ecology, evolution, biology, statistics, teaching, streaming video
This video presents a very brief glimpse into what I do as a professional researcher studying "my birds" -- the parrots of the South Pacific Ocean (during those rare and beautiful times when I actually have a job!!). To say the least, it fills me with intense longing to reclaim my long lost life.
grrlscientist | October 4, 2009tags: Tree of Life, conservation, biodiversity, ecology, evolution, biology, statistics, teaching, streaming video
This video presents a very brief glimpse into what I do as a professional researcher studying "my birds" -- the parrots of the South Pacific Ocean (during those rare and beautiful times when I actually have a job!!). It features interviews with one of the scientists whom I worked with when I was in grad school at the University of Washington: Scott Edwards, who now is at Harvard University. To say the least, this video fills me with intense longing to reclaim my long lost life…
edyong | October 1, 2009This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
At Harvard University, a group of creative scientists have turned the brains of mice into beautiful tangles of colour. By mixing together a palette of fluorescent proteins, they have painted individual neurons with up to 90 different colours. Their technique, dubbed 'Brainbow', gives them an unprecedented vision of how the brain's cells are connected to each other.
The art of looking at neurons had much…
edyong | September 19, 2009This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
Science fiction loves to play off the potential threat of threat of alien viruses. But a new study suggests that space travellers are much more likely to be threatened by germs from our own planet that become more virulent in space.
Warding off infections is a real priority for astronauts, especially if longer space missions to the Moon and Mars are to go ahead. People have a tendency to get sick in space and…
grrlscientist | August 20, 2009tags: How Proteins Are Made From DNA in a Living Cell, biology, molecular biology, DNA, streaming video
This video uses the latest research to create an animation of how DNA gives rise to proteins in a living cell. But do you think the word "machine" is correct? I have difficulty with the use of that word .. [4:27]
grrlscientist | August 17, 2009tags: How DNA is Replicated in a Living Cell, biology, molecular biology, DNA, streaming video
I still remember when I learned how DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) replication occurs, and it was like a lightning bolt from the sky: it changed my view of the world and a molecular biologist was born. This video uses the latest research to create an animation of how DNA is replicated in a living cell [1:54]
DNA replication is a fundamental process underlying biological inheritance that occurs in all living organisms to accurately copy their DNA. This process occurs through a "semiconservative"…
pharyngula | August 4, 2009
We miss something important when we just look at the genome as a string of nucleotides with scattered bits that will get translated into proteins — we miss the fact that the genome is a dynamically modified and expressed sequence, with patterns of activity in the living cell that are not readily discerned in a simple series of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs. What we can't see very well are gene regulatory networks (GRNs), the interlinked sets of genes that are regulated in a coordinated fashion in cells and tissues.
What this means is that if you look within a specific cell type at a specific gene, its…
edyong | August 3, 2009Swine flu has made the world all too aware of the possibility of diseases making the leap from animal hosts to human ones. Now, we know that another disease made a similar transition from chimpanzees to humans, several thousand years ago. This particular infection is caused by a parasite, and a very familiar and dangerous one - Plasmodium falciparum, the agent responsible for malaria.
Transmitted by the bite of mosquitoes, P.falciparum infects over 500 million people every year. Its closest relative is a related parasite, Plasmodium reichenowi, which infects chimpanzees. Leading an…
pharyngula | July 31, 2009Edge hosted an amazing session that described the looming future of biology — this is for the real futurists. It featured George Church and Craig Venter talking about synthetic genomics — how we're building new organisms right now and with presentiments for radical prospects in the future.
Brace yourself. There are six hours of video there; I've only started wading into it, but what I've seen so far also looks like a lot of material that will be very useful for inspiring students about the future of their field. There is also a downloadable book (which is a dead link right now, but I'm sure…
pharyngula | July 21, 2009
PLoS has recently published a highly speculative but very interesting paper on how a particular signaling pathway, the Hedgehog pathway, might have evolved. It's at a fairly early stage in hypothesis testing, which is one of the things that makes it interesting — usually all you see published is the product of a great deal of data collection and experiment and testing, which means the scientific literature gives a somewhat skewed view of the process of science, letting the outsider mainly see work that has been hammered and polished, while hiding the rougher drafts that would better allow us…
grrlscientist | July 21, 2009tags: TEDTalks, medicine, Psychopathic Killers, epigenetics, brain damage, psychology, MAOA gene, serotonin, Jim Fallon, streaming video
Psychopathic killers are the basis for some must-watch TV, but what really makes them tick? Neuroscientist Jim Fallon talks about brain scans and genetic analysis that may uncover the rotten wiring in the nature (and nurture) of murderers. In a too-strange-for-fiction twist, he shares a fascinating family history that makes his work chillingly personal [4:42]
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference,…
grrlscientist | July 20, 2009tags: TEDTalks, medicine, infections, new technology, alpha-gal aptomer, antibiotics, Kary Mullis, streaming video
Drug-resistant bacteria kills, even in top hospitals. But now tough infections like staph and anthrax may be in for a surprise. In this video, Nobel-winning chemist Kary Mullis, who watched a friend die when powerful antibiotics failed, unveils a radical new cure that shows extraordinary promise [4:42]
TEDTalks shares the best ideas from the TED Conference with the world, for free: trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses, all giving the talk of…
pharyngula | July 15, 2009
No, not really — my title is a bit of a sensationalistic exploitation of the thesis of a paper by Peterson, Dietrich, and McPeek, but I can buy into their idea that microRNAs (miRNAs) may have contributed to the pattern of metazoan phylogenies we see now. It's actually a thought-provoking concept, especially to someone who favors the evo-devo view of animal evolution. And actually, the question it answers is why we haven't had thousands of Cambrian explosions.
In case you haven't been keeping up, miRNAs are a hot topic in molecular genetics: they are short (21-23 nucleotides) pieces of…
edyong | July 12, 2009
Our mind often seems like a gigantic library, where memories are written on parchment and stored away on shelves. Once filed, they remain steadfast and inviolate over time, although some may eventually become dusty and forgotten.
Now, Reut Shema, Yadin Dudai and colleagues from the Weizmann Institute of Science have found evidence that challenges this analogy. According to their work, our memory is more like a dynamic machine - it requires a constant energy supply to work. Cut the power and memories are lost.
Shema found that the plug that powers our memories is an enzyme called PKMzeta…