apalazzo | March 29, 2008If I were you, I would add Juniorprof to your blogroll.
(I think it's time that I clean up my blogroll as well ...)
apalazzo | March 28, 2008This will be short - I'm performing a big protein purification prep today.
Visualizing a single ribosome translating amino acids, one at a time at Biocurious (Nature Article here).
Two posts on that Lin-28 paper in Bayblab and The Skeptical Alchemist. Just to remind you, Lin-28, a factor that was part of the four gene cocktail that the Thomson group used to program stem cells, has now been shown to inhibit the processing of let7 miRNAs. More posts on miRNAs and stem cells on Science and Reason.
RPM gets excited about how sleep deprivation affects fly sex - oh and it's all on prime time TV (…
apalazzo | March 26, 2008
We realy screwed up in so many ways. We created a mess. We lost any shred of credibility we ever had, we created terrorists, and even if we went into Iraq for the oil, we are so inept that we can't even get that job done properly. Yes we are too incompetent to even be greedy.
In the American mass media, there is all this talk about the military status of Iraq. What we forget is that having a functional society is so much more important. And nothing in Iraq is working. Not enough water, not enough electricity, not enough police. The streets are sewers. If that happened here, we would all go…
apalazzo | March 25, 2008George Daley dicussed the results of that incredible Lin-28 paper on NPR's Talk of the Nation. Click here to listen.
apalazzo | March 25, 2008Here's a micrograph that I snapped way back in December 2004.
This is a picture of a mouse fibroblasts, a cell type found in connective tissue. The chocolate chip like circles are cells' nuclei where DNA is stored. The chips in each cookie, are nucleoli where ribosomes are manufactured. I took this micrograph in the middle of a microinjection experiment because I notice the heart shaped nucleolus (actually it looks like 3 nucleoli that are in close proximity) and just had to record this freakish event.
apalazzo | March 24, 2008There have been some interesting posts about the relationship between scientists and the public.
Here's a little snap shot:
Jake at Pure Pedantry advocates that scientists should refrain from making subjective assessments of the general population's lifestyle based on their scientific findings. Scientists should stick to the facts and descriptions of the natural world.
Larry Moran discusses Bruce Alberts' commentary in a recent issue of Science Alberts' writes that the biggest challenge for science education is to teach citizens how to think scientifically.
Dan at BitesizeBio adds his two…
apalazzo | March 24, 2008Last past week was incredible. A slew of very important papers stemming from basic science and having deep impacts on cancer and stem cells came out in Nature and Science. Both stories came from labs here at Harvard Medical School, and everyone's been talking about both papers. The first story is complicated - but I wanted to use it to give a history of one aspect of cancer research. I have already written a two part intro into the topic (here and here). The other story, which was presented at last week's New England RNA Data Club, is now available online, I'll sum up the incredible discovery…
apalazzo | March 22, 2008A docudrama by Piet Hoenderdos on Douglas Hofstadter, philosopher and author of one of the greatest books ever published, Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.
[HT: Mental Floss]
apalazzo | March 21, 2008Last time I told you about how the view of cancer switched from the perspective of metabolism to oncogenes. Today we'll see how recent developments have placed the spotlight back on metabolic pathways.
I'll begin this tale with a quote from a review written by Andrew M Arshama and Thomas P Neufeld:
The TOR (target of rapamycin) signaling pathway has been the subject of a 30-year-long reverse engineering project, beginning in the 1970s when the macrocyclic lactone antifungal compound rapamycin was purified from soil bacteria found on the Pacific island of Rapa Nui, famous for its moai (giant…
apalazzo | March 18, 2008Earlier in the month he'd even spoken to a bespectacled blackgirl on a bus, said, "So, you're into photosynthesis", and she'd actually lowered her issue of Cell and said, "Yes, I am." -Junot Diaz, from his latest book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
apalazzo | March 17, 2008One of the biggest stories over the last decade was how metabolism taught researchers new lessons on cancer.
Say what?
Here is a brief history lesson on how cancer was viewed by cell biologists over the last hundred years. Today I'll talk about how our views changed from metabolism to oncogenes, tomorrow (or the day after) I'll close the loop by explaining how metabolism came back into the picture.
About 100 years ago the famous German biochemist, Otto Warburg, thought that the way to understand cancer was through metabolism. Unlike normal cells, which broke down sugar using oxidative…
apalazzo | March 16, 2008OK I've been silent too long. But with every political pundit I hear, with every column or blog post I read, I've become more and more upset. I'm distiurbed by all the frivolousness out there when it comes to politics and the current slate of candidates.
Seven and a half years ago, we suffered an unimaginable tragedy. Close to 3000 innocent people died, for what? Thousands more suffered, for what? Because a group of fanatical religious zealots had some point to make. We were angry, we needed to do something. Those lunatics were out of touch with reality. They were driven by some ideology that…
apalazzo | March 12, 2008Sorry about the paucity of posts. I've been running around lately. Friday right after the Origin of Life Symposia we took off for NYC. After a day of mental stimulation, including stops at the Whitney and the Met to hear Janine Jansen play Bach and an incredible Schnittke String Trio, we raced back to Boston on Sunday to catch a ride up to the White Mountains (that's New Hampshire for you non-east coasters) to attend the almost annual Rapoport Lab retreat. There I participated in the mandatory alcohol toxicity seminar that lasted into the wee hours of the morning. After a quick nap we sprang…
apalazzo | March 12, 2008We've got a great line up this week including one of the coolest findings of the year. The email is below the fold:
Hello All,
The next meeting of the New England RNA Club will take place Thursday, March 20th, a week from tomorrow. We will have beverages starting at 5:30PM and talks from 6:00-7:30PM in the Cannon Room of Building C at Harvard Medical School. Food and beverages will be served after the talks. Our speakers will be:
- Graham Ruby, Bartel Lab, Whitehead (MIT)
The mirtron biogenesis pathway.
- Amanada Young, Sharp Lab, Whitehead (MIT)
Targeted deletion reveals essential and…
apalazzo | March 11, 2008From the HHMI website:
Through a national competition that opens today, HHMI plans to select as many as 70 early career scientists from a wide range of scientific disciplines relevant to biological and medical inquiry. These scientists, most of whom will be assistant professors at the time of the award, will receive six-year, non-renewable appointments to HHMI and receive the substantial research support necessary to move their research in creative, new directions. HHMI will invest more than $300 million in this first group of scientists and plans a second competition in 2011.
...
HHMI is…
apalazzo | March 9, 2008Friday night we came down to the city to get our regular dose of stimulation. Yesterday we were at the Whitney Museum for the Biennial. This year we were also able to catch the extra exhibits at the Park Ave Armory. For the first time at the Biennial, I was swallowed up by the video installations. Three that stood out -
Javier Tellez - Letter on the Blind For the Use of Those Who See The blind and an elephant. Beautiful images of blind patients in contact with an elephant. Incredible details of the elephant skin and hypnotizing narration from the participants.
Omar Fast - The Casting. On the…
apalazzo | March 8, 2008From Lucy M. Ziurys, professor of astronomy and chemistry, University of Arizona.
1) There is an incredible amount of interesting organic chemistry happening n the vacuum of space.
2) When the earth formed, it is likely that it had no carbon. Over its lifetime, the earth acquired carbon from asteroids, comets, meteorites and cosmic dust.
From David Catling, European Union Marie Curie Chair, University of Bristol.
3) It is now believed that most of the earth's water did not come from asteroids. Why? The deuterium/hydrogen ratio in the ocean does not match the ratio found in asteroids. We are…