apalazzo | June 25, 2007miRNA and RNA interference is so hot right now ...
I'm not in the field, but I do keep an eye on it. Right now the there is quite a few papers on how miRNAs regulate translation. There is some data that indicate that miRNA and the associated RISC complex (RNA Interference Silencing Complex) inhibits the ability of ribosomes from engaging targeted mRNAs. The initiation of protein synthesis would thus be blocked. Other data indicate that miRNAs inhibit the activity of ribosomes that are bound onto transcripts. In this second model miRNAs prevent the elongation step of protein synthesis. These…
apalazzo | June 25, 2007Is the question asked by Jack Parker. So are we really taken advantage of, or are we just a bunch of whiners?
A study from 2002 says it all. (Keep in mind that the study is 5 years old and that postdoc salaries have gone up.)
First off, some comparisons:
Compared with their peers in engineering, law, medicine or business administration, natural scientists languish at the bottom of the salary league. In 1999, the median annual income of those working in the natural sciences in the USA was almost US$10 000 less than that of mathematical and computer scientists. This imbalance was even higher…
apalazzo | June 23, 2007I was watching Science Saturday, over at bloggingheads.tv, where Horgan & Johnson were talking about the origin of life and RNA (among other things). Also mentioned was Robert Shapiro's article in Scientific American. Shapiro is an advocate of the cell first theory, which I have to say that I don't really get. How would that work? How would this entity self-perpetuate and evolve.
Another item at Science Saturday was a link to this article in the Economist on how RNA research is where all the action is ... from the article:
It is probably no exaggeration to say that biology is now…
apalazzo | June 23, 2007Check out the new What's up postdoc? Next edition will be hosted right here. If you have any entries on postdoc-hood, send 'em to me.
Also the next Mendel's Garden will be held at Eye on DNA on July 8th (it was moved to make way for the July 1st edition of Gene Genie). Send your best genetic (or biomedical) entries over to Hsien. If anyone is interested, we still need a host for the August edition of Mendel's Garden (Sunil has volunteered for September). If you are interested, email me.
apalazzo | June 23, 2007Yeah it's been a while since my last entry, but in my defence, my thinkpad died and I simultaneously got back the reviewers comments from my submitted manuscript.
Although my boss was a tad disappointed, I'm quite pleased. I have to say that writing this post is kinda strange, are my reviewers out there reading my daily diatribes? Should I censure myself?
And so ... all I will say about the comments is that I spent the last month collecting data to bolster the key findings of my paper - mostly control experiments, but it looks like the reviewers believe the main concept and did not ask for…
apalazzo | June 20, 2007From Thomson Scientific's ISI Web of Knowledge ... the latest impact factors for most of the journals I read, i.e. those that publish cell biology & molecular biology manuscripts. Note that the list does not contain neuroscience or review journals.
(Inspired by Coturnix' entry.)
apalazzo | June 20, 2007To all those who are getting married tomorrow, on the longest day of the year, congratulations.
Below the fold: more Web2.0, a book on the history of cell biology, trashy science journalism in WIRED, and the latest on stem cell legislation.
From Coturnix I learn of this great site, Scitalks, that acts as a repository for science seminars and interviews.
After posting about the latest web2.0 tools from Nature, I was alerted to Jeffsbench. As the developer Curtis describes:
We have tried to integrate a lot of the same tools that Nature is using (i.e. social networking, social bookmarking,…
apalazzo | June 19, 2007Nature has been busy diving into the "web 2.0".
Now it looks as if the folks at Natiure have two new projects for the science masses:
- Nature Precedings, a website where people can dump all their spare data, unpublished manuscripts, powerpoint slides, posters, images and where readers can leave comments and even vote on a submission (I think the voting sounds too corny). It looks as if there is minimal peer review. From the site:
Submissions are screened by our professional curation team for relevance and quality...
The focus is on biology, medicine, chemistry and earth sciences. As an…
apalazzo | June 19, 2007We'll be having talks by Hong Cheng from the Reed lab (click here for my summary of her recent paper), Changchun Xiao from the Rajewski lab on miRNAs and B cell differentiation, and Peter Boag from the Blackwell lab on P-bodies and development.
The talks will be held in the Cannon Room in building C of the Harvard Medical School quad. They begin at 5:30 and end by about 7:00PM. Food and drinks will follow.
apalazzo | June 18, 2007The boss is out of town.
My green card just got approved.
It's beautiful outside.
Enough blogging for today.
apalazzo | June 15, 2007This story sounds like it comes from the plot of a bad movie.
A couple of days ago the Globe reported that FBI agents will be visiting labs in the New England area.
I'm not kidding. They've already visited MIT, U Mass and BC. From the article:
Agents plan to visit many more New England colleges in the coming months and are offering to provide briefings about what they call "espionage indicators" to faculty, students, or security staff as part of a national outreach to college campuses.
Why?
The FBI's website says universities should consider the possibility of foreign spies posing as…
apalazzo | June 14, 2007
When I was a lowly grad student at Columbia U, I was part of a small and cozy department headed by Michael Gershon. Now Professor Gershon is an expert of the enteric nervous system, or the nerve system of the gut. He gained celebrity status due to the fact that he had written a book called The Second Brain, which describes the history and current research on this curious feature of the nervous system. This entity, the enteric nervous system, is pretty remarkable in that it does in fact work quite independently from the rest of your body. Neurons within the gut form a highly connected network…
apalazzo | June 12, 2007For once I got home early, but I'm too tired to realy blog (instead go read this fine synopsis of the Stem Cell Papers at denialsim). So instead I'll offer this quote that I heard the other night at the pub:
Researcher #1: Life is more important than science.Researcher #2: What made you say that?Researcher #1: My life is science.
apalazzo | June 12, 2007I heard this last night. With Marius, John Gearhart, and William Hurlbut.
Or if you like stupid conspiracy theories, read Larry Moran's summary of the stories spun by people with too much time on their hands. (BTW there is no way that the timing of the three stem cell papers had anything to do with the stem cell legislation, here's why.)
apalazzo | June 11, 2007Remember how I met this fellow Mike, from the Gilliland lab?
Well he had told us that he had a blog full of poetry with a slight tinge of ... translational-research.
Here's a taste from his blog (at his myspace page):
Wonka bars
She was not simple to attain
But once she arrived she fed me
She was complicated but it was understood
Once I got her everyone else wanted her
But she was mine and everyone else could only see her
she was my oasis and even though I would wander
her riches brought me back
when I first met her and brought her to the big ball
then they all knew about her and expected…
apalazzo | June 9, 2007So last night we went out to watch the American Repertory Theatre's version of Eugene Ionesco's The Killing Game. Afterwards we ended up at Grafton Street for food, drinks and discussion.
Of course with Marius Wernig in attendance, the talk turned to this week's big news.
[In attendance as well was Mike Kharas, a postdoc in the Gilliland lab. In a weird coincidence, Mike worked on klf4 (krumpel-like factor4), the most mysterious of the four genes which are part of the cellular fountain of youth elixir.]
First it looks like everyone in the Jaenisch lab is jumping onto this project - turning…
apalazzo | June 9, 2007
Wow. Using the collective memory of everyone on earth we can reconstruct a virtual imprint of our civilization. (+ it would be a nifty way to read the newspaper!)
[HT: biocurious]
apalazzo | June 8, 2007Here's another video for you where Dr. Jaenisch discusses this week's incredible findings:
Also check out this new feature at the Nature website on stem cells and a new stem cell blog called the niche. (NT: pimm)
PS I'll be meeting up with Marius tonight if you have any questions you would like to ask on stem cells let me know.
apalazzo | June 7, 2007I got in this morning and the place is buzzing with yesterday's news. So the big question is whether this technology will be useful for stem cell therapy?
One professor was willing to wager that these new findings will not lead to therapeutic stem cell therapy. In the lab, we were actually split down the middle on this issue. You see the problem is that cancer and stem cells share a lot in common. This technology involves introducing four transgenes (two of which are proto-oncogenes) into cells. This protocol may increase the likelihood that these induced stem cells turn into teratomas after…
apalazzo | June 6, 2007
Today three papers came out, two in Nature, and one in the inaugural edition of Cell Stem Cell, that basically confirm the results from last year's landmark manuscript by Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka (for details on this paper, see this post).
Just to remind you, in that original publication Takahashi and Yamanaka describe how they reprogrammed connective tissue cells (called a fibroblasts) into stem cell like entities, by introducing four active genes (Oct3/4, Klf4, Sox2 and c-Myc). The resulting iPS cells (induced pluripotent stem cells) could differentiate into any number of…