apalazzo | October 5, 2006OK now that the Science Nobels have been distributed it's time for the real awards to begin, the Ig Nobels.
How big is the Ig Nobel? It's janitor won last year's Nobel for Physics!
If you're in the Boston area, good luck getting tickets. If you can't get tickets or if you're outside the Boston area, you can watch the webcast, beginning tonight at 7:15PM. As for me, I was planning to attend, but when I woke up this morning I found myself in Montreal. If I can get away from all the food and drinking that comes along a visit to my big Italian family (or as they call themselves, "the clan")…
apalazzo | October 4, 2006Yesterday someone on our floor announced "I see Jesus!"
Really?
Then we saw his image on the left side of a silver-stained polyacrylamide gel:
Upon closer inspection it looked like his face was partially obscured by some proteins.
We could kinda make out a nose, a mouth and a beard. But where are his eyes? Curse that IgG! And ... Jesus is brown! (I never knew.) To help those, who like "seeing Thomas" need some extra help, we then photoshoped ... I mean enhanced the picture:
So is this a blessed pulldown? Or is this a vengeful Jesus trying to warn us latte drinking, public transportation…
apalazzo | October 4, 2006If you need to know ANYTHING about biology remember: DNA =(transcription)=> RNA =(translation)=> Protein.
Well today the Nobel Prize went to Roger Kornberg of Stanford for the structure of the first process.
The Nobel's press release (pdf).
It's official, RNA is the molecule of the year.
(PS It's funny we all speculated that the second process [translation] would win. Kudos to George Smiley who partially called this one.)
apalazzo | October 3, 2006Here is the annual list from The Scientist. (Click here for the article.)
The top 15 US academic institutions are:
1. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
2. The J. David Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, CA
3. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
4. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
5. Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI
6. Trudeau Institute, Saranac Lake, NY
7. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
8. University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
9. Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA
10. National Institutes of Health, Bethesda/Rockville, MD
11. Georgia Institute of…
apalazzo | October 3, 2006It's not as deranged as the last one. It must be for biotechs and pharma as "Get Promoted" and "Batch Released" do not really apply to this lab.
apalazzo | October 2, 2006OK a breif history of RNA interference.
1990 Rich Jorgensen at the University of Arizona wanted to make petunias a deeper purple. His group tried expressing extra copies of the same gene and ... he got white flowers. The very gene he wanted to overexpress got turned off. This effect was named "cosuppression".
Cossupression was then seen in other plants and fungi. Plant virologists also found that plants expressing viral genes, or simply small bits of viral RNA that did not encode for any protein, developed resistance to the virus from which the genes originally came from.
1993 Victor Ambrose'…
apalazzo | October 2, 2006About a month ago I wrote an entry on centrosomal RNA. Turns out that the work was not "out of Bob Palazzo's lab" as I asserted but from Mark Alliegro's Lab.
His lab has been working on this project for quite a while and he tells me that more's on the way. (In fact from the little note he sent me the new data sounds VERY cool, but I'll wait till the next paper(s) comes out to tell you more).
apalazzo | October 2, 2006We all thought that it was a bit early, but VERY deserved. Also can I add this:
The Daily Transcript 1: Thomson Scientific 0.
For anyone not in the basic biomedical sciences, the two biggest revolutions in the past 10 years have been RNA interference (RNAi) and fluorescent protein technology. The two techniques allowed us to perform genetics in higher eukaryotes and to visualize proteins over time. When both came on the scene it was truly amazing. People first gossiped about both technologies and the buzz spread fast. Within months everyone was using the technique to probe their field of…
apalazzo | September 30, 2006A lesson of what not-to-do from Joseph Schlessinger (the "signaling guy" and head of Pharmacology at Yale) at the Yeda vs. ImClone Patent trial. Yeda provided detailed records of their development of Erbitux, ImClone provided no records, only Joseph Schlessinger's account of a twenty year old conversation. The court stated:
We find Schlessinger's account of this conversation not credible for several reasons. First, nearly twenty years have passed since the conversation occurred, such that we doubt Schlessinger remembers its details, especially considering the contorted testimony Schlessinger…
apalazzo | September 29, 2006An easy one this week:
Click here to listen to your hint.
What could it be? Leave your answers in the comment section. I'll confirm any correct answer over the weekend.
apalazzo | September 28, 2006Here is an illustration from a recent PLoS Biology paper:
Two complexes:
1- miRNA. Imperfect base pairing between the small RNA and the target. This complex sorts the RNA to p-bodies (processing bodies) where other proteins join in. The mRNA is either destroyed or stored.
2- siRNA. Perfect base pairing. The mRNA is destroyed and that's it.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Ref:Chu Cy, Rana TM
Translation Repression in Human Cells by MicroRNA-Induced Gene Silencing Requires RCK/p54.
PLoS Biol (2006) 4(7): e210
apalazzo | September 28, 2006Wow - a creationist was appointed to high level position in the Conservative government back home. On the other side of the line Richard Dawkins has set up a foundation to promote acceptance of atheists (Richard, you better open a franchise in Ottawa.)
Speaking of the RDF (Richard Dawkins Foundation) there are great videos available there, including one with Collin McGinn, professor of philosophy at Rutgers (I read his excellent book recently - see this post).
The video is from Jonathan Miller's BBC series, A Brief History of Atheism and you can watch it bellow the fold: Well, something is…
apalazzo | September 27, 2006Someone yesterday asked whether there were online odds for the upcoming Nobels? Well Thomson Scientific (producers of ISI and other citation indices) have their own predictions and a poll too (although they only give 3 choices???)
Medicine & Physiology predictions (by Thomson Sci):
For more speculation on the Nobels (including my pics and the pics of many others, click here).
apalazzo | September 27, 2006Newest from PLoS Biology:
Raj A, Peskin CS, Tranchina D, Vargas DY, Tyagi S
Stochastic mRNA Synthesis in Mammalian Cells.
PLoS Biol (2006) 4(10): e309
The authors genomically incorporated a gene with
32 tandem copies of a 43-base-pair probe-binding sequence at the 3â² end of a coding sequence for a fluorescent protein
into CHO (chinese hamster overy) cells and probed fixed cells with fluorescent oligos (in other words they used FISH). The high signal (32 oligos/transcript) allowed the group to see individual mRNAs. The incorporated gene was under an inducible promoter.
What did they find?…
apalazzo | September 26, 2006Who will win this year?
Some guesses for the Medicine & Physiology (or perhaps Chemistry) below the fold. Warning - the guesses presented here are highly biased towards cellular physiology.
Membrane Traffic. James Rothman and Randy Schekman. Maybe you could throw in Peter Novak.
There's a rumour that intracellular signalling may win. Tony Hunter (phospho-tyrosine), Tony Pawson (protein signalling domains) and Allan Hall (small G-protein switches).
Structure of the first virus. Steven Harrison. (I've been told to throw in Michael Rossman from Purdue).
Structure of the ribosome. Tom Steitz…
apalazzo | September 26, 2006(What follows was started at The Sunburnt Cow, an Australian Bar/Restaurant in Alphabet City - over a brunch that included unlimited Mimosas, Bloody Marys, Fosters and Vegemite.)
Here is the hypothetical situation:
It's the end of the world. You are barricaded in your lab. You have unlimited access to water. What lab supplies can you eat? What order should you consume them in?
A LIST OF POTENTIAL FOOD SOURCES IN THE LAB
(We realize that this depends on the model organism used in the lab ...)
- Yeast extract. Very rich. Probably very flavorful. This is a component of many broths used to grow…
apalazzo | September 25, 2006Just came back from New York. As usual we met up with the old crew and had a blast. On Saturday we stopped by Korea Town (32nd Street) for some kimchi. Sitting down, we saw this:
Kimchi from GMO bacteria!
Kimchi, for those of you who don't know, is produced by the fermentation of various vegetables (most commonly napa cabbage) by bacteria of the genera Lactobacillus. Hot chili powder and other spices are also thrown into the mix to produce this odorant yet delicious dish. Note that the placemat not only contained the patent number but the patent owner's CV plus a little label, "Great-tasting…
apalazzo | September 23, 2006Why? You can find treasures there. I once owned this book, then lent it to a friend who is now studying place cells in Bristol, UK. (Bruno you can keep the book.)
apalazzo | September 22, 2006Well I'm back in NYC, visiting old friends and my thesis advisor. Since I'm writing about my intellectual roots, here is this week's "mystery campus":
hint:The unexamined life is not worth living.
This one should go quickly! Place your answers in the comments.
(PS Thanks Claudia for letting me use your laptop.)
apalazzo | September 21, 2006OK it's been a while since I've really gone off and wrote about ... art, food, music, city life and other mental stimuli ...
(I've been persuaded to even start a category)
But here we go ...
I've learned that Jean LeLoup, the musical genius that is virtually unknown outside of Quebec and France (mostly because he sings almost exclusively in French), has released a new album, Mexico. Oui ca fait du temp qu'on a vue quelque chose de Jean. Tabarnak.
I've also found out that Jean has killed his old identity and has picked up his birth name of Leclerc.
Here is the title song from his new CD.
And…