evolgen | April 8, 2006I'm sure most of my readers are familiar with the Canadian funding agency that rejected Brian Alters proposal to study the effects of intelligent design on the teaching of evolution. I don't have anything to say that hasn't been said already, but I will point you to EvolDir which has posted the summary of the grant proposal. In case you were wondering, here is the purpose of the study from the horse's mouth:
The purpose of this study is to measure the extent to which the recent large-scale popularization of Intelligent Design is detrimentally affecting Canadians' teaching and learning of…
evolgen | April 7, 2006This week's evolgen Double Entendre Friday is brief. It's also not my own idea, and I can't seem to remember where I stole it from (if I stole it from you, drop a note in the comments). Sorry. Here it is:
Two glutamines bump into each other waiting to aminoacylate a tRNA. One says to the other, "I saw you hanging out near that ribosome with your last tRNA. Did you go all the way?" The other replies, "Well, my tRNA got me into the A site, but we were caught pretending to be a histidine. After that, there was no way the ribosome was going to let me get through her exit tunnel."…
evolgen | April 6, 2006Andre at BioCurious has checked out the authorship of the Tiktaalik papers and concluded that the grad students got jobbed, PhD comics style:
Another thing I noticed is that only the supervisors are listed as authors on the two papers they published. I know there were many grad students also involved in the project because Daeschler showed a picture of someone fighting off a dust storm trying to get gear from a landing helicopter and he joked that that's what they're for. At least, I thought he was joking... Maybe it's a palaeontology thing, but if this was say, a particle physics paper, all…
evolgen | April 5, 2006I attended a seminar in the Math Department today. The topic was assembling genomes. Even though this is a computationally rigorous field, the speaker glazed over all the mathematically interesting details. Maybe he thought the mathematicians in the audience would be bored by the math. Because he was sponsored by the Math Department, however, he felt obligated to give a poor summary of genetics for all of the non-biologists in the audience. The mathematicians then proceeded to ask the speaker some interesting questions about biology, which was ironic considering there were at least 20…
evolgen | April 4, 2006I previously alluded to Junk Non-coding DNA evolving into a gene in my last post on junk DNA. Here is another example of this phenomenon:
Scientists at the University of Illinois have discovered an antifreeze-protein gene in cod that has evolved from non-coding or 'junk' DNA.
...
"This appears to be a new mechanism for the evolution of a gene from non-coding DNA", says Professor Cheng, "3.5 billion years of evolution of life has produced many coding genes and conventional thinking assumes that new genes must come from pre-existing ones because the probability of a random stretch of DNA…
evolgen | April 4, 2006Seed is sponsoring their first ever writing contest. The topic:
Amidst emerging competitive threats from abroad (China and India in particular) and heated debates over intelligent design, stem cells and climate change: What is the future of science in America? What should the US do to preserve and build upon its role as a leader in scientific innovation?
The top three essays will win cash prizes and be published by Seed.
evolgen | April 3, 2006It looks like the United States is not the only nation sending molecular markers into orbit. From the New York Times:
The spacecraft is small by world standards -- a microsatellite of a few hundred pounds. Launched in October by the Russians for an oil-rich client, it orbits the earth once every 99 minutes and reportedly has a camera for peering down on large swaths of land.
The punch line comes in the next paragraph: the satellite is owned by Iran. No report as to whether it's a CA or AT repeat.
evolgen | April 3, 2006Following my Sweet 16 optimism, my bracket was blown to shit. I am currently sitting in fourth place in the ScienceBlogs pool, but I last earned points when UCLA made it to the Final Four. Teutonic Thunder (whomever that may be) has won the pool regardless of who wins tonight (we think). He or she can step forward and claim the prize of absolutely nothing. As for the title to this post, see below the fold.
Why would I title my post "UCLA Wins the National Championship"? Let's just say it has something to do with this email I received from Amazon:
And, yeah, I would love to see UCLA get…
evolgen | April 1, 2006I read blogs and news via their site feeds using Bloglines (a web based newsreader). This has gone without a hitch for the year or so I've been using the service, but I have been thinking of switching to program that actually runs on my computer. Today, Bloglines stopped updating my feeds, inspiring me to search for an alternative newsreader. I downloaded a couple of free programs (Awasu and Vox Lite), but neither of them seem to be able to handle Atom feeds (which means that I can't read many Blogspot blogs). Does anyone know of a free newsreader that can handle Atom?
evolgen | March 31, 2006Our plan to have the House Budget Committee approve an amendment to increase the NIH budget failed. Our next chance to ensure the NIH budget is increased will occur on the House floor. If you have yet to contact your US Representative about supporting life-sciences research, please do so by visiting this site. The following comes from an email from the Genetics Society of America.
Your Voice Still Needs to Be Heard
The House Budget Committee voted down the amendment offered by Rep. Rosa DeLauro that would have increased health and education funding in the House Budget Resolution by $7…
evolgen | March 31, 2006Help! I need some more double entendres. Help! Not just any double entendres. Help! You know I need some biology double entendres.
When I first proposed this wacky idea I figured I'd add funny biology terms to my list as the weeks went by. Well, I exhausted my original list quite rapidly, and now I'm scraping the dregs of funny terms to bring you something to make your Friday go by a little bit faster. This week I'm stealing from a list of molecules with silly names (via the recently expunged Frink Tank). Here's an awkward exchange that may have occurred between a student and her advisor:…
evolgen | March 30, 2006
The Coalition Against Biopiracy has announced their winners for the 2006 Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy, and they're a hoot. We already knew that Darwin was a pirate, but now we learn that so are Craig Venter and Google. What are their crimes? Venter is accused of being the "Greediest Biopirate", and Google is accused of being the "Biggest Threat to Genetic Privacy". I have some more details on these charges below the fold, in addition to showing why the Coalition Against Biopiracy needs to walk the plank.
Venter is accused of:
"undertaking, with flagrant disregard for national…
evolgen | March 29, 2006As I mentioned previously, the Senate passed the Specter-Harkin Amendment. The House of Representatives is our next target to ensure the Bush's anti-science budget is improved upon. The Genetics Society of America has done an excellent job keeping its members up to date on these political goings on. I have included the most recent request to contact your US Representative below the fold. Follow the instructions to send an email, letter, or to get your representative's office phone number to request he or she support the budget amendment.
ACTION: Call or E-Mail Your US Representative! Ask…
evolgen | March 27, 2006My little screed on junk DNA elicited some good feedback, including a comment from Dan Graur. In a somewhat ill-thought out rant, I implied that anyone who uses the term 'junk DNA' should be ostracized from the scientific community (or something along those lines). I restated my opinion in a far more diplomatic manner in the discussion that followed in the comments: junk DNA is an appropriate term for DNA that serves no function (non-transcribed, non-regulatory, and non-structural), but we should refrain from using that term for all non-coding DNA. I elaborate my opinion and reference a…
evolgen | March 27, 2006Alright, already! I took the quiz. 12.5% is like the equivalent of one leg, right? That's not too bad.
12.5 %
My weblog owns 12.5 % of me.Does your weblog own you?
evolgen | March 24, 2006I'm running out of good biology related double entendres, and I want to wait a few more weeks before I post those that people suggested in the comments or that I stole from other blogs (don't worry, I'll give you mad props if I jones something off you). So, for this week's evolgen double entendre, I give you an essay that I came across in high school. To give some context, we were required to write a timed essay on the essay during class. I spent the first five to ten minutes (of the allotted fifty) trying to compose myself before I could even begin to think about what I would write. This…
evolgen | March 24, 2006The title is, obviously, an overstatement, exaggeration, and blatant misrepresentation. But it gets your attention, don't it? Anyway, Hawks has been questioning whether genomics is really any different from genetics. In this post, he says something that I've been thinking for a while:
"Actually, the thing that bothers me about genomics is not the renaming -- I'm totally fine with coming up with clever new names, even if they carry little information content . . . What bothers me is that so many people are being trained in genomics without learning any genetics!"
I agree. Entirely. I know…
evolgen | March 23, 2006Alex Palazzo managed to piss off some people with his taxonomy of biomedical disciplines. We have also learned that there are different types of physics geeks and anthropologists. (By the way, don't ever call me a geek; geeks bite the heads off of chickens. I'm a nerd.) I previously attempted to classify evolutionary biologists and named them after the important names in their particular field. It was actually a satire of the creationist ploy to call people Darwinists, so laugh. Now I'm going to further divide up the evolutionary geneticists (already a sub-set of biologists) into a bunch…
evolgen | March 23, 2006The term "Junk DNA" is bullshit. There, I said it. The moment I hear someone utter that phrase, I immediately lose respect for him or her. No one whose opinion is worth anything will refer to non-coding DNA as junk. That's why this article bothers me. The title, "Junk DNA may not be so junky after all" has nothing to do with the content of the article. The research being described is not about showing that non-coding DNA has a function. The function has already been determined. The researchers have used zebrafish to identify enhancers for human genes. The subtitle to the article (…
evolgen | March 22, 2006Given my lack of any substantial entries recently, I'd say that I am not. But, if you are, go ahead and add this logo to your blog. Click on the image to find out what it entails.
(Via Notes from the Biomass.)