My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. I am not an MD so I cannot diagnose and treat your sleep problems. As well as writing this blog, I am also the Online Discussion Expert for PLoS. This is a personal blog and opinions within it in no way reflect the policies of PLoS. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com
No matter how cutesy the acronim SAD is. Joseph reports on a study that links SAD to serotonin. But serotonin itself may not be necessary to understand how SAD works, though an intimate link between serotonin and melatonin (the former is the biochemical precursor of the latter) suggests that…
Inferring Human Colonization History Using a Copying Model:
Humans like to tell stories. Amongst the most captivating is the story of the global spread of modern humans from their original homeland in Africa. Traditionally this has been the preserve of anthropologists, but geneticists are starting…
Some Like It Hot! Structure Of Receptor For Hot Chili Pepper And Pain Revealed:
You can now not only feel the spicy kick of a jalapeno pepper, you can also see it in full 3D, thanks to researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Early Life Exposure To Cats May Reduce Risk Of Childhood…
Grand Rounds Volume 4, No. 35 are up on Musings of a Dinosaur
Carnival of Space #55 is up on Catholic Sensibility
The 87th Skeptics Circle is up on Action Skeptics
Carnival of the Liberals #65 is up on Neural Gourmet
This week's 172nd edition of the Carnival of Education is up on Teacher in a…
The websites/wikis of the first two conferences appear to be down. We will move all of those archives to a new site soon, and very soon the website for the third ScienceOnline conference (formerly known as Science Blogging Conference) will be filled with more information. But for now, you can…
If you are one of the few of my readers who actually slogged through my Clock Tutorials, especially the difficult series on Entrainment and Phase Response Curves, you got to appreciate the usefulness of the oscillator theory from physics in its application to the study of biological clocks. Use…
From November 01, 2005, a review of a review...
Here is a nice article in Washington Post - Ecological Niche May Dictate Sleep Habits - about the adaptive function of sleep.
It addresses some of the themes I am interested in.
First, the unfortunate fact is that sleep was initially defined by…
(First posted on February 5, 2007) Last week I asked if you would be interested in my take on this paper, since it is in Serbian (and one commenter said Yes, so here it is - I am easy to persuade):
Stankovic Miodrag, Zdravkovic Jezdimir A., and Trajanovic Ljiljana,
Comparative analysis of sexual…
There are 61 articles published in PLoS ONE this week. Here are some of the highlights, look around for more and please comment, rate, and send trackbacks:
Adaptive Evolution and Functional Redesign of Core Metabolic Proteins in Snakes:
Adaptive evolutionary episodes in core metabolic proteins are…
I got several e-mails yesterday about a new study about the molecular mechanism underlying circadian rhythms in mammals ("You gotta blog about this!"), so, thanks to Abel, I got the paper (PDF), printed it out, and, after coming back from the pool, sat down on the porch to read it.
After reading…
What it really means when we are talking about babies "sleeping through the night" (from September 22, 2005)
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Trixe Update is a blog that is very unusual. First, just looking technically, the posts go from top to bottom instead of the latest post being on…
Fifth in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria, covering more politics than biology (from May 17, 2006):
In the previous posts in this series, I covered the circadian clocks in Synechococcus, potential circadian clocks in a couple of other bacteria, and the presence of clock genes (thus…
Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait:
We advance this long tradition of surveying teachers with reports from the first nationally representative survey of teachers concerning the teaching of evolution. The survey permits a statistically valid and current portrait…
PLoS ONE just published a very exciting paper - a regulatory sequence from the genome of a preserved Tasmanian wolf was inserted into a mouse and shown to have the same function:
Resurrection of DNA Function In Vivo from an Extinct Genome:
There is a burgeoning repository of information available…
The fourth part of a four-part series on the topic, this one from April 02, 2006....
This being the National Sleep Awareness Week and on the heels of the recent study on sleep of adolescents, it is not surprising that this issue is all over the media, including blogs, these days.
I have written…
As you know, I am currently in Florida, at the 20th Anniversary meeting of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, that is, my own society. I have not been since 2002, so I am surprised to see how many people remember may face and are happy to see me.
I am also surprised to hear how many…
Fourth in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria (from April 30, 2006):
For decades, it was thought that prokaryotes did not have circadian clocks. Then, a clock was discovered in a unicellular cyanobacterium, Synechococcus (later also in Synechocystis [1] and Trichodesmium [2]) which quickly…
This is the third part of the series on the topic, from April 01, 2006...
This being the National Sleep Awareness Week and in the heels of the recent study on sleep of adolescents, it is not surprising that this issue is all over the media, including blogs, these days.
I have covered this issue a…
The third installment in the five-part series on clocks in bacteria (from April 19, 2006):
As you probably know, my specialty are birds, so writing this series on clocks in microorganisms was quite an eye-opener for me and I have learned a lot. The previous two posts cover the clocks in the…
I just had nice seafood dinner while watching the sunset over the water with this guy, down in sunny Florida. Readers of this blog have met him before, here and here.
I also saw Erik Herzog, who is familiar to all of you from, e.g., here, here, here and here. I heard him give a presentation about…
Earlier this year, during the National Sleep Awareness Week, I wrote a series of posts about the changes in sleep schedules in adolescents. Over the next 3-4 hours, I will repost them all, starting with this one from March 26, 2006. Also check my more recent posts on the subject here and here…
Second post in a series of five (from April 05, 2006):
In the previous two posts, here and here, I have mentioned how the discovery of circadian clocks in Cyanobacteria changed the way we think about the origin and evolution of circadian clocks. Quite soon after the initial discovery, the team…
'Mitochondrial Eve' Research: Humanity Was Genetically Divided For 100,000 Years:
The human race was divided into two separate groups within Africa for as much as half of its existence, says a Tel Aviv University mathematician. Climate change, reduction in populations and harsh conditions may have…
