evolgen
Posts by this author
March 31, 2008
As I have mentioned before, de novo sequencing of whole eukaryotic genomes may be a thing of the past (or, at least, these whole genome projects won't be getting very much more common). Instead, I proposed that people would use the new high-throughput technologies to sequence parts of the genome…
March 18, 2008
60 Minutes ran a special on the science of sleep this week. The special included an interview with Scott McRobert about sleep deprivation and mating in Drosophila.
So if lack of sleep impacts our appetite, our metabolism, our memory, and how we age, is there anything it doesn't affect? How about…
March 13, 2008
It's not very funny, but it's about a topic that comes up around here often (groans...). That said, this is something you'd expect to see over at Genomicron, not evolgen. In fact, the guy looks a bit like a young TR Gregory.
For the full strip, go here.
March 11, 2008
The Next Generation Sequencing blog has a post on low coverage of A/T regions with Solexa sequencing. The post is in reference to a paper in Nature Methods on genome resequencing in C. elegans (doi:10.1038/nmeth.1179). Here's how the NextGen Sequencing blog summarizes it:
However, it points to a…
March 7, 2008
I really like the PLoS journals. Their mission -- to make research freely available -- is totally awesome. And, on top of that, the journals publish very interesting research. PLoS Biology is a top notch journal, with papers on par with those in Science and Nature. And the specialty journals, like…
March 7, 2008
Identifying and cataloging biological diversity is challenging. One way to do go about IDing all the life forms is to sequence a known region of the genome in all those species. This is known as DNA barcoding. An article in PNAS reports on the DNA sequence of a gene found useful for DNA barcoding…
March 6, 2008
Olivia Judson (aka, Dr. Tatiana) has a blog at the NYTimes website. It's usually a good read, but she has been known to go off the deep end. In this week's entry, Judson posts on how bones are not the only fossils. What other fossils does Judson write about? Genomes.
Judson's focus is on genome…
March 6, 2008
Apparently, ScienceBlogs is loaded with white people. Hell, the whitest person I know blogs in this very domain. That got me thinking. Sure, we may look white. But are we really white? I mean, really white. So white that we like the stuff white people like.
We do have someone who really likes…
March 5, 2008
Brian Charlesworth has reviewed Michael Lynch's The Origins of Genome Architecture for Current Biology. Charlesworth's review is generally positive, and he agrees that population size may be an important factor in genome evolution. However, he thinks that Lynch overplays the role relaxed selective…
March 2, 2008
One of the drums I beat around here pertains to inferring demographic history using molecular markers (i.e., DNA data). I've been known to go off on people who make claims about ancestral population sizes based on studies of a single locus or gene. You see, studying a single locus only gives you…
March 1, 2008
I'm easily annoyed. A lot of things piss me off. Here are the things that irked me today:
Fake St. Patrick's Day. A large drinking school schedules Spring Break the same week as St. Patty's Day, and they do it two years in a row. This pisses off the students because it costs them an official…
February 28, 2008
Poorly done and over clicked?
Rod Page has a post worth reading in which he's "deliberately critical" of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). You should be able to visit the EOL at that link. Only you can't, as of two days following the release. You see, they weren't able to handle the 11.5 million hits…
February 26, 2008
Jonathan Eisen is the new Academic Editor in Chief at PLoS Biology, and he's kicking it off with this editorial. In his editorial, Jonathan describes how he became an Open Access publishing advocate. The header of his article features a short biography with an interesting item:
Jonathan A. Eisen is…
February 24, 2008
I have an intuition, backed up by absolutely no evidence, that my particular area of interest (evolutionary genetics) has more faculty blogging about stuff related to their research than other fields. This is most likely the result of my interest in those blogs, and, hence, my increased awareness…
February 15, 2008
Do you ever sit in a boring departmental seminar and scope out the other folks in the room? You'll pick up some odd behaviors. Like the guy picking his nose -- gross! Or the secret couple that can't be open about their relationship because it breaks some university policy sitting a bit too close to…
February 12, 2008
Jonathan Eisen's been blogging the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) meeting in Marco Island. Here's what he's written so far:
Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Meeting - First Post
AGBT Marco Usland Update - Long Live Sequencing
Marco Island Evening One - The Strange and the…
February 10, 2008
Not Jim or Sam or Sally or Jane. Or Dr. Acula. But how do you refer to your advisor when you're talking to someone else? Do you call him/her "my advisor"? Do you call him/her "my boss"? Do you call him/her "that person I see once every two weeks who provides the money for me to get my PhD"?
This is…
February 1, 2008
Paraphyly in Drosophila
Many biology students have hands-on experience working with Drosophila melanogaster. This little fly is one of the major workhorses of genetics. It may not be for long. That's not to say people will stop working with the fly, but the fly may no longer be named "Drosophila…
January 30, 2008
Everyone's blogging about Stephen J. Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Razib, John Lynch, Laelaps). I'm not. The book's too long, and I'm too busy. But that doesn't mean I can't link to them, and to another review of Gould. The other is Richard Lewontin's review of two Gould books: The…
January 16, 2008
Alex is pissed about science writers neglecting important discoveries in cell biology:
Why are cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology never covered in the media? I've spoken to so many science journalists - most of whom have no science training. I've come to the conclusion that…
January 15, 2008
What's a gene chip? Well, it's not a gene chip, that's for sure. It's a microarray. It has various parts of a genome arrayed on a small chip. The parts of the genome you put on the chip depends on what you're interested in studying. You then take some DNA you're interested in and apply it to the…
January 14, 2008
While much of the research in evolutionary biology is purely academic in nature -- designed for the purpose of understanding the biology of a system rather than for immediate human benefit -- there is some research that yields immediate practical uses. One research area that is particular fruitful…
January 11, 2008
Let's pretend this never happened:
Those are the Scientists for Better PCR, complete with their own wanna-be Boss. Because when you need to find out who the daddy is, you turn to PCR.
January 10, 2008
John Timmer has a must read post on the coverage of science in the New York Times editorial pages. The science section of the NYTimes is probably the best in the country. Carl Zimmer leads the way, and there are many other solid science writers published by the NYTimes. Even Nicholas Wade, who has…
January 10, 2008
There's a large element of "chance" in all biological systems. Whether it's a biochemical process within a cell, the movement of cells throughout an organism, or the evolution of the those organisms, stochasticity plays a large a part in biology. Unfortunately, this is often missed by most students…
January 7, 2008
Matt Nisbet thinks that Francis Collins should be the next presidential science advisor. He does this after rejecting excellent popularizes of science, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and E.O. Wilson, on the following grounds:
Most science popularizers such as Wilson or Tyson don't have the years of…
January 2, 2008
I can't draw for shit. And I've got crappy penmanship to boot. All in all, I don't end up with aesthetically pleasing creations when I put pen or pencil to paper. So it's ironic that my one blog post selected for the 2007 edition of the Open Lab is a comic that I made. It's called The Lab Fridge,…
December 30, 2007
Can positive selection drown out neutral evolution? That's what John Hawks claims in response to my post on accelerated evolution. Hawks points out that, rather than looking at the neutral fixation rate (which is equal to the mutation rate, u), we should be more interested in the average time to…
December 28, 2007
Historical Inaccuracy Edition
A lot of us who work in well established biological systems take for granted how those systems were first discovered or established. Sometimes this involves the choice by an individual to begin studying development using a small worm. Other times it's the fortunate…
December 21, 2007
There's been a whole lot of hype around the Hawks et al. paper describing a recent burst of adaptive evolution in the human genome. The problem is a lot of people are conflating accelerated adaptive evolution with accelerated evolution. Take this for example:
12/11: Accelerated Human Evolution
In…