evolgen
Posts by this author
March 16, 2007
If you happen to be a yeast population geneticist, then you probably already know about the Saccharomyces Genome Resequencing Project. They have resequenced 32 strains of S. cerevisiae and 27 strains of S. paradoxus at between 1x and 3x coverage. The nice thing about resequencing is that SNP…
March 15, 2007
The advertising department over at the Nature Publishing Group isn't filled with the sharpest knives in the drawer -- as I've pointed out previously. They are responsible for the long vertical banners that run along the right column of their webpages (see the example to the right). Each of these…
March 15, 2007
I'm really digging the interviews with high profile scientists that Current Biology has been publishing. Last November I quoted their interview with Michael Ashburner (ie, he who will not pose with Prof. Steve Steve) on his thoughts on open access publishing and pointed out that they were being…
March 15, 2007
This post is part of a series documenting Professor Steve Steve's recent visit to Philadelphia for the Drosophila Research Conference (aka, the Fly Meeting).
Professor Steve Steve had a wild Saturday night. He was quite happy to have met leaders in the fields of evo-devo, population genetics, and…
March 14, 2007
It's March, and you know what that means: brackets. There are two ScienceBlogs brackets to keep your eye on:
The barkers at the World's Fair have put together a Science Showdown -- bracket style -- broken into four regions: Octopus (life sciences), Mortar and Pestle (chemistry), Chair (philosophy…
March 14, 2007
It seems like only yesterday (okay, less than two years ago) that I learned about 454 sequencing. It's the new technology that many folks think will replace dye termination Sanger sequencing using capillary arrays (the method used to sequence the human genome and many other genomes). A new…
March 14, 2007
This post is part of a series documenting Professor Steve Steve's recent visit to Philadelphia for the Drosophila Research Conference (aka, the Fly Meeting).
In the previous two installments of Steve Steve in Philly, we finally managed to meet up despite the best efforts of the staff at the…
March 13, 2007
The title pretty much says it all. Go here to sign up.
March 13, 2007
The New York Times has published an article in their Science section on the evolution of human parasites, and it's not by Carl Zimmer. In the article, Nicholas Wade (another good science writer at the NYTimes) presents a few vignettes of human-parasite co-evolution, including a bacterium that…
March 13, 2007
This post is part of a series documenting Professor Steve Steve's recent visit to Philadelphia for the Drosophila Research Conference (aka, the Fly Meeting).
After tracking down Steve Steve in the lobby of the hotel on Saturday, we picked up some food at the Reading Terminal Market -- a permanent…
March 12, 2007
What a weekend! Professor Steve Steve and I returned from Philadelphia on Sunday after hanging out with the Drosophilists. Steve arrived in Philly on Thursday morning on a direct flight from Iowa City, but the staff at the Philadelphia Marriott couldn't understand his thick accent when he asked…
March 6, 2007
Alex claims I do cowboy science because my protocol for DNA isolation requires cutting plastic with hot razor blades. But before we ever get to cut any plastic, we need to grind up the flies. I don't have any pretty pictures of this process, but I can capture the essence in words (picture may come…
March 5, 2007
A discussion of open access data using bird flu and other disease data as examples.
The recent scares over bird flu have led many researchers to investigate the epidemiology, genetics, and disease risks of the virus. The researchers are focused on both preventing the transmission of the virus into…
March 4, 2007
The word on the streets is that there used to be a blog at this URL (pronounced like the mountain range separating Europe from Asia). If this were a blog, however, it would be updated often and definitely not left dormant for over two weeks. All I can say is that meth is a hell of a drug. But fear…
February 15, 2007
Those kooky Canucks at the Science Creative Quarterly have started a new club: the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique. Anyone is free to join, provided they're not a teetotaling, lying, world-dominating, badge-hater, 'cause they're really into badges. To…
February 15, 2007
Some bio-bloggers are atwitter over an article by Wojciech Makalowski on Scientific American's website about Junk DNA. I'm a little late to the game because, well, I've been really busy looking at sequences to determine if they are junk DNA. Is it irony? Is it coincidence? Who cares? It's an…
February 14, 2007
In honor of all the snow being dropped on the Northeast US, I give you "Things that rock & things that suck." Cue the theme music...
Things that rock: Snowfall measured in feet.
Things that suck: Freezing rain.
Things that rock: Showing up to class/work on cross-country skis.
Things that…
February 13, 2007
Duplicated genes can arise via various mechanisms -- polyploidization, chromosomal duplication, segmental duplication, and retroposition -- and we can usually distinguish the various mechanisms as each has distinct signatures. For example, retroposed duplicates arise when an RNA transcript is…
February 12, 2007
Does anyone know anything about NESCent (the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North Carolina)? They're affiliated with Duke, UNC, and NC State (the Research Triangle universities), and they offer postdoctoral fellowships. One of my committee members suggested it as a possible location for…
February 9, 2007
Hsien at Genetics & Health has posted the newest edition of my favorite (just) science blog carnival: Mendel's Garden. There are oodles of reasons why you should love genetics (and only a couple why you should not).
If you would like to host a future edition of Mendel's Garden, visit the…
February 8, 2007
I have previously mentioned, in passing, a pet peeve of mine: when people conflate ecology with environmentalism (see here and here for examples). It's an odd pet peeve for an admitted non-ecologist, but it falls under the umbrella of distinguishing science from technology which is at the heart of…
February 7, 2007
Shotgun sequencing refers to the process whereby a genome is sequenced and assembled with no prior information regarding the genomic location of any of the DNA we sequence. There are quite a few steps that you have to go through before you have an assembled genome sequence. We're going to cover…
February 6, 2007
Where the variation comes from.
Evolution proceeds by the action of many different evolutionary forces on heritable variation. Natural selection leads to the increase in frequency of variation that allows individuals to produce more offspring who, themselves, produce offspring. Genetic drift…
February 5, 2007
I've been chatting up Wilkins about the role of natural selection in speciation (and when I say "speciation" I mean "reproductive isolation"). Wilkins listed a few cases where speciation would occur independently of natural selection. Amongst the mechanisms in Wilkins's list was speciation via…
January 31, 2007
Jeremy has posted the newest edition of the Circus of the Spineless -- the blog carnival dedicated to invertebrates -- at the Voltage Gate. We'll excuse the carnival organizers for creating a carnival organized around a paraphyletic taxon this one time because Jeremy included one of our posts on…
January 30, 2007
I straddle the line between being a population biologist and a molecular geneticist. That's a self-congratulatory way of saying that I am an expert in neither field. But existing in the state I do allows me to observe commonalities shared by both. For example, both fields have terminology (or what…
January 29, 2007
The Week of Science Challenge (official website here) begins next Monday (5 February 2007). During the time of the challenge, all participating bloggers will post at least once per day on science and only science -- no anti science or non-science material.
If you would like to participate, you can…
January 25, 2007
We've got Phil Skell, and we can't get rid of him. Both Michael Behe and William Harris have rolled through my parts in the past few years. Tonight we get disciples of Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya), the muslim creationist described in this article on creationism in Turkey. He's also an alleged…
January 24, 2007
Wilkins has replied to my post on species concepts.
The gist: there are a bunch of species concepts, many of which are pretty darn good.
My reply: that's awesome as long as they guide future research. The BSC provides a framework for studying reproductive isolation. Ecological species concepts are…
January 23, 2007
Because I haven't riled up Wilkins in a while.
I was chatting with a friend who has published a fairly high profile article on speciation about species concepts. We came to the conclusion that species concepts are useless unless they guide future research. Okay, we were just echoing Coyne 'n Orr.…