Stacey Smith
I'm a graduate student studying the molecular and biochemical evolution of HIV within patients and within populations. I also study epigenetic control of ERVs.
sa smith
Posts by this author
November 10, 2008
File this under "Whoa thats cool! But its not really a realistic solution for the AIDS pandemic."
It sounds like a cruel joke, but HIV patients have increased odds of developing leukemias and lymphomas. These cancers arent necessarily directly related to HIV (there is no reason to think HIV-1 is…
November 6, 2008
This is a repost from the old ERV. A retrotransposed ERV :P I dont trust them staying up at Blogger, and the SEED overlords are letting me have 4 reposts a week, so Im gonna take advantage of that!
Im with Orac. I was pretty grossed out when I read about Robert F. Kenneys potential position as…
November 6, 2008
WONT SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CREATIONISTS!!!
No more will they have Captain IDiot in the White House.
Tina Fey Sarah Palins dinosaur-human porno fantasies are a fading dream.
What do they have left? WHAT DO THEY HAVE LEFT??
Look at this!
LOOK AT IT!
Creationists, reduced to recycling ancient…
November 5, 2008
I survived yesterday :) Back to normal science programming soon.
But for all of you working to ween yourself off of politics news, Ive got a nicotine patch for ya: Freepers and RR.
Bask in the schadenfreude. Come down off the laughing gas. Get back to work :P
OH! And Im sure you all know what…
November 4, 2008
This is going to be the best day ever.
I have my first committee meeting this morning (the group of people who tell you when/if you can ever graduate).
I have an Advanced Micro test this afternoon (I am a complete moron when it comes to bacteria, this is going to be fun).
And then the goddamned…
November 2, 2008
I realize Ive had a pretty 'lucky' upbringing, for an atheist. My family is rather non-theistic-- Our idea of 'Christmas' was/is Santa, presents, and ordering pizza. 'Passover' is watching 'The Ten Commandments' on TV. At the dinner table we would make fun of stupid things theists did ('AHAHA!…
November 2, 2008
A friend of a friend is a comedian/singer in NYC, Ben Lerman. Ben hatched a nefarious plot to stop Proposition Hate-- To quote Margaret Cho, "Behind every gay man is a steadfast and supportive fag hag" (show of hands, who took a gay boy to prom in high school?). To capitalize on this historical…
October 29, 2008
Who cried watching the Obamamercial?
Because the status quo is not quo:
October 29, 2008
Back in 2006, I wrote a short note on the use of pigs for organ transplants.
Why the hell was I interested in pig organs? Well, pigs can be genetically engineered to be almost perfect organ donors for humans that need transplants. Perfect... except for the fact pigs have PERVs like humans have…
October 27, 2008
So I saw EXPELLED this weekend.
My review is two words: Thats it?
Thats it? Thats what caused a humagiganitisoid blagosphere hubub? OMG it was so boring! I got bored 15 minutes in, started cleaning the apartment while watching. Made it to 45 minutes in before just paused it and watched a…
October 22, 2008
Whoa!
I dont know how much stock to put into this particular paper, but some (potentially) incredible data just came out in Journal of Virology:
Human endogenous retrovirus K (HML-2) elements in the plasma of people with lymphoma and breast cancer
HERV-K (human endogenous retroviral family K) are…
October 21, 2008
WARNING: This post is just a rant against a review article Im too impatient to deal with today. Its really just a rant. heh.
Hey, you know whats even better than having 'science reporters' use the term 'junk DNA' in their pop-science articles?
A 'real' scientist using the term 'junk DNA' in…
October 20, 2008
YAAAAAY!!!
The EXPELLED DVD is coming out soon!!
EXPELLED!
Starring, BEN STEIN!
Featuring, BEN STEIN!
"FOUR STARS! I Love This Film!"-- BEN STEIN!
heeeeeeeehehehehe!
BEN STEIN!!!! **JAZZHANDS**
Well, I encourage you all to go to EXPELLEDs website to vote in their poll:
"Do you think Darwin's…
October 17, 2008
I love the intrawebz!
I was bopping around on Google last night, looking for neat info about Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (post on that later!), and I stumbled upon a really awesome article from 1994:
The use of Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV) in genetic engineering: 35S Promoter (CaMV) in Calgene's…
October 16, 2008
Wednesday nights battle was epic.
I cant believe its over.
Congratulations Leanne Marshall!!!
Oh. And that other brawl-- that was pretty fun too! "Womens health. PFF!"
October 14, 2008
After generations of humans whined and moaned about how awful viruses are, turns out those 'wads of nucleic acid and protein' might just save our sorry asses when we ruin Earth and are forced to establish colonies on other planets/moons.
A key to establishing permanent residence on another planet…
October 14, 2008
Uh oh. I must be leaking 'Mean Girl' toxins into our water supply, or something, cause now Rachael Maddow is infected.
Civil discourse! Wont anyone rise to the challenge of civil discourse??
Sure, McCains camp is encouraging people at their rallies to kill Obama, but Maddow talking about…
October 13, 2008
There was a lot wrong with Micheal 'Lilo' Behes description of HIV-1 in last years book, 'Edge of Evolution'. There is a lot of discussion in the Evilutionist community as to what constitutes a Creationist, but there are a few mistakes Creationists continually make when trying to argue against…
October 12, 2008
From these negative reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, I knew 'Religulous' was gonna be good:
"[Maher's] scattershot and ad hominem attacks against many different forms of religious hypocrisy don't add up to a coherent critique, and he's not qualified to provide one."
"One of the rules of satire is that…
October 9, 2008
I fell in love with Claire McCaskill my Junior year of high school. I 'got' to go to Girls State, which was hands down, one of the worst weeks of my life. It was death by boredom (well, we almost died by tornado). The only time I smiled that week was when I got to hear Claire speak. She really…
October 8, 2008
Wow! Awesome time at the Viral Evolution conference! But now I have a ton of work/blogging to catch up on!
First and foremost:
I must have had a near-death experience this weekend, or something, cause I was in heaven. Get this-- I got to see two gods in abiogenesis, Susanna Manrubia and Valerian…
October 3, 2008
So while you all were having fun watching the VP debate last night, I was at (am at) Viral Evolution 2008 listening to Marco Vignuzzi and Susanna Manrubia and Evilutionary Biologist talk about viral evolution. We are also drinking beer.
Im.
So.
Happy.
BRB!
October 2, 2008
Holy crap.
Do you guys remember how Per Ahlberg got his big break? He sifted through the fossil collection at the London Natural History Museum, found friggen tetrapod?
Someone just did the same thing with HIV-1.
Michael Worobey dug through prehistoric (1960s hehe) tissue samples hunting for early…
September 26, 2008
A few years ago, I went to see 'Good Night, and Good Luck' with some friends. Afterwards we loled at the fact that in order to see reporters kicking ass and taking names, we had to watch a movie.
I am loling no longer. Campbell Brown is on a friggin roll!!! Remember the RNC, when she asked '…
September 25, 2008
61 votes from 61 American Nobel Prize winners, 1960-2007.
Yes, scientists are pissed about the money (the lack of money) in scientific research right now... but its not just about the money. Its about the fact that Obama has stated time and time again that he is interested in The Science. Not how…
September 25, 2008
Creationists: Experts in being arrogant idiots.
These sources promoting the classic "junk DNA" icon of neo-Darwinism need updating, as a Yale University news release from earlier this month recalls the fact that "[i]n the last several years, scientists have discovered that non-coding regions of the…
September 23, 2008
News #1
Felicia Day, the cutest girl on the internet, is going to be a guest patient on House tonight.
If you are Bill O'Reilly or Oprah Winfrey and you dont know who Felicia Day is, welcome to the internet! Get your butt over to Hulu to watch 'Dr. Horrible', and YouTube to watch 'The Guild'.
News…
September 22, 2008
Okay, so there are like 20,000 polar bears left.
4,000 tigers.
1,600 Pandas.
Meh, who cares, right? I mean, there are still some. 1,600 plus the ones in zoos. 'Endangered' animals are fine! Yeah... No. Minor problem with decreasing population numbers: Its more than just the numbers. Its…
September 18, 2008
This past Tuesday a troupe of SciBlog readers met up in OKC for pizza, beer, and cookies!!
Ill leave it to readers to out themselves if they want (or email me to anonymize you!), but I had to put up a funny pic of Logan, my partner-in-crime from Dembskis infamous OU visit:
And a pic of the good…
September 17, 2008
Though HIV-1 is the retrovirus that gets all the press these days, it was not the first human retrovirus discovered. The 'first' human retrovirus was discovered in 1980-- Human T-lymphotropic virus, HTLV.
HTLV has a couple of things in common with HIV-1-- Though it is not a lentivirus, it is still…