sporte | December 30, 2006This is multipart series on antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
Check out the previous bits:
1. A primer on antibiotic resistance
2. Natural vs. synthetic drugs
Eventually, we'll reach the ways in which bacteria develop antibiotic resistance, but before we get there, we'll spend a little more time on antibiotics themselves.
What have we learned so far?
1. Antibiotics are natural products, made by bacteria and some fungi.
We have also learned about the difference between antibiotics and synthetic drugs. There isn't always a clear distinction since chemical groups can be added to…
sporte | December 26, 2006In case you missed it, the December edition of Animalcules is posted at Aetiology. Look for lots of enjoyable reading about our invisible friends.
sporte | December 22, 2006Bacteria can cause other epidemics, why not obesity? Is there a relationship between our body weight and our bacterial inhabitants?
Two reports in Nature (1, 2) suggest that bacterial populations differ between people who are obese and people who not, and that the bacterial inhabitants of their guts, may be partly to blame.
In one study, the authors studied the bacterial populations of their volunteers' intestines by compiling a data set of 18,348 DNA sequences for bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA by sampling feces. Wow! That's a lot of ... well, I won't say it, but you know what I mean. In…
sporte | December 21, 2006Yes, indeed the DVDs are now available on a first-come, first serve basis.
The NSTA has a link to the DVD giveaway page. And the NABT (National Association of Biology Teachers) has written about it, too.
From the NABT:
The DVD's will be given away starting Monday, December 18, 2006 thru Thursday, January 18, 2007. Teachers are encouraged to log on to www.participate.net to request the DVD, which will be delivered within 6-8 weeks. Every teacher must provide a nine-digit federal tax ID number belonging to the school where they teach.
A free downloadable curriculum guide to accompany An…
sporte | December 21, 2006
Her name is Flora and she is a single parent. Born in Miami, Flora moved to Chester, UK, as a toddler. Now, she's almost 8 years old and starting a family, all on her own.
Literally.
Four eggs have hatched and another eight are ready to go. Yet, Flora has never gotten cozy with another male dragon.
How did Flora accomplish this feat and how do we know that she's not just good at keeping secrets?
Flora's not the only one
Parthenogenesis -- reproduction without the need for fertilization by a male -- has been observed before in about 70 vertebrate species, including snakes and monitor…
sporte | December 8, 2006Laurie David claims that National Science Teachers' Association (the NSTA) is inconveniently hooked up with big oil because they won't spend the money to send out 50,000 copies of the "An Inconvenient Truth" DVD.
If I do the math and estimate that it costs $4 to mail each DVD, that includes packaging, mailing, the costs of hiring a distribution center, I get $4 x 50,000 = $200,000. I think that's an expensive gift.
Is there really a smoking gun?
For the record, I saw the movie and personally, I would like a large number of teachers and students to see it, too. But, I'm bothered by Ms.…
sporte | December 7, 2006Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor (dubbed the Tripoli six) may be executed soon by the Libyan government for the crime of deliberately infecting over 400 children with HIV. If they did infect the children, this would be a horrendous crime. If they did not infect the children, it's the Libyan government that will be killing innocent people.
The clock is ticking.
Some of you might be wondering (I know I was): How exactly is molecular sequence data being used to solve the crime? Why are scientists and science bloggers claiming that the Tripoli six are innocent?
Let's begin by…
sporte | December 1, 2006In which I present a quick guide for the omically challenged and a defense of 'arth and "ome."
Other SciBloggers have shared their thoughts on the use of ome here and here.
Sometimes I get frustrated too, with the way language is abused and tweaked by those around me. So many word pairs that once made phrases—;log in, data set, file name, set up, and pick up—;have been condensed into single words, that I've had to start using Google to double-check my editing. Perhaps it's surprising then, that I like "ome," "omics," and even Sydney Brenner's chief phrase-to-hate, "systems biology."
I…
sporte | November 30, 2006Some of my fellow bloggers and I have been following the fall out from an Op Ed piece in the Washington Post on the NSTA's refusal to mail 50,000 copies of the "An Inconvient Truth" DVD to it's members. You can read earlier posts: here, here, and here.
Today, the NSTA confirmed that they never said David couldn't provide the film free to NSTA members, it's just that they don't mail out third party materials to members without their consent or request.
From the NSTA pressroom:On November 29, 2006, NSTA's Board of Directors held a telephone conference to review Ms. David's request. In an…
sporte | November 30, 2006The EMBL graduate students have organized an ingenious conference titled: Life Sciences - Shaping the Future. Learn about Omics and Systems Biology from speakers like Leroy Hood, Stuart Kim, and Ronald Krause (and more). Explore options for career development, and learn how you can join the Web 2.0 science revolution in the session on scientific communication.
The conference will take place Dec. 4th-8th, 2006. Don't worry if you don't have a plane ticket or a place to stay, you're virtually there. How? It's all on-line.
Some of you might be wondering how a virtual conference works.
1…
sporte | November 29, 2006What's the difference between a synthetic drug and an antibiotic?
Sometimes there's no difference at all.
Let's take a look at chloramphenicol and couple of pencillins.
Chloramphenicol kills many different kinds of bacteria by interfering with their ability to make new proteins. Here's a point where language gets tricky. Originally, chloramphenicol was isolated and purified from Streptomyces (a kind of bacteria). But, chloramphenicol is small and chemists are able to synthesize it. So even though we consider antibiotics to be natural products, they don't have to be made in a "natural…
sporte | November 28, 2006One of my favorite books, "The Phantom Tollbooth," by Norton Juster, has a wonderful description of the penalties for making decisions without carefully evaluating the facts. Whenever the characters in the book arrive at a decision too quickly, they end up, literally, "jumping to Conclusions," an island far off the shore.
The penalty for quick blog posts isn't so high. And, I'm pretty certain that no blogger has been stranded on a distant island for writing something without having all the facts. Still, it seems that the story of the offered "An Inconvenient Truth" DVDs, wasn't as…
sporte | November 28, 2006Antibiotics are molecules of biological warfare.
Produced by bacteria and some fungi, in response to extracellular signals, antibiotics represent a diverse group of compounds that inhibit bacterial growth at different points and different stages of the life cycle.
We will get around to antibiotic resistance, but in these few words, I think I already wrote quite a bit. Admittedly, some of these ideas need a bit of chewing, if they are to be properly digested. Already, I can imagine hands raised and questions waiting to be asked.
What are antibiotics made of?
I'm confused about this idea…
sporte | November 27, 2006A few years ago, I heard an interesting thing from another mother when I picked my oldest daughter up from daycare. The other mother was suffering from a head cold and confessed to me her fear that she had become "antibiotic resistant."
I found this statement pretty funny at the time, especially since I was teaching microbiology to college students.
Over the years, though, the joke quit being funny. Now I suspect that the worry voiced by the "antibiotic resistant" mother is shared by many people. It should also be noted that my anxious friend is an educated professional and at the time,…
sporte | November 22, 2006If you're still awake tomorrow after the feast and managing to withstand the sopoforic effects of the tryptophan from the turkey and the carbohydrates from the potatoes and pie, you might want to consider doing a little science at home. Fellow SciBlings Tara Smith (here & here), Mike Dunford (here & here), GrrlScientist, and I (here) have all experimented with the wonders of Mentos and carbonated soft drinks.
Orac even found a Mentos and Diet Coke plug for organ donation. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself.
Now, it's your turn. According to the WSTA…
sporte | November 22, 2006Random remembrance #1. December 1st is world AIDS day. On December 1st, I will mourn for my former colleagues, students and acquaintances who've died from AIDS.
Random random reminder #2. Bloggers, Ron Hudson from the International Carnival of Pozivities will be putting together stories about AIDS and HIV. The next carnival isn't until Dec. 10th, but you can still submit.
Random blog comment #3: After the last International Carnival of Pozivities, I had a very odd comment on my article.
One commenter wrote:Uhhhhh. Can you name a society that doesn't acknowledge that STD's spread via…
sporte | November 14, 2006A few weeks ago, I wrote about visiting the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Pacific Science Center and learning how DNA analysis is being used to help put pieces of the scrolls together.
One of the mysteries that was discussed in the exhibit was the question of whether the members of the religous sect living in nearby Qumran were the authors or at least the owners of the scrolls.
It appears that the owners left other clues behind that have answered this question.
One of the distinctive aspects of the Essenes, who lived in Qumran, was their obsession with achieving purity. So obsessed…
sporte | November 8, 2006I touched a nerve in another post by mentioning molecular biology kits.
Let's face it. Cloning kits, sequencing kits, and their relatives are the laboratory equivalent of frozen cookie dough.
With frozen cookie dough, anyone can bake hot, steamy, chocolate chip cookies that taste great. You don't have to read a recipe, do any math, or figure out how to "cream" butter and sugar together. Just spoon the dough on the pan, put the pan in the oven, and 10 short minutes later: ummm, cookies.
Lab work and cooking have much in common. At one time, only a few people were good cooks. Now,…
sporte | November 7, 2006This is worth taking a look. Go see the 2006 winners in the Nikon Small World Gallery.
There are lovely images of the nuclei in a mouse colon, cyanobacteria and a diatom, a fluorescent aquatic worm, a lovely picture of a transgenic tobacco species, a beautiful picture of a sea urchin embryo in metaphase, a lovely image of some Hela cancer cells, and so very much more, that I can't believe you're still here. Off you go!
sporte | November 7, 2006BioMed Central has gone beyond conventional scientific publishing and started including movie supplements to scientific papers. I saw this one in my e-mail box and couldn't resist.
After all, if you don't have access to a microscope, equipped with a digital video camera, how are you supposed to see these sorts of things?
I took a look at the article from Neural Development, from Zolessi, et. al. comparing the development of retinal ganglion cells in vitro and in vivo. In the movie, linked below, the first cell looks a bit like a child playing "Pin the tail on the Donkey." He/She (the…