The existence of functional, non-protein-coding DNA is all too frequently portrayed as a great surprise uncovered by genome sequencing projects, both in large media outlets and in scientific publications that should have better quality control in place. Eric Lander, writing a Human Genome Project 10th anniversary retrospective in Nature, explains the real surprise about non-coding DNA that was revealed by big omics projects.
Personalized genetics is hot in the news right now, but in fact we're generally terrible at using genotypes to predict who is going to get a disease. One villain here is the phenomenon known as epistasis, which essentially means that the physiological effect of one genetic variant depends on what other genetic variants (in other genes) are hanging around in the same genome.
Eternity Soup, by Greg CritserHarmony Books, 2010Scientific Blogging's own Greg Critser has tackled the science and business of eternal youth in his latest book. It's an engaging and excellent read. Critser is a fine storyteller, mixing his discussion of science with the lively personalities of the people involved. The book covers the latest science behind aging, the people who have shaped their lifestyles around that science, and the businesses that are trying to capitalize prematurely on the science.
The big news in biotech this week is the court ruling against Myriad Genetics and gene patents. As Genomics Law Report discusses, this was an overwhelming win for the plaintiffs (which included the ACLU and various research and patients' organizations). The judge issued a summary judgement, which means 1) that both sides of the case agreed on the basic facts, and 2) the law was judged to be overwhelmingly on the plaintiff's side:
I forget how I ran across this link, but this blogger reflects on how six years of blogging has helped his work as a political analyst:
Over at Marginal Revolution economist Tyler Cowan has started one of those blog trends, and many other bloggers have followed like a pack of lemmings.
I've heard a senior colleague say that there is nothing fundamental left to be discovered in biology. It's a nagging worry some people have, including myself. What's left, according to some (including one of molecular biology's founders Sydney Brenner), is to work out the details of particular systems, implied by already established paradigms - kind like chemistry.
Information processing and entropy management - that's what organisms are about, right? Information and entropy are terms that get people excited, and yet it's extremely difficult to integrate formal ideas about information, free energy, entropy, etc. (much of this from modern statistical mechanics) into a meaningful biological framework. People (including myself) love to toss around terms like entropy and information, but in most cases I have encountered, efforts to apply these concepts to molecular/cellular biology are hopelessly vague and unhelpful. Once you get beyond the level of individual proteins in biology, it's difficult to apply some of the traditional concepts of physical chemistry.
Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance on Entropy and the Meaning of Life:We know that entropy increases as the universe evolves. But why, on the road from the simple and low-entropy early universe to the simple and high-entropy late universe, do we pass through our present era of marvelous complexity and organization, culminating in the intricate chemical reactions we know as life?...
Bad habits of ineffective science: Trends in Biochemical Sciences has a piece on Mental inertia in the biological sciences. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but the piece does contain some interesting thoughts on hot topics vs. important topics:Almost any scientist wants to work on solving an important problem, but at any given moment, it can be difficult to distinguish the topics that are ‘important’ from those that are ‘hot’. Often the scientific community does not immediately recognize the true significance of the work, and it can remain obscure for many years...
End of the World Sci-FiOryx and Crake (2003)The Year of the Flood (2009)by Margaret AtwoodIn Atwood's world of Oryx and Crake, biotechnology has ruined the world, in more ways than one. As the result of a near-omnipotent ability to manipulate biology, society has become structured around biotech consumer products and services, with a major division between the consumers and the powerful biotech companies. The consumers (the "pleebs") live in a polluted, crime-ridden world outside of the highly secure, isolated, wealthy compounds where the employees of the biotech corporations live.
Do boys and girls learn differently? Differently enough to justify sex-segregated classes and schools?The ACLU says no and is involved in a case in Louisiana:
I seem to have developed a reputation for hating networks, but really, it's just tough love. Complex, adaptive, self-organizing networks are fascinating (and inspired the title of this blog), and they deserve a rigorous scientific treatment. Decentralized control mechanisms are incredible, and, although they're all around us, they go completely against our instincts for good, hierarchical design for control systems. How does a cell adapt to environmental signals, in the absence of a brain or CPU? And how do we make our own, human-built networks as self-adaptive and robust as biological ones? In other words (for those of you who've endured lengthy lectures on the subject in physiology class), how do you effectively engineer homeostasis?
