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.
John Timmer comments on the problem of modern biomedical research and statistics: we can now measure so much more than our statistics can handle. In a typical genome-wide association study, you're testing so many hypotheses that the favored 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001 p-values from Stats 101 just don't cut it anymore."We're so good at medical studies that most of them are wrong:"
Babylonian astronomy sounds a lot like some areas of omics/computational biology today:Looking back at Babylonian astronomy from the twentieth century, one is struck by two things: the care with which the records were kept, and the mathematical brilliance of the predictive techniques. Eventually, science was to owe a great debt to the Babylonian astronomers, for speculative theories about the Heavens could, in the long run, be tested only by seeing how far they explained the observed motions of the heavenly bodies. The Babylonian material was to be fundamental
Most science talks I listen to, even good ones, leave me dissatisfied because the stories I hear never come to a complete resolution. The issue is this: we can get from traits to genes, and from genes to molecular biology. But we have largely failed at getting from molecular biology back to the characteristics of organisms. We don't do a good job explaining organismal traits with molecular biology.
Life can be brutal for yeast in the wild. You don't know where your next meal is coming from or what form it's going to take. The key to being a successful yeast is to be metabolically agile, able to switch your metabolic state quickly based on the food source that's currently available on the bark of an oak tree or in the leaf litter of a forest floor.
The FBI yesterday released a 104-page report laying out its case the the 2001 anthrax attacks were committed by a US Army bioweapons researcher, Dr. Bruce Ivans. Some are arguing that this report isn't conclusive and that the FBI is closing the case prematurely. I can't speak to that, at least in any informed way, but if the FBI is correct, you've got a chilling, classic evil scientist scenario:
When asked to justify the research I do, I always struggle a little to explain my dissatisfaction with the traditional descriptive, non-quantitative explanations of molecular biological systems. As a glance at a classic molecular cell biology textbook will easily demonstrate, molecular biologists have been tremendously successful with verbal or semi-quantitative explanations of what goes on inside the cell. And in any case, the complexity of the cell is extremely daunting for the would-be theoretical biologist.
The question of whether record snows in the Northeast US says something about climate change is a scientific question. The NY Times shows us how not to report on a scientific issue:Skeptics of global warming are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change — this looks more like global cooling, they taunt.Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events.
The trial over gene patents, Association for Molecular Pathology, et al. v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, et al., is beginning. Discover summarizes the case:When Lisbeth Ceriani, a 43-year-old Massachusetts woman, was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, her doctors recommended that she undergo genetic testing to see if she carried mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that increase risk of breast and ovarian cancers...
You're living as part of a small band of hunter-gatherers 30,000 years ago in what will later become France. How do you explain the fact that a stone, when dropped, falls to the earth? How do you even begin to think about gravity?People sometimes wrinkle their noses when, in the context of explaining the meaning of the word 'theory' in science, you talk about the 'theory of gravity'. Gravity is a fact, isn't it? But from our 21st century perspective, we take too much of 2000 years of theoretical developments for granted. So try to imagine how you would even begin to think about gravity if you were living in a cave 30,000 years ago.Aristotle
What kinds of genetic changes are required to evolve significant changes in body shape and size? The availability of affordable, state-of-the-art DNA sequencing and array technology has made it possible to study evolution at a level of molecular detail inaccessible just a decade ago.
Since when has systems biology been a synonym for genomics?This is from a Perspective piece in the Oct. 2 issue of Science:The relative value of discovery aimed at hypothesis generation versus hypothesis testing has been debated. High-profile journals publish systems biology studies, including the human genome sequence, but most papers focus on hypothesis-driven investigations.
It's not hard to find scare stories about cell phones and brain cancer. On the other hand, numerous randomized, double-blind studies have debunked extreme claims of negative health effects of EMF exposure.So what should you believe? Is the cell phone industry, like the tobacco industry in the past, covering up evidence for the harmful effects of cells phones?
