Genetics & Molecular Biology

Great big Fat Prize!

Great big Fat Prize!

In the beginning... Osamu Shimomura of Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, MA, USA; Martin Chalfie of Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, and Roger Y. Tsien of the University of…
John Derbyshire Misunderstands Race and Genetics

John Derbyshire Misunderstands Race and Genetics

There's been some comment recently about pundit John Derbyshire's belief that Obama will try to shut down biology because it has validated racism. Needless to say, Derbyshire is full of it, and he…
A bacterium's-eye view of life

A bacterium's-eye view of life

Howard Berg is a physicist turned systems biologist, and he's been a systems biologist long before it was trendy to be one. He's one of the smartest systems biologists around, and a nice guy too (one…
LRRK2 in the News

LRRK2 in the News

The recent announcement that Sergey Brin, the multibillionair co-founder of Google, has discovered that he possesses a genetic mutation that predisposes him to a form of Parkinson's disease has…
Is this really why we sequenced the human genome?

Is this really why we sequenced the human genome?

I usually like Nicolas Wade, but this very first sentence of a piece in this week's NY Times science section is not right: The principal rationale for the $3 billion spent to decode the human genome…