Genetics & Molecular Biology

Genomic Junk And Transcriptional Noise

With hot, new technologies, biologists are taking higher-resolution snapshots of what's going on inside the cell, but the results are stirring up controversy. One of the most interesting recent discoveries is that transcription is everywhere: DNA is t ...

Article - Michael White - May 8 2009 - 11:18am

Engineering Biology Step By Step

Engineering A Biological Pulse Generator I've got my issues with synthetic biology. Either synthetic biologists do something trivial dressed up in elaborate engineering language, or they achieve something impressive and complex the old fashioned way ( ...

Article - Michael White - May 6 2009 - 12:34pm

Off-the-shelf synthetic biology parts are a pipe dream

Will we ever have a set of standardized biochemical devices that synthetic biologists can snap together to make more complex systems? I'm skeptical that any single standardized biological device will hold up well under very different cellular contexts ...

Blog Post - Michael White - May 6 2009 - 12:36pm

Time To Ditch Embryonic Stem Cells?

There's a line that politicians opposed to embryonic stem cell research have been peddling lately: recent breakthroughs in stem cell technology have now made ethically questionable embryonic stem cell research obsolete and unnecessary. This isn' ...

Article - Michael White - May 6 2009 - 12:30pm

The Relationship Between Physicists and Biologists

As Feynman told the story in late 1959: We have friends in other fields---in biology, for instance. We physicists often look at them and say, "You know the reason you fellows are making so little progress?" (Actually I don't know any field w ...

Blog Post - Michael White - May 7 2009 - 4:22pm

Can Old Genes Learn New Tricks?

Can fundamental genes acquire new functions?  A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Indiana University Bloomington biologist Armin Moczek and research associate Debra Rose reports that two ancient genes were "co-opted&q ...

Article - News Staff - May 11 2009 - 5:43pm

Blood Stem Cells Go With The Flow

A new report published in Cell says that a heart beat and blood circulation are critical signals for the production of blood-forming, or hematopoietic, stem cells in the developing embryo. ...

Article - News Staff - May 13 2009 - 12:55pm

When It Comes To Genomes, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Our genome is a patchwork of neighborhoods that couldn't be more different: Some areas are hustling and bustling with gene activity, while others are sparsely populated and in perpetual lock-down. Breaking down just a few of the molecular fences that ...

Article - News Staff - May 16 2009 - 8:04pm

Tame Silver Foxes And The Origin Of Dogs

Take a look at your dog. If you don't have a dog, then check this out: Figure 1. What dogs may look like. ...

Article - Andrew Lamperski - May 26 2009 - 9:57am

Excess Baggage Or Genomic Force Of Nature? Junk DNA Gets Some New Respect

Scientists sometimes regret when the terms they use in a scientific way get a colloquial meaning.   In physics, Peter Higgs has to like his name recognition but might edit out references to a ' God particle ' if he had it to do over again, and in ...

Article - News Staff - May 20 2009 - 12:31pm