Genetics & Molecular Biology

You're sitting in a room filled with a gazillion air molecules- how likely is it that most of those air molecules will spontaneously end up in the corner of the room opposite of where you're sitting? Most likely you're not too concerned abou ...

Article - Michael White - May 22 2009 - 5:41pm

Old News: Biology is more than the sum of its parts

Systems biology is a trendy field right now, but, despite the fact that it's hyped as some amazing, new, holistic approach to biology, the questions systems biologists are asking aren't new. Check out this paper from 1985: a model of an extremely ...

Blog Post - Michael White - May 21 2009 - 11:03pm

Erlotinib Is For Lung Cancer But With The 'Happy Hour' Gene Discovery It May Cure Alcoholism

A class of drugs already approved as cancer treatments might also help to beat alcohol addiction. That's the conclusion of a discovery in flies of a gene, dubbed happyhour, that has an important and previously unknown role in controlling the insects&# ...

Article - News Staff - May 21 2009 - 11:20pm

Hedgehog Molecule- Why The Thumb Of The Right Hand Is On The Left Hand Side

It is the concentration of a few signaling molecules that determines the fate of individual cells during the early development of organisms, say a team of molecular biologists writing in Current Biology. Pia Aanstad of the University of Innsbruck and col ...

Article - News Staff - May 22 2009 - 9:47am

new GFP's discovered

I just saw over on Science Daily that they have found lots of new Green Flourescent Proteins in Amphioxus, aka the lancelet (which is the closest invertebrate relative to our phylum, Chordata). The article, with a nice green glowing picture, is here. ...

Blog Post - Mrs. H. - May 22 2009 - 10:12am

Superbugs Not So Bad? Sometimes They Help Our Immune System

It appears that some superbugs have evolved to develop the ability to manipulate the immune system- and that can be a good thing, say a team of researchers at The University of Western Ontario. Some processes that reduce the lethal effects of toxins from s ...

Article - News Staff - May 24 2009 - 1:10pm

Some Free Genetic Counseling

I happened to get my hands on some interesting literature on pre-natal genetic screening, literature that amply reinforces my impression that clinical genetic testing is still in the dark ages. Let's say you (or your wife/fiance/girlfriend) are pregna ...

Article - Michael White - May 26 2009 - 10:51am

Talking Mice? No, But Their FOXP2 'Speech' Gene Can Tell Us About Our Evolutionary Past

Following on the heels of 'missing links' in the popular media earlier this month, you might expect that research on mice carrying a "humanized version" of a gene believed to influence speech and language will have references to cartoon ...

Article - News Staff - May 28 2009 - 1:30pm

Scientists Take Us One Step Closer To A Talking Mouse

FOXP2 may be the gene that makes us human- or so the hype goes. Hyped or not, FOXP2 is rightly a focus of intense research, since it is a gene that clearly has a major effect on human speech. Mutations in FOXP2 are responsible for some rare but strange la ...

Article - Michael White - May 28 2009 - 7:05pm

Male Biological Clock And IQ: Much Ado About Nothing

"The men are getting really angry and the women are a little too gleeful,” wrote New York Times columnist Lisa Belkin commenting on the overwhelming response she got for an article on a new study that found that men, too, may have a “biological clock ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - May 29 2009 - 12:32am