Genetics & Molecular Biology

Do computational biologists care about being right?

I'm not the only one who hates computational biologists: Zhang et al. (11), Braunewell and Bornholdt (12), Ge et al. (13), and Okabe and Sasai (14) have presented stochastic models of the yeast cell cycle based on a deterministic Boolean model from Li ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Aug 21 2009 - 11:58am

Dude Looks Like A Lady

Seriously, if you have to ask, then you should probably just keep your mouth shut. Because nothing good is going to come of asking. The question? Whether or not 18-year-old South African runner Caster Semenya, who won the 800-meter race at the World Athlet ...

Blog Post - Becky Jungbauer - Aug 21 2009 - 2:46pm

Somatic embryogenesis and DNA organization of genomes

Abstract Under identical culture conditions, only 8 out of 12 species and subspecies of the genus Daucus proved capable of somatic embryogenesis. Random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis indicated a polymorphism ...

Blog Post - Ashwani Kumar - Sep 8 2009 - 9:46am

It's Not Frankenstein, But It's A Start

Craig Venter says that in a few months, his team will have created the first genuine artificial life form. As you may recall, Venter's team did the first whole genome transplant a few years back, which involved taking the genome of one species of bact ...

Article - Michael White - Aug 23 2009 - 11:44am

Influence Of N P & K Fertilizer On Biochemical Contents Of Asparagus Racemosus (Willd.) Root Tubers

This research paper attempts to investigate the influence of N, P &K on chlorophyll, carbohydrate, proteins and sapogenin contents of Asparagus racemosus (Willd.). The treatment consisted different concentrations of Nitrogen (N 20, N 40, N 80 and ...

Article - Ashwani Kumar - Aug 24 2009 - 9:05pm

All Aboard! CendR Cargo Carrying Peptide Delivers Drugs

UC Santa Barbara scientists have revealed what they call a potential new drug delivery system- a biological mechanism for delivery of nanoparticles into tissue. They developed a peptide, a small piece of protein that can carry "cargo" for deliver ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 25 2009 - 11:51am

Not Just The Gene- Abnormal SHOX Regulation Implicated In Short Stature And Leri-Weill Syndrome

The so-called SHOX gene (short stature homeobox gene) is responsible for the normal growth of bones and is often mutated in short-stature patients. Short stature is considered when final height of an individual is no more than 160 cm (men) or 150 cm (women ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 25 2009 - 12:12pm

Systems Biology: Still New After All These Years

I've been mean to computational/network/systems biologists recently (twice). Real soon here I'm going to get into some positive aspects of these fields, but before that, I have to slam systems biology one more time. Guess which blurb was written ...

Article - Michael White - Aug 26 2009 - 9:59am

Mutation Rate In Humans Gets Measured By Direct Sequencing

In 1935 one of the founders of modern genetics, J. B. S. Haldane, studied men in London with the blood disease hemophilia and estimated that there would be a one in 50,000 incidence of mutations causing hemophilia in the gene affected – the equivalent of a ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 27 2009 - 9:01am

Establishment Of An In Vitro Clonal Propagation Method For Commercial Exploitation From A High Biomass Yielding Aloe Vera (L.) Germplasm

L. syn. A. barbadensis Mill. is a perennial, herbaceous and succulent species which belongs to the family Liliaceae. It is a short-stemmed plant bearing fleshy, mucilaginous leaves. The margin of the leaves becomes spiny with maturity. The plant is a nativ ...

Blog Post - Ashwani Kumar - Aug 26 2009 - 9:36am