Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth

From Melville's under-appreciated Mardi: On a quest for his missing love Yillah, an AWOL sailor...

Non-coding DNA Function... Surprising?

The existence of functional, non-protein-coding DNA is all too frequently portrayed as a great...

Yep, This Should Get You Fired

An Ohio 8th-grade creationist science teacher with a habit of branding crosses on his students'...

No, There Are No Alien Bar Codes In Our Genomes

Even for a physicist, this is bad: Larry Moran, in preparation for the appropriate dose of ridicule...

Michael White

Welcome to Adaptive Complexity, where I write about genomics, systems biology, evolution, and the connection between science and literature, government, and society.

I'm a biochemist

Ivory Towers are the New Smoke Stacks of Economic Development

Dec 16 2008 | comment(s)

Ivory towers are replacing smoke stacks in Alabama and all over the US.

This can be a good thing, but there is a core problem:

Until relatively recently, most universities and the cities surrounding them went about their business without taking full stock of what each meant to the other. Many local and state government leaders, notes Temple University political scientist Carolyn Adams, "don't see these institutions as having an economic development function much beyond employment and land development." For their part, hospitals and academic institutions aren't accustomed to thinking of themselves as de facto economic bigwigs or pondering the responsibilities that go along with that status; for many, the prevailing attitude toward the communities that host them has essentially been, "You should just thank your lucky stars we're here."

Sex, Drugs, but No Science at the Interior Department

Dec 16 2008 | comment(s)

Anyone surprised?

The inspector general of the Interior Department has found that agency officials often interfered with scientific work in order to limit protections for species at risk of becoming extinct, reviving attention to years of disputes overthe Bush administration’s science policies.

In a report delivered to Congress on Monday, the inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found serious flaws in the process that led to 15 decisions related to policies on endangered species.

Science Bloggers and the Internets

Dec 15 2008 | comment(s)

An editor at Nature discusses the internet and the ethics of science communication (PDF). The paper doesn't turn out to be much of a discussion of science communication on the web - the piece ends up being more of a dig at open-access publishing advocates. On top of that, the discussion of science on the internet is rather banal, making a few fairly obvious points without offering any new solutions.

Sunday Science Book Club, December 14 2008

Dec 14 2008 | comment(s)

The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Spencer Wells
Random House, 2002

Spencer Wells, in his short, accessible book designed to accompany a similarly titled documentary film, describes the deep history of humans as it has been inscribed in Y chromosomes. This history has only recently become decipherable through modern genetic tools, and the results have settled some centuries-old controversies about how humans in different parts of the world have become so diverse. The biggest surprise is that our differences are recent: the dramatic differences that distinguish Kenyans, Swedes, Han Chinese, and Polynesians all arose less than 50,000 years ago.

Obama puts Scientist in his Cabinet

Dec 11 2008 | comment(s)

Obama is going to appoint a Nobel-prize winning physicist to be his Energy Secretary. I don't know anything about the physicist, Steven Chu (except that he's director of the Lawrence Berkely National Lab), but I can't complain anymore that scientists never make it into influential positions in the Executive Branch.

Like I said, I don't know anything about Chu, but with his technical background, he ought to be comfortable dealing with issues the Energy Secretary must face, from climate change to biofuels to nuclear power and weapons.

Going Beyond Nature's Limits To Learn The Logic Of Gene Regulation

Dec 10 2008 | comment(s)

How can we share 98% of our DNA with a chimpanzee and still be so different? One of the biggest biological surprises found in our genomes is that chimps, mice, and even flies don't differ very much from us in either number or types of genes. What makes the many diverse animal groups different is not what genes they have; the secret is in how those genes are used.

Something similar takes place inside ourselves: nearly every one of our cells carries the exact same DNA, and yet some cells transmit electrical signals in the brain, while others break down toxic compounds in the liver. How do you get such different cells from the same DNA? Again, the secret lies in how genes are regulated.

It should be no surprise then that gene regulation has been the subject of intense study. Most of these studies have focused on taking known genes and describing how they are regulated, but what biologists would really like to do is predict how an unfamiliar gene is controlled, simply by analyzing that gene's regulatory DNA. Once we can predict how genes are regulated, we're not far away from being able to design new regulatory DNA, which we can use to control the fate of stem cells, manipulate dosing in gene therapy, and design microbes that make better biofuels or degrade toxic waste. A new report in Nature describes an innovative new way to learn the logic of gene regulation.