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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

What Makes Cells Tick? Reverse Engineering Biological Cycles

May 16 2008 | comment(s)

Physics can explain the cycle of the earth around the sun, but what drives cellular cycles? Two of the most important cycles in cells are the series of events that take place when cells divide, and circadian rhythms - the cycle of day-night events that even bacteria participate in.

Unlike a planet, a cell's cycle can't be described by simple physical laws, nor does it have a CPU like a computer to keep time and and control the order of events. So how do cells control their cycles? Researchers have been trying to reverse engineer cell cycles, and two recent successes give a fascinating molecular view of what's going on.

How is a starving, mutant yeast like a cancer cell?

May 14 2008 | comment(s)

When yeast are starving, they do what any rational microbe would do: they stop dividing and hunker down, trying to conserve resources until the good times return. But you can trick yeast with what could be called 'unnatural starvation': you don't starve yeast by withholding natural environmental nutrients like phosphate, sulfate, or nitrogen; you starve them of nutrients that yeast in the wild normally make themselves, like the amino acid leucine. To do this, you need a mutant yeast that is an auxotroph - a yeast missing a gene essential for making leucine, for example. Normal yeast don't ordinarily starve for leucine; they can make it themselves from other nutrient building blocks.

Can science save literary criticism?

May 13 2008 | comment(s)

From the Boston Globe:

We literary scholars have mostly failed to generate surer and firmer knowledge about the things we study. While most other fields gradually accumulate new and durable understanding about the world, the great minds of literary studies have, over the past few decades, chiefly produced theories and speculation with little relevance to anyone but the scholars themselves... I think there is a clear solution to this problem. Literary studies should become more like the sciences.

Scientists really do know better!

May 12 2008 | comment(s)

This is what I keep saying: "Scientists do know better than you do - even when they're wrong." Before you flame me, hold on - this is true not because scientists are smarter than everybody else:

When you discover the jagged edges of science, you start to think, wait a minute—maybe scientists' views aren't quite as immaculate as we thought they were. Maybe ordinary people's views can weigh a little more. And I think there's some truth to this, but not as much as some of my colleagues think.

Phyllis Schlafly's Honorary Doctorate is Shaking the Foundations of Our Commitment to Research

May 11 2008 | comment(s)

As you may have read in the national press, the university where I work, Washington University in St. Louis, is honoring the anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly with an honorary doctorate at the university's commencement this week. This choice of award has generated protest, not only by faculty and students at Washington University, but also by others in higher education. But it's not the political fight between liberals and conservatives that worries me; I think there is a bigger issue at stake here, one which cuts to the heart of what a university should be about.

Capitalists, Genetic Tests And Your DNA

May 11 2008 | comment(s)

Everyone knows there is a lot of crazy stuff on the internet, but did you know there is a lot of great writing about genes, genetics, and human diseases? And believe it or not, sometimes these pieces are written by people who know what they're talking about. If you're looking for what's new in human genetics, you've come to the right place.

Welcome to the 31st Gene Genie, a blog carnival dedicated to great blogging about human genes and how they impact our health. This Mother's Day edition includes an in-depth highlight of the growing industry of personalized genetics.