MigrationsMigrationsCells, birds, and musings from a biologist Articles
Centriole Biogenesis: Polo-like Kinase as a vital factor?
2007-08-23 17:06:00 I’ve been reading up on centriole biogenesis and centrosome duplication - look for more posts from myself on topics such as this: Plk4-Induced Centriole Biogenesis in Human Cells [Dev Cell. 2007 Aug;13(2):190-202]. From the introduction: We have previously shown that overexpression of Plk4 in human cells causes the recruitment of electron-dense material onto the proximal ... More About: Vital , Factor , Trio , Actor , Polo
Lying Filth of the Discovery Institute
2007-08-23 15:30:00 Now the lying filth of the Discover y Institute (the ones trying to replace science with theology) are coming out with a movie, based upon the premise that scientists are persecuting those proclaiming that it is ?inappropriate? for anyone to teach ?views that differ from evolution? in any ?life, earth, and physical science courses.” Only in the ... More About: Creationism , Lying
A Reasonable Proposition
2007-08-22 16:59:00 Via Iron Wolf: So my modest proposal is that believers, particularly those who hold to some form of presuppositionalism, finally come clean and publicly declare that they believe for no reason at all, and that they will henceforth no longer attempt to use reason, science, or anything that looks like them to back their claims. ... More About: Religion , Posi , Sona , Prop , Position
We Live in a Dynamic, Evolving World
2007-08-21 21:41:00 In this week’s news, we hear of still more creationists who continue to insist that life has never evolved since the birth of the universe, despite the vast wealth of natural history which we have at our fingertips. Funny enough, it seems a common feature of the human condition that political ideology often retains ... More About: Science , World , Live , Dynamic , Nami
Cells Weekly #42
2007-08-19 18:49:00 The image above is from the work of Del Alamo et al., in the August 14th PNAS, on the Spatio-temporal analysis of eukaryotic cell motility by improved force cytometry. In the interests of promoting science posts relating (however broadly) to my interests of cell and molecular biology, here?s my biweekly installment of ?Cells Weekly ,? a showcase ...
Migrating Monarchs
2007-08-17 17:00:00 I’ll be away till Sunday, but for related Migrations reading, check out Keith’s post on King of the Mona rchs at Omics! Omics!, or my Del.icio.us bookmarks. More About: Narc
Pilgrimages and Migrations
2007-08-16 12:51:00 Here’s a contribution from John Bryden (below the horizontal line; my comments are much below the fold, following another line) Here?s an angle that seems kind of appropriate to put forward on a blog entitled Migrations. A paper by historian Bernard Lewis surveying middle eastern personal travel starts by discussing the Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage. He writes: ?I ... More About: Religion , Grim , Pilgrimage , Ages
Cellular Evolution Papers
2007-08-15 16:40:00 Back in July, BioEssays had a slew of interesting papers on cellular evolution, and July had another, that I thought worth mentioning: Finding treasures in frozen cells: new centriole intermediates - recent findings from cryo-electron tomography give insights into centriole biogenesis. Evolution of size and pattern in the social amoebas - The fruiting bodies of slime molds ... More About: Cellular , Papers
Fishy Migration
2007-08-14 04:16:00 In one report, appearing in the journal Hydrobiologia, a team of international scientists documented two giant bluefins tagged within minutes of each other off the coast of Ireland. The two fish swam to opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean?ending up more than 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) apart. One of the fish traveled 3,730 miles (6,000 kilometers) southwest ... More About: Biophilia , Marine Science
Open Thread: Positivism and Philosophy of Science
2007-08-12 19:32:00 In last week’s ‘cells weekly’, I made a reference to MikeGene’s disingenuous search for anything science-looking that could support his preconceived worldview, calling him a crank. This apparently drew some attention from a couple of like-minded individuals (Doug and BrianJ) - interestingly, they didn’t want to discuss any empirical evidence on the ‘evolution gene’ ... More About: Philosophy , Science , Open , Thread , Posi
Relieving Tensin Relaxes Cells, Helps Migration
2007-08-10 22:58:00 Brief note on a paper in the August issue of Nature Cell Biology - researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel have found how one adaptor protein can be replaced by another related protein, uncoupling the connections between the extracellular matrix (ECM) and the actin cytoskeleton through integrins. This family of gene products, termed ... More About: Cancer , Ving
A Different Drummer: Lawrence?s Goldfinch
2007-08-07 17:25:00 Among the more oddball migration patterns would have to be Lawrence ’s Goldfinch (Carduelis lawrencei), which moves mostly to the east and west, rather than northward and southward, between seasons. Most, but not always all, of these birds leave northern, central, and inland southern California in winter. They move into the coastal lowlands and into ... More About: Drummer , Diff
Lives of a Cell
2007-08-06 16:43:00 Twenty-odd years before anyone had conceived of blogging, much less blogging about science, Lewis Thomas was publishing a handful of books that were on science, creative and pithy, and little more than a collection of loosely-connected essays. Lives of a Cell : Notes of a Biology Watcher, is one of his more popular collections, and ... More About: Books
Cells Weekly #41
2007-08-05 20:00:00 If biologists have ignored self-organization, it is not because self-ordering is not pervasive and profound. It is because we biologists have yet to understand how to think about systems governed simultaneously by two sources of order, Yet who seeing the snowflake, who seeing simple lipid molecules cast adrift in water forming themselves into cell-like hollow ... More About: Weekly
Religion and Ethnocentrism: Is Religion Adaptive?
2007-08-03 16:50:00 A couple months ago I noted a class that Allen MacNeill was preparing to teach during summer session here at Cornell, titled Evolution and Religion : Is Religion Adaptive ?. More specifically, it sought to address the question “Is the Capacity for Religious Experience Adaptive” in a seminar format, with readings of Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, ...
Tangled Bank 85 - The Reductionist?s Tale
2007-08-01 12:59:00 Meet the Digesting Duck, which followed the principles of Descartes?s mechanistic universe. The implication from this is that we’re just machines, but that’s nonsense. What’s explicit in Descartes’ Universe is that we can begin to understand complex things by studying the most fundamental aspects of them - a concept that we’ve come to ... More About: Bank , Redu , Tangled , Tale , Tang
Cells Weekly #40
2007-07-29 17:34:00 From Figure 4 of Christodoulou et al., 2006 [J Cell Sci 119, 2035-47]. Nuclei from mitotic stages, from left: prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase. Overlay colors from indirect immunofluorescence: alpha-tubulin (red), KIFC5A (green), DNA (blue). In the interests of promoting science posts relating (however broadly) to my interests of cell and molecular biology, here?s my weekly ... More About: Weekly
Toward Giving Artificial Cells The Ability To Move
2007-07-29 02:37:00 This is a bit outside my area of knowledge - I’m not a chemist - but I noticed on Science Daily recently a story about chemists trying to develop self-propelled oil droplets that could provide a basis for giving artificial cells the ability to move. The new study focuses on “another essential and perhaps more ... More About: Giving , Move , Ving , The A
Bacterial Cytoskeleton
2007-07-27 22:09:00 [Figure 1 from Shih and Rothfield (2006); click on image to enlarge] Recently, Alex had asked for a mention of the bacterial cytoskeleton, which does deserve mention. As Shih and Rothfield describe, the amino acid sequences of eukaryotic and bacterial cytoskeletal monomers bear minimal resemblance to one another. Their 3-dimensional structures, however, bear striking ... More About: Cell Biology , Rial , Teri , Kele
Truth in Science and Politics
2007-07-26 22:36:00 The Union of Concerned Scientists Science Idol contest winner has been announced! I kinda like the fact that the cartoon that I voted for won - and I voted for it because it was the most to-the-point and eye-catching of the lot. The abuse of science these days, largely perpetrated by the Right, ... More About: Politics , Truth , Poli , Politic
2nd Call: Tangled Bank and the Most Fundamental Units of Science
2007-07-26 15:54:00 Whether it be atoms or cells or other discrete units, most of the sciences are reductionist. We seek to find and understand much of the world around us in the smallest terms. At what level should we focus? This will be the theme for next week’s Tangled Bank , to be hosted here. Please ... More About: Science , Administrative , Call , Units
Tumors and Cancer Stem Cells Again
2007-07-25 15:28:00 Last week’s Science has another Brief on the ‘Stem Cell Theory of Cancer ,’ with a nicely critical slant - Tumor Growth Need Not Be Driven by Rare Cancer Stem Cells , by Kelly et al. Determining whether the growth of various tumors is sustained by most of the tumor cells or by a rare subpopulation has important ...
Supporting Science
2007-07-23 16:24:00 The July 13th issue of Science had a letter that I want to take a post to draw attention to. In it, James Gentile (President of the private funder Research Corporation) responds to John Marburger (Bush’s science advisor), who recently called for U.S. researchers to rely more on private philanthropy and industry to expand ...
Cells Weekly #39
2007-07-22 17:32:00 [From Carmen Laethem, Aerie Pharmaceuticals, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA - Primary porcine trabecular meshwork cells (20x)] In the interests of promoting science posts relating (however broadly) to my interests of cell and molecular biology, here’s my weekly installment of “Cells Weekly ,” a showcase of topical blog posts by others from the past week. Enjoy! Cell ...
Icons of Migration: Bar-headed Goose
2007-07-20 15:36:00 The superlative for the highest altitude migrant goes to the Bar-headed Goose (Anser indicus), which has been seen at up to 33,382 feet (10175 m). This bird, which breeds in Central Asia, migrates through the Himalayan range. The air at these heights is so thin that helicopters cannot fly there and kerosene cannot burn. ... More About: Icons , Cons
Tangled Bank: Call for Submissions
2007-07-19 19:36:00 Jeremy at The Voltage Gate has issue #84 of the Tang led Bank : Science in Ancient Greece. And in just under two weeks, I’ll be hosting the 85th Tangled Bank, so send in your contributions! Please send them to “cellsnbirds” at Gmail.com (or “host” at tangledbank.net) by Tuesday at Noon (EDT), July 31st. ... More About: Administrative , Call
Cells Weekly #38
2007-07-15 19:31:00 Orgel’s Second Rule: “Evolution is cleverer than you are.” Mankind has evolved to believe in religion, not understand science. “Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature.” - Jacob Bronowski (1908 - 1974) Histone deacetylase ... More About: Weekly
The Nature of Philosophy and Poking Fun at Religion
2007-07-14 16:09:00 A bit of weekend humor… This is the International Philosophy sketch by Monty Python, with the Greek vs. German philosophers (I know this is an old bit, but it came up recently in a discussion, and I couldn’t resist). And something else from Monty Python which came up in the same discussion - it ... More About: Religion , Humor , Nature , Hilo
Centrosome Structure and Duplication
2007-07-13 14:45:00 Following my review of the major eukaryotic cytoskeleton components, and microtubules in particular… A pair of centrioles is shown, each with ninefold symmetry owing to the nine triplet microtubules. Each centriole has pericentriolar material that nucleates microtubules around the ends closest to one another. Only the maternal centriole has two sets of extra appendages, distal and ... More About: Cell Biology , Structure , Some , Duplication
Migration and Divergence of H. sapiens from its African Roots
More articles from this author:2007-07-12 21:31:00 Via the Cornell Chronicle Online, Evidence that up to 10 percent of human genome may have changed very recently revealed by CU researchers: A Cornell study of genome sequences in African -Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the ... More About: Biophilia , Roots , Root , Diver 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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