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On Animal Rights Activism
2008-03-18 09:51:00
Creationism isn’t the only form of pseudoscience. One form that specifically targets biomedical, and especially pre-clinical, research is that of animal rights activism. Often resorting to terrorism, they are not above arson, home invasion, and vandalism. Groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Animal Liberation Brigade (ALB) in Southern ...
More About: News , History , Activism , Rights

Top 10: iGoogle Gadgets for Molecular and Cell Biologists
2008-03-17 07:25:00
I finally signed up for Google Reader last week after reading Bala’s great post last week on Google Reader for Academics. Setting this up brought my attention to iGoogle, another very useful Google service. iGoogle allows the user to create a personalised start page. One of it’s main features is the ability to add all sorts of ...
More About: Gadgets , Cell

Around the Blogs
2008-03-14 12:32:00
It’s Friday again, and that means ‘around the blogs.’ Included are a few links to topics on personal development, science itself, and public understanding of science. Giant neural stem cells in Times Square - The two winners of GE Healthcare’s 2007 IN Cell Image Competition went on display on the NBC screen in New York ...
More About: Blogs

Howard Hughes Plugs Funding Gap for Early Career Scientists
2008-03-13 09:25:00
The Howard Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has announced a $300 million competition to support the USA’s best early career scientists in biological and medical disciplines. The recipients of the seventy available awards will be selected from researchers who have led independent laboratories for two to six years at one of the 200 eligible U.S. medical schools, universities and research institutes. They will receive a six year, non-renewable funding award, which includes full salary and research support and will remain affiliated with their home institutes. The initiative is designed to plug the funding gap for scientists who are nearing the end of the institutional start-up funds awarded with their first faculty position, and are therefore coming under pressure to apply for federal research grants. “We know there is a tremendous need for flexible funding to support scientists who are two to six years into their independent research careers. This is a critical time for ...
More About: Funding , Career , Early , Scientists

Wellcome Image Awards 2008
2008-03-12 08:50:00
After yesterday’s bit of whimsical late-night creativity, I thought that today might be a good time to share the results of the 2008 Wellcome Image Awards . These images have been captured using both traditional and cutting-edge imaging techniques, from the simple light microscope to the latest in computer-aided imaging. Their artistry is astounding, ...

Late Night Lab Entertainment
2008-03-11 11:57:00
And now for something completely different… It’s always good to introduce a little levity to the lab, before we as researchers begin to take ourselves too seriously. With that in mind, below the fold, I have a handful of YouTube videos shared by molecular biology grad students who apparently needed to introduce a little creativity to their late nights in the lab. (more…)
More About: Entertainment , Night , Late , Late Night

Easier DNA Sequence Manipulation
2008-03-10 02:45:00
If you regularly use online DNA sequence manipulation programs, your life might be about to get just a little easier. At Bitesize Bio, we were becoming tired of jumping from site to site to get the sequence manipulation tools we needed. One site for reverse complementation, another for translation and yet another for restriction analysis… it was all just a bit irritating. (more…)
More About: Sequence , Manipulation

Around The Blogs
2008-03-07 07:33:00
This week’s around the blogs has stacks of yeast plates, tear-free onions and garage bio labs. Dare you miss it?
More About: Blogs

Why Have Journal Club?
2008-03-06 12:16:00
Relating to my recent comments on seminars, a beginning grad student or undergrad researcher might wonder why journal club is such a good thing. Or you might not be wondering, since the benefits are more or less the same: digesting, discussing and analyzing research findings. But whether or not you realize the benefits ...
More About: Communication , Journal , Club

18 Ways to Improve your PubMed searches
2008-03-05 09:59:00
Do you *really* know what you?re doing when you search for articles in PubMed? Are you familiar with Boolean operators? What does ?MeSH? mean to you? Can you locate (and use) the Limits tab? History? Details? Have you set up automatic updates with MyNCBI? Do you know how PubMed relates to the other NCBI databases? If you?re like me ...
More About: Improve

Google Reader for Academics
2008-03-04 13:10:00
Google reader is one the weapons available in an academic’s arsenal to combat information overload in the Internet era. Part of research involves keeping oneself informed of the development happening in one’s own field as well as other closely related. It should not come as a surprise that these avenues of information are diverse, but nevertheless ...
More About: Google , Reader , Google Reader , Academics

Ethidium Bromide: The Alternatives
2008-03-03 01:56:00
Last week, in my article about the perils of exposing DNA to UV light during cloning procedures, I mentioned a couple of stains that offer an alternative to ethidium bromide for DNA visualisation. I this article I compare all of the available DNA stains (I know of) that can be used in electrophoresis to clarify the ...
More About: Services , Kits , Alternatives , Reagents

Around the Blogs
2008-02-29 16:23:00
Around the blogs this week, there are 8 articles out there that caught my attention, below the fold. Also, check out a recent issue of Cell for a few informative reviews of stem cell biology.
More About: Blogs

10 Unmissable Bio Flick and Pic Galleries
2008-02-28 02:05:00
A picture tells a thousand words. So I suppose a movie tells 24,000+ words per second. Whether you use them for educating, self-study or just for your viewing pleasure, photos and movies of biological concepts and processes are a valuable resource. Here are ten of the best bio flick and pic galleries from around the web.
More About: Galleries , Learning , Flick

Top 5 Books from Experimental Biology
2008-02-27 15:13:00
I just got done reading Ernst Mayr’s The Growth of Biological Thought, which is on the history and philosophy of biology, from Aristotle to ~1980 (written in 1982). Of particular interest to me was the section on the Modern Synthesis, where the views on evolution of the geneticists and other experimental biologists were reconciled ...
More About: Books , Biology , Experimental

Turn Away from the (UV) Light
2008-02-26 13:45:00
This is a story that could strike fear into your heart if you use UV light to visualize DNA that you later intend to clone. Read on if you dare. A while back I was doing a project where I had to make a mutation library of a plasmid. There are a number of ways to ...
More About: Services , Kits , Light , Turn , Reagents

Stop and Enjoy the Seminars
2008-02-25 12:47:00
Continuing in the same frame of mind as my last post, What Comes After Grad School, I was thinking about something that Alex said: It reminds me of a bit of advice given to a fellow postdoc by Dr. Richard Hynes - try to attend every seminar. I would also add that in my comparatively short ...
More About: Communication , Seminars , Enjoy , Stop

Around The Blogs
2008-02-22 12:06:00
How to tell which identical twin is the father of your child, CRISPR arrays helping bacteria fight off phages and patents written on toilet paper. It’s all happening in this week’s look around the blogs…
More About: Blogs

What Comes After Grad School
2008-02-21 13:47:00
For many of us, grad school immerses us so deeply in first-hand laboratory research that we begin to think that that’s all there is, and when faced with either limited opportunities for postdoctoral and (later) faculty research positions, we become blind to our other options. Others simply want to get out of academia and ...
More About: Careers , School

Sending Plasmids: How to Avoid Jail Time and Shredded Envelopes
2008-02-20 11:50:00
Whether need to get your plasmid DNA to a lab on the other side of the world, or a few hundred miles down the road, it’s important to make sure your precious sample gets there, it is not degraded, and you don’t end up in jail. Here’s the Bitesize guide on how to send plasmids ...
More About: Time , Jail , Avoid , Sending

Zebrafish: Making Development Transparent
2008-02-19 10:58:00
With the recent development of transparent Zebrafish, allowing scientists to directly view its internal organs, and observe processes like tumor metastasis and blood production after bone-marrow transplant, it seems appropriate to describe Zebrafish as a model organism. (more…)
More About: Development , Transparent

Ligation Independent Cloning Primer Design
2008-02-18 13:46:00
Since I wrote about the wonders of ligation independent cloning a while back, several people have contacted me to say they were confused about how to design primers for this application. It can be a bit confusing, so here I’ll give a quick overview on how to do it.
More About: Design , Independent , Cloning

Around the Blogs
2008-02-15 11:43:00
This week, around the blogs is a bit heavy on the science posts, and light on the meta-science. First though, by way of Jake at Pure Pedantry, is an attractive visual demonstration of the cell cycle, from Sakaue-Sawano et al.:
More About: Blogs

The Best Polymerases of 2008
2008-02-14 12:55:00
Yawn…. The awards season is upon us once again. Overpaid, under-worked and over-ego’d celebrities get together to slap each other’s backs and tell each other how great they are. But little do they know where the real party is in town. The 2008 Thermostable Polymerase Awards (the THEPA’s) are underway and you have a front row seat. ...
More About: Services , Kits , Reagents

Critical Learning Habits
2008-02-13 13:53:00
One view on the aim of graduate studies towards a PhD is to foster critical learning and thinking habits, much more so than to simply learn facts. You’re supposed to learn how to “think like a scientist,” or develop and mature your intellectual behaviors in the discussions of difficult concepts (AKA, problems). “Habits of Mind ...
More About: Learning , Critical

The Basics: How Phenol Extraction Works
2008-02-12 16:10:00
Phenol extraction is a commonly used method for removing proteins from a DNA sample, e.g. to remove proteins from cell lysate during genomic DNA preparation. It’s commonly used, but not commonly understood. If you want to know how it works so you can show off to all of your friends… read on.
More About: Works , Basics , The Basics

GenePaint: Visualizing Developmental Expression
2008-02-11 12:03:00
In fields describable as functional or experimental biology, one tool that could be both useful and beautiful is a digital atlas of gene expression patterns in a representative mammal during development. That’s just what GenePaint represents. In studying any individual gene product, its global function in the whole organism needs to be addressed. ...
More About: Expression

Wrapping up a Week of Just FAK
2008-02-08 11:55:00
Just Science week has been fun, reading four recent journal articles on focal adhesion kinase (FAK). It has helped me refresh myself on FAK as I got back to writing fellowship applications - although it had the added effect of taking time away from said writing activities. So today I thought a recap ...
More About: Week

Around The Blogs
2008-02-08 11:55:00
Movie stars in the lab, debates and the destruction of creationism. There’s lots going on in the science blogs this week… here are the best bits…
More About: Blogs

FAK and Phosphatidyl Inositol in Cell Polarity
2008-02-07 12:07:00
After the past three days of blogging focal adhesion kinase (FAK), each focusing on an important regulator of cell adhesion dynamics and cell motility, I’m going to turn my attention to phosphatidyl inositol-3 kinase (PI3K). PI3K has a regulatory subunit (p85), and a catalytic subunit (p110) capable of catalyzing the phosphorylation of the D3 ...
More About: Cell