Displaying the most recent of 472 posts written by

Iddo

It’s a small (RNA) world after all

The central dogma of molecular biology edit: the sequence hypothesis (thanks for setting me straight, Kamel!) as formulated 57 years ago was simple: DNA is transcribed to mRNA,and  mRNA is translated to proteins. Proteins are the business end of this process. mRNA is only the messenger: its sole function is to deliver information from the […]

Science as Middle-Earth

From Abstruse Goose. I like it that Biology is in Mirkwood, and that Bioinformatics is on the left bank of Anduin while CS is on the right. I would have put Botany in Fangorn (because of the Ents), Microbiology in the Sea of Rhûn for beyond it are “wide uncharted lands, nameless plains, and forests […]

Sonny Moorman’s group at Oxford

This Cincinnati group played a concert today (Thursday) at the uptown park at Oxford Ohio. A trio with Sonny on guitar, Dennis “Willy D” Williams – bass & vocals, and Dave Fair- drums & vocals. They played powerful electric blues-rock, with great covers of Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson and many originals. Sonny played a […]

Scary

Celebromics? HeavyMetalomics? Advertomics? Anniversomics!

René Goscinny would probably have done a better job of naming the new trend of personal genomics (genomix?) companies to sequence celebrities genomes. Heck, we might have even done Obelix’s  and Asterix’s genomes to find out  if Obelix can drink the magic potion without Getafix’s (Panoramix’s) admonishments that it might do him harm, or to […]

Bioinformatics Open Source Conference 2010 (and a poll)

The 11th Annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) 2010 is coming up in Boston, July 9-10 2010. The BOSC meetings are a great get-together of a community of programmers who are like-minded in their advocacy of open source code for science, and specifically for bioinformatics. The whole thing is run by volunteers who take a […]

Protein function, promiscuity, moonlighting and philosophy

I recently received an email from a graduate student in Philosophy regarding protein function. Not sure if that person wants his name advertised, so I will keep it to myself. “I am a fan of your blog, and interested in the philosophy of biology. One particularly interesting question is what makes something have a function; […]

Black Cat Zoot – No Swingin’ In Your Walkin’

Once again, Black Cat Zoot, whose walkin’ is always swingin’:

What is the function of a necktie?

From a random bulletin board…

Computational Bridge to Experiments

A bit of background information: this is a meeting I am really happy to be part of, and even more so honored to be a co-organizer. One of my main scientific interests is the prediction of the function of genes and proteins of unknown function. Some background information: we have sequenced more than 1000 genomes […]

Awesomest Cola & Mentos yet

Yeah, yeah, Cola & Mentos videos are getting somewhat tired. Still, this one really goes overboard: Ha! Now how does the Cola & Mentos reaction work? Well, first, the Cola & Mentos thing is a physical reaction, more than  a chemical one: it happens mainly due to nucleation sites provided by the pitted surface of […]

Closing gaps

Geek alert: this post for coders. So you sequenced your genome, reached an optimally small number of contigs, they look sane, and now you would like to see what you need for the finishing stage. Namely, how many gaps you have and what are their sizes. UPDATE: “might just be worth clarifying this is for […]

A cure for Ebola?

There are few infectious diseases as violent and as lethal as the Ebola Haemorragic Fever.  This terrible disease was first described in 1976 at a mission hospital at the Ebola river in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).  The disease is 80% fatal, the victims die painfully from a literal meltdown of their organs. […]

Android apps for scientists

A few science apps for the Android mobile phone operating system. Some of these I have, some I don’t , and some I really would like to check out. Feel free to add more that you know of in the comment section. Better yet, make a wish… Science Literature: AgileMedSearch: Searching through pubmed databases. Pretty […]

Life on earth in 60 seconds

Gives a nice temporal perspective.