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stuctural biology

OK, you saw it here first

  (For those who don’t get it.)

Open Positions in Structural Bioinformatics

Posting for a colleague, who leads a great structural bioinformatics group in Valencia. Structural Genomics Unit Bioinformatics & Genomics Department – Príncipe Felipe Research Center Seeking a Bioniformatician and a Postdoc The Structural Genomics Unit at the CIPF (Valencia, Spain) seeks candidates for two open positions: Open position in RNA 3D modeling (Technician/Bioinformatician) Open position in […]

The polypharmacome

Pharmaceutical companies are always on the lookout for secondary drug targets. After all, if you invest billions developing a single drug, you would be more than happy to sell it as a treatment for two, three, or more different ailments. Sildenafil citrate was developed to treat angina and hypertension, but during phase I clinical trials, […]

Fold.it: wasting time in a good cause

I just spent the better part of a Saturday playing with Foldit. Foldit is an ongoing experiment in finding protein structures by harnessing the power of the mob – or gamers, as is the case here. The player is presented with a backbone & sidechain configuration, with the secondary structures mostly pre-determined. The problem is […]

Photosynthesis, phages and structures: there’s treasure everywhere!

Here’s a really cool work, published this September in Nature.. Why did I choose this work?  Well, it’s a major discovery, and it’s all done using bioinformatics, and fairly simple bioinformatics at that. The power of metagenomics and bioinfromatics: in a mass of data you just have to know what you are looking for, and […]

Did you know it’s DNA Day?

Short quiz and a movie for DNA day. 1) We celebrate DNA day because: a) Congress said so b) Francis Collins said so c) I said so 2) Who has DNA? a) CSI Miami b) James Watson c) Please, please, PLEASE let the  paternity test comes back negative… 3)  Nature vs. Nurture: which is more […]

On Molecular Viewers, or why I voted for RasMol

Beware the temptation to use the 45 and 120 degree angle pink and yellow light source, in combination with shiny plastic B-splines, which would make your protein model look like brothel decor

A very loose and circular association to π (Pi) Day

Happy Pi (π) Day! Americans write dates in the MM/DD/YYYY format instead of the DD/MM/YYYY format used by the rest of the world.  Usually a rather painful and confusing format if you did not grow up with it, causing checks to bounce and leases to expire for those who recently moved to the US, but […]

Enzyme Promiscuity

Gradualism is a cornerstone principle in evolution.  Things happen in small increments;  all the time that changes happen, overall organism fitness cannot be compromised.  So how then do full-featured complex functions appear? One way is by functional re-purposing of an existing organ: …an organ may become rudimentary for its proper purpose, and be used for […]