There are more microbial cells in our body than our own. Those microbes are not just passive hitchhikers or conversely, malicious agents of disease. They affect our well-being and health in a much broader spectrum than simply “bad” or “passive”. Among other things our gut microbes play an important role in digestion, have been linked [...]
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, [...]
Speaking of sampling bacteria, this ties in well with the previous post about GEBA. And by “well” I mean “in an alternate-universe/ altered-consciousness manner”. The voices in the song are sampled from this KFC employee training tape. The video won a prize in machinima.com. So if you like World of Warcraft, bacteria, KFC, sampled music, [...]
Stephen Colbert had an interesting lineup for the past two nights: Richard Dawkins on Sep 30, and Francis Collins last night. Enjoy the vids: The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
CLARIFICATION: the events described here have not happened. Yet. We are a few years into the future. Whole human genomes can be sequenced relatively cheaply and accurately. Direct to Consumer Genomics companies offer true genomic analyses now, not just marker analyses. They BLAST* your sequence against known genotype & disease databases, looking for known genotypic [...]
(Full disclosure before I start: I am an academic editor in PLoS ONE. I have no financial stake in PLoS, and as far as I know, they have none in me. They’d better not, if they know what’s good for them). PLoS have come up with yet another cool mechanism for scientific communication: PLoS Currents. [...]
From Annals of Diagnostic Pathology. This is what happens when you bring a pathologist to a fast food joint. Hat tip to Laura for pointing this out. Here were my initial thoughts about these findings. “Bleaaachhhh!” (I’m very verbal when reading scientific papers). Well, it looks bad.. but. But. Cooked ground beef can have up [...]
Shirley Wu has penned a beautiful open letter to Oprah Winfrey explaining why Oprah should not provide a soapbox to Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy is the unofficial spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement, a dishonorable position at best. Given yet another podium, more people will listen and take McCarthy’s bad advice, resulting in more deaths and preventable [...]
1976: Prologue In July 27, 1976, the American Legion, a US military veterans association, held a large meeting at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel a hotel in Philadelphia PA, celebrating the USA’s bicentennial year. Within 2 days, guests started falling ill with an atypical pneumonia. By the end of the week, 221 people were ill and [...]
We learned in high school and/or undergrad biology that one antibody would bind to one antigen. This is what makes our immune system so effective: antibodies bind with high affinity to foreign proteins or other molecules. Not only that, but those antibodies are specific: they would bind only to a specific site on the foreign [...]
