First, a short glossary. Homologous genes are descended from a common ancestral gene. There are two types of homology: Orthology is homology due to a speciation event. So if there is a gene A’ in humans and A” in mice, and they are obviously similar in sequence, we infer that they homologous. We usually also [...]
I will try to maintain a weekly poll on BsB, for matters biologick, bioinformatick, generally scientifick or otherick. As in any poll, if read too much into its questions or answers, you should seriously chill. That being said, comments are most welcome. The poll is on the sidebar that’a’way.—> (Scroll a bit down if you [...]
Proteins are the machinery of life, and they facilitate most of life’s functions. Traffic into and out of the cell? Protein pumps, pores and channels. Respiration? Proteins. Metabolism and catabolism? Proteins. Immune system, signaling, development… all complex networks of interacting proteins. Understanding a protein’s structure can tell us a lot about how it performs its [...]
First, a non-bioinformatic one liner, which is very relevant to most of us working on 3 different machines simultaneously, not including the 80 in our cluster. ssh-ing and giving your password each time is painful, and makes it almost impossible to do scripted file transfers, like backups. A good solution is shared key ssh in [...]
In any programming gig, and that includes bioinformatics, a lot of repeat scriptology comes cropping up. I decided to share some of that, pro publico bono, and also because I hope to start some sort of ongoing cookbook for short bioinformatics hacks. If you have any cool short scripts you like to share, please email [...]
Warning: frivolously geeky and technical post, which can be best defined as “science methodology esoterica”, and from which you can learn absolutely nothing useful. If you don’t get what’s going on, then it’s probably for the best, because this is a complete waste of time. Specific Aim 1: find the longest word in English composed [...]
When I say here “scientific websites”, I am not referring to education sites, science blogs, or scientific journal web sites. I am talking about sites scientists use for their day to day research. Sites like Entrez, EBI, FlyBase, ExPasy, PDB etc. The sites I just mentioned I deem quite virtuous, but there are many sinful [...]
Apparently sequencing two white males of European extraction does not make for a very good sample of mankind, and that if we really want to get a good view of what we are really like, we need to sequence a couple more. Maybe even, you know, a woman, or someone from India or China or [...]
Following Shirley Wu’s excellent post on the stimulus money at the NIH, I decided to do my bit, and post some bioinformatically relevant programs from the Challenge Grants. I am defining bioinformatics rather narrowly here, and excluding most biomedical informatics, imaging technologies, clinical data management, etc. Also, many other topics would be supported to some [...]
Most of the Earth’s surface is colder than the inside of your refrigerator. Deep sea temperatures are almost universally 2-4C. That’s already 73% of the Earth’s surface. Then add to that the polar regions, mountain ranges and permafrost and you have about 85% of the Earth’s surface constantly at refrigerator or freezer temperatures. While there [...]
When the Moon is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, a bunch of people gather for their “Bioinformaticians anonymous” group therapy. There they metaphorically gather, commiserating about how bioinformatics is dead (or was it bioinformaticians?), just smells funny or suffers from identity theft, probably because it got drunk at the last ISMB, [...]
Biopython is entering its 10th year; the unofficial birthday is on September, since that is when the mailing list started: September 1999. I stumbled onto that list mid-September, 1999. I believe the Python version was 1.5, I was still working on SGI Irix, and I was an 0.3 PhD candidate. Today I am coding with [...]
In any data-rich science, data visualization is of prime importance. Finding ways to visually depict data is challenging, as we have opposing demands: we would like to see the data in the whole, but also be able to zoom in and analyze the details; we would like to know how the many details add up [...]
Maybe I am slow on the uptake, but I never quite liked the term “post genomic”, and I used it very sparingly. (Yes, I do have that term in one of my better cited papers, smack in the first sentence of the abstract, but I never liked that). Perhaps because of all the associated abuse [...]
Here is a little trick I performed as a first year grad student a while ago and which I would like to share. My PhD adviser, Hanah Margalit was supposed to give a talk at a joint Israeli-Palestinian meeting. (Hopefully, such days will be back soon and permanently!) The audience was rather broad, and included [...]
