Poker Night

Heads up to the bay crew. It's poker night once again. If you want to lookm like a pro, memorize these hand names. My personal fav, the Motown hand!

Penguins a proof of intelligent design

For those who have seen this documentary, you'll be suprised to know that the "march of the penguins" has been embraced by the creationist. Why is that you may ask? Well, aparently: "To think that natural selection or even the penguins themselves could come up with the idea to migrate miles and miles multiple times each year without their partner or their offspring is a bit insulting to my intellect. How great is our God!". Of course this doesn't have to do with food availability and reproductive sucess driving behavior, but what do I know...

IA updates

IA updates in the hisouse.

So you think you're a nerd...

These guys put all us wannabe nerds to shame. PBS has a new webcast-only show called NerdTV featuring interviews with some of the all-time greatest nerds ever. The show is hosted by Cringely, who maintains a pretty solid nerd-blog himself.

Since most of us mortals will never achieve such heights of nerdness on our own merits, buy some geek gear instead.

Look out Qiagen - Silica column recycling is here

Basically the commercial DNA isolation kits we all depend on are all about the silica spin column. They're what make the kits fast and reliable, justifying their high cost in comparison to alternative old-school methods. This article describes a new product called maxXbond, basically a two-buffer system that's supposed to remove residual DNA and other crap from the columns after use. The columns can then be re-used for prepping new samples (at least 20 times over they claim). Sounds like the days of miniprep kit mass consumption are over. If I had shares in Qiagen I'd be selling them about now (if this stuff actually works)...

Supposedly they have patents pending, but I haven't yet been able to find them in either the US or European databases. I also couldn't find anything on what's acutally in the solutions.

NCBI's Wide World of Viruses

The rapidly increasing heap of sequence data filling up the NCBI database is making it tougher and tougher to find a specific sequence on demand. In my experience seaching for viral sequence, it's almost impossible to avoid getting back lots of irrelevant crap. Searching on "rhabdovirus" for example, the first hit is "Rattus norvegicus myxovirus (influenza virus) resistance 2 (Mx2), mRNA". Thankfully NCBI is working on a viral genomes resource where you can search a database consisting exclusively of virus and viroid sequence. Also cool is the taxonomy section where you can browse the database by species or family. Only problem is its not complete yet, but I'm definitely going to keep an eye on their progress as this will be super-useful.

science blogs

OMFG. too much to read.
IA updates are in.
Also found a ton of fairly decent competition for the bayblab in some other science blogs:
Simple trend (biotech bizz)
Molecular approaches to cancer
Humans in science
Longevity in science
Science, Politics and Ethics
Uncovering and discovering
Life Science tools of the trade
The scientist errant
ScienceBase
Science Nerd depot
The eyes have it (?)
World science

It will take me sometime to figure out which ones I will actually read regularly and which are just crap.
WARNING: These blogs are not intented to substitute or replace following the goings ons of the BAYBLAB, they are mearly mentioned here to augment science surfing pleasure.

One of the boys meets reality show

I was sure by now they would've ran out of ideas for new reality shows. Can it go lower than extreme facial reconstruction home edition or who wants to mary paris hilton's dog. Yes it can! In this new reality show contestants fight to be sperm donors. In other news, shares of nivea moisturizer have tripled.

really really small genome

The smallest genome award goes to Mycoplasma genitalium, the "other" mycobacteria that gets passed around the lab. But it is an obligatory parasite. Well now our pal Craig Venter has sequenced the smallest genome for a self-sufficient bacteria. This little ocean bug named Pelagibacter ubique ("ubiquitous sea bacteria", how original), has no gene copies, no junk and a genome so streamlined it minimizes the amount of nitrogen used for replication. At just 1354 genes, its so small, so so small.

Nano-camel-bodies

Ablynx is a biotech startup exploiting naturally occuring camel antibodies that consist solely of heavy chains, and therefore offer several potential advantages as therapeutics. Scientific American has a quality story on the sci-biz of these "NANOBODIES". The company was launched through the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology in Belgium. They seem to have a pretty slick research setup aimed at launching new biotech.

In vitro steaks

Following the usual lunch conversation on the subject of growing chicken wings in TC, its seems someone was listening in. Imagine having a machine at home that could grow any meat you'd want. Finally my dream of enjoying a panda burger could become reality. check out this paper in tissue engineering.

IA updates

yeah.
IA updates

Check out conferences without leaving your bench

I just came across this sweet Nature News blog collection. Day by day accounts from attendees of scientific conferences around the world. Definitely worth checking out.

One for the boys

Check it out: The Secret Life of Sperm.

A.K.A. Chris Lemieux

Paintball was fun!

Lock and load!
Plaid camouflage. That's so 90s.

I'd make a witty fashion comment, but I'm too scared to mess with this guy...

Nothin' like a shot to the kisser to start things off...

Defending his M.Sc. thesis - "Guerilla warfare tactics for Eastern Ontario farm fields"...can you spot the Tang?


"I shot you!" - "I shot you first!"- "No I did!" Either way - you're both dead.
Don't mess with team Edge...

It sure was fun to finally get out of the lab and shoot guns at each other!

Zero casualties incurred. Minor collateral damage.

Victory for the Union of Concerned Scientists

Last week—after several years of pressure from the Union of Concerned Scientists and the coalition group Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW)—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made history by banning the use of the animal-antibiotic Baytril in poultry due to worries about the increase in antibiotic-resistant infections in people. This action marks the first time the FDA has withdrawn an agricultural antibiotic from the market because of concerns about antibiotic resistance affecting human health. Baytril is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic, much like the commonly used human antibiotic Cipro.

From the immunologists trying to be cool department

Check out the spin on this article about Licensing of natural killer cells by host major histocompatibility complex class I molecules. This is priceless: "Scientists have discovered that a group of important immune system cells has a surprising resemblance to cinematic British superspy James Bond: the cells receive a "license" that allows them to unleash their most potent attacks on enemies". In other news, we still haven't defeated "Dr. Evil" with our anti-cancer compounds. Allright back to work.

Pikey

Listening to RP I heard a jingle from 'Snatch' the movie.
Checked it out, it's definitely Pikey not Parkie (definition 5)
Crazy. SIlly brits

Faster Sequencing

Sweet new sequencing method 100 times faster than current Sanger-based technology. One machine-person team does adenovirus genome in a day and human genome in 100.