Redefining the concept of organism
A while back, I stumbled upon an article by Freeman Dyson on Carl Woese. Carl Woese is a long time scientist studying the origins of life and revolutionized thi...
Category: Science
Phylostratigraphy: Genetic Archeology
The Economist reports on some scientists that did some phylogenetic comparisons to see when certain genes arose. The scientists noticed that genes that appeared...
Presidential DNA tested for 2012 election?
Wow. This is a deep topic. While I think the discussions around DNA testing will start raging in the next 12 months, for sure there will be a question of whethe...
A wander through personal genomics
So, I’ve been talking about trends in biology that I think are significant (maybe because I’ve only started following biology again in the past year...
Potential of immune system reboot?
This is cool (below). Gene therapy combined with a re-install of the immune system. I am writing a story where the main character basically gets an immune syste...
A good warning for writers, by Joel
Another great article by Joel Spolsky on, basically, literary laziness. Link: Anecdotes – Joel on Software This is not the way to move science forward. On...
“Taste good, sequence it” and “Look cute, sequence it.”
When I first started working in science, sequencing was just beginning to be a ‘kit’ science, where anyone could buy a kit and sequence. It was long...
Random walks through synthetic biology
Synthetic biology is the design and building of novel organisms or biological systems. Sounds amazing, but we have been doing it to some degree for millenia, th...
Three trends for the future of biology
A chance encounter, about a year ago, with some interesting minds in the field of biomedical publishing had me going back to my roots: biology. I’ve been ...
Cool animation by 23andMe on Human Prehistory
For various reason I’ve been lurking around 23andMe, a personal genetics social service thingy out of SFO (I follow them on Twitter, of course). One big p...