Science/Strategy/The Narrative

Follow our efforts to get bio panels into SXSW 2012

Posted on by charlie

Folks, @thisischristina (and writer at SciAm’s Oscillator) and I both submitted panel proposals for SXSW 2012. We’re going to need some help getting into the program.

Voting is from 15aug to 02sep with program announcements starting end of October. [see Panel Picker pages]

Save this link [https://www.molecularist.com/tag/sxsw2012] to keep up with info about this process – I’ll be interviewing speakers, going more in-depth about the topics, and more.

UPDATE 09aug11 – corrected to SXSW 2012

UPDATE 26aug11 – Here’s my panel [http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/10348] and Christina’s panel [http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/10478]

Links of note/Science/Strategy/The Narrative

Editor Explains ‘New Philosophy’ of Open Access Scientist-Run Journal – ScienceInsider

Posted on by charlie

“The new open access biomedical journal announced last month by a trio of research charities now has an editor-in-chief. He is cell biologist Randy Schekman, an HHMI investigator at the University of California, Berkeley, who now edits the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

Good questions in this interview, revealing more about the new pub. The most interesting tid-bit to me is this pub has 3 years of operating money to build the publication before they need to decide on a biz model. Hopefully, by then, they’ll find some interested way to fund the pub or realize that PLoS still has the best model (charging authors).

Read this article…

Links of note/Science

Bacteria Flash Like Christmas Lights – ScienceNOW

Posted on by charlie

“But why would it need to, even for a second? The researchers aren’t sure, but they believe that depolarizing their membranes may allow the bacteria to kick out charged molecules they’ve accumulated, such as toxins or antibiotics. In fact, Cohen says, the finding could be a potential antibiotic resistance mechanism. When the researchers put a dye molecule that, like many antibiotics, was positively charged into the bacteria, they kicked it out. Previous researchers had observed this phenomenon but couldn’t explain it.”

This is indeed cool. With video as well [http://bcove.me/qeax5utv]. Just one more example how we keep discovering things there were always discoverable and right under our noses the whole time.

Read this article…

Innovation/Links of note/Science/Strategy

Ginkgo organism engineers and the pipe – Ginkgoo blog

Posted on by charlie

“Here I’ll try to give a high-level picture of Ginkgo’s pipeline for organism engineering. If you’ve checked out our webpage, you’ll see that we have several different organism engineering projects happening at Ginkgo that span several different hosts. Our goal was to build out a pipeline that could support the engineering of all these very different organisms for very different purposes but that uses a shared pipeline. To accomplish this goal, we deliberately opted to decouple design from fabrication. Ginkgo organism engineers place requests via our CAD/CAM/LIMS software system. Those requests are then batched and run on Ginkgo’s robots.”

This is indeed exciting. These folks are among the most experienced in synthetic biology and they are finally taking their engineering skills to the next level. They are reducing organism creation to a CAD request to an automated pipeline by an organism engineer. Really cool. [See more here: http://ginkgobioworks.com/works.html]

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Innovation/Links of note/Science/Strategy/The Narrative

Chemically evolved bacteria

Posted on by charlie

“European scientists have created an Escherichia coli strain with a separate genome using chlorinated DNA. The genome should be unable to transfer back into unmodified bacteria, leading to what the researchers call a ‘genetic firewall’.”

First arsenic, now chlorine. In my grad school days, we were studying DNA-protein interactions by modifying specific atoms on the DNA. With this bacteria, it would be interesting to see how the overall biochemistry and enzymatic changes. Opens up a whole new way of studying biochemistry.

And I’d really like to know how they set up their continuous culture system.

Read this article…

Links of note/Science/Strategy

Patients, Caregivers Willing To Buy Health Monitoring Devices — InformationWeek

Posted on by charlie

“Nearly 8 of out 10 Americans are willing to pay up to $100 for a medical device that monitors their vital signs, according to an IBM survey that tracks trends in the use of mobile devices in healthcare. Fewer than 10% of respondents are paying out-of-pocket charges for such devices today, but more than one-third expect to do so within the next two years.”

This is great. Trends in miniaturization of sensors, mobile connectivity, and accountable care are creating the right conditions for health sensors to boom. This article summarizes a survey done by IBM (disclaimer: my employer) with a whole slew of very interesting findings – a state of the market, so to speak.

Do you know anyone using mobile snsored devices to track health info for their health care provider?

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Announcements/Innovation/Links of note/Science

Comprendia and New England Biolabs Connect Epigenetics Scientists – PRNewsWire

Posted on by charlie

“Comprendia, leading developer of web 2.0 and social media tools for the life sciences, sponsored by molecular biology reagents provider New England Biolabs, Inc. (NEB), is introducing an online resource that will support epigenetics research. Epigenetics is a quickly growing field with important implications for oncology, neurology, metabolism and disease mechanisms. ‘Engaging Epigenetics Experts’ (E3) is an online community that will allow epigenetics researchers to more easily connect so they can leverage their collective, interdisciplinary knowledge in a way that has not been possible before.”

From the press release. I’m always interested in how social web tools are applied to science and research. I know that Comprendia is constantly pounding the drum for social web tools for scientists. It’s great to see them working with such and esteemed company like NEB.

Do you know anyone who will use, uses, or has used E3 [http://www.epiexperts.com/]?

Read this article…

Links of note/The Narrative

Trillium toasts to local ingredients, tastes – BostonHerald.com

Posted on by charlie

“A Brookline home brewer cleared a major hurdle this week on the way to opening a brewery of “farmhouse”-style beer in Fort Point. “It’s not a come-and-have-pints-all-night type place, it’s a come-and-have-a-sampler type place,” said Trillium Brewing Co. owner Jean-Claude Tetrault, 34. Trillium, which will have a storefront with a small tasting bar, scored a zoning variance Tuesday that allows for the manufacturing of beer on the site. Tetrault will apply for state and federal licensing in the next few weeks.”

This is indeed a nice story. Looking forward to having a few of their beers.

[via @IDBoston]

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Links of note/Science

PLoS ONE: The Gut as Reservoir of Antibiotic Resistance: Microbial Diversity of Tetracycline Resistance in Mother and Infant

Posted on by charlie

“These findings reinforce the notion that the human GIT is currently a relevant environment for the spread of antibiotic resistances, even in the case of young infants that solely ingest maternal milk. Further analyses involving more mother-infant pairs will be required in order to establish whether the trends observed in this case study describe the general relationship between mother and infant antibiotic resistomes.”

This is really interesting. To me, mother-child form one closely tied ecosystem, so it’s not surprising that bacteria take advantage of that to move locations or capture resistance genes from other bugs. What’s good about a report like this is that it once again reinforces the need to re-evaluate the flow of organisms and information in the human-microbial ecosystem and implications for medicine and health.

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Innovation/Links of note/Strategy/The Narrative

In Massachusetts, entrepreneurs are on a mission to make a difference – The Boston Globe

Posted on by charlie

“I was knocking back a Harpoon IPA last week in an old textile warehouse in Boston, thinking about what Massachusetts will mean to the global economy in this century. The beer had been brewed by a company headquartered just a few blocks away, in the Seaport District. But it had been chilled in a giant steel vat designed by another company, Promethean Power Systems. Promethean is developing technology that uses energy from the sun to operate a refrigerator, intended to help farmers in developing countries keep milk and produce fresh longer, increasing their earnings. The sun-cooled beer was being served at a grand opening party for Greentown Labs, a grungy-but-proud-of-it workspace occupied by Promethean and eight other start-up companies developing new energy-related technologies.”

Very nice article about the new businesses cropping up in the state that are creating wold-changing products and services. Fits in well with some of my thoughts on the philanthropy of business.

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