Dystrophin is the largest known human gene, covering about 2.4 million basepairs. The gene has 79 exons, which when spliced together yield a relatively modest relatively modest 425 kDa protein–still huge, but perhaps less than one might expect given its genomic sequence. It connects the actin-based cytoskeleton of muscle fibres, through the cell membrane, to…
“Pandemrix” The word might not mean anything to you now, but if I were to tell you it was a drug–or a vaccination–you’d probably guess right away what it was for. Pandemrix is an adjuvanted anti-flu vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline, targetted against the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. And it has a great name. Another great name is…
If you’re into mass sequencing, the $1000 genome and all that jazz, you’ve probably already seen the paper in today’s Nature from the Rothberg group at Life Technologies, on the Ion Torrent sequencing technology. There’s a rather scathing take-down of the paper (not the technology itself, mind) by Daniel MacArthur over on his Wired blog.…
Can a human perform as well as a machine? Usually the question is posed the other way round, and depressingly frequently answered with “much better.” But a curious study in Anesthesiology suggests that with a bit of training, anesthesiologists are just as capable of interpreting the output, in real time, of machines that keep an…
Everybody’s at it. This time, it’s the turn of the venerable Company of Biologists—a Cambridge-based “non-profit organization whose objectives are the advancement and promotion of research in, and the study of, all branches of biology”. They publish a number of well-respected titles, including Development, Journal of Experimental Biology and one of my all-time favourites, the…
Via a tweet from F1000 Member David Stephens I came across the latest edition of despatches from the frontline, aka the Journal of Cell Science‘s ‘Sticky Wicket‘ column.
News like this always warms my heart. The Royal Society has announced this year’s awards, and there are three from the Nobel Factory(cite). Greg Winter receives the Royal Medal for interdisciplinary sciences (and perhaps also for surviving the LMB for nearly 40 years); Brad Amos has been invited to deliver the 2012 Leeuwenhoek Lecture in…
It was Kuhn, quoting Max Planck, who claimed that for science to progress (through the discarding of old hypotheses and the adoption of new ones) that opponents of progress had to die. It remains to be seen whether the general acceptance of that hypothesis itself will outlive the current generation (or not). But as our…
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is no laughing matter–unless you’re an indomitable Gaul, that is. In the ever-popular Asterix the Gaul comic books, Asterix, his companions dish out magic potion-powered pugilism to various bad guys–Romans, Vikings, pirates and even extraterrestrials. If you’re anything like me, you might have wondered what happens to these victims. Wonder no…
Michael Lappe is an F1000 Member in Structural Genomics, and runs an independent group at the Max Planck in Berlin. Michael has just evaluated a very interesting paper on something that has occurred to most of us who have anything at all to do with biological datasets–‘Sciencenet’–towards a global search and share engine for all…
