Actually zebrafish embryos are the perfect model for large scale small compound screens, they are vertebrates like humans unlike other model organisms suitable for large screens like yeast, worms (C. elegans) and fruitfly (D. melanogaster). Why do you think zebrafish embryos are that much different then humans? A large portion of the zebrafish proteins are very homologous to human ones. If a compound has the desired effect on zebrafish it's very easy to verify in a tissue culture setting if it has the same effect on the human homologue.
You realize that the species in the example you give (banteng (a bovine species) and a cow) are much, much more related than anything we have walking around right now will resemble a dinosaur, right?
To be honest I didn't know cross-species cloning was possible, also I don't think it will never be possible to clone a dinosaur, just not right now. I just wanted to point out that it is not as easy as putting some DNA in a cell and let it grow. PS: morphologically similar doesn't say much, birds are still more closely related. Although alligator appearance didn't change much over the course of millions of years doesn't mean that some essential mechanisms like embryogenesis did.
According to Jack Horner, professor of palaeontology
Yes, I'm sure a professor in paleontology will now everything about the genetic problems that will arise...
To name a few: Mere DNA is not sufficient for an fertilized oocyte to develop, generally an oocyte contains maternally provided protein and RNA, where are you going to get those? Second is epigenetics: The DNA generally contains a lot of modifications to "switch on or off" genes, during embryonic development the DNA is heavily reprogrammed, those cues are probably very species specific, again where are we going to get an dinosaur oocyte??? I'm sure there are even more difficulties to overcome.
As a scientist working with a lot of imaging data I can tell you that Photoshop is provided by my institution and our license allows installation on private computers as well (as long as you are employed). So using photoshop cost me nothing, but requires me to leave that windows partition on my computer.
So since I already have photoshop at work and know how to use it, why whould I bother to learn how to use GIMP so I can do some work at home? To be honest, I might if I had to pay for it but not very likely, I would just make sure I wouldn't need to do any such work at home at all.
Of course the star will function as the light source, but as I understand the current method of finding exoplanets is looking for regular fluctuations in star spectra caused by their orbiting planet(s). In order for *this* to work light reflected on the planet needs to be intercepted.
How would resetting them horizontally help in that case either? Seems to me that putting them on roofs spreads the chance of breakdown. Sure some roofs can be blown of, but not all of them. If that hurricane passes right over that solar power generator you risk losing all power at once.
Good point, I wondered about this too. I lived in Boston for a year and realize it is considered perfectly normal in the States, but WHY is the normal local police not sufficient for a campus? Especially in say Boston College where the campus is located within the city? When I was there I never had the feeling that crime is so bad as to justify hiring extra police to do that job...
I like your reductio ad absurdam, but by the same reasoning, suppose the hardware salesman is the only one in town and suddenly decides that hammers are worth 1 million dollars. Now this dead cat is starting to look mighty appealing, also maybe this road where the cat was found has other things to offer, like rocks!
Anyway, my point is price is never irrelevant, but free is not always better either.
sequencing software != sequencer, which the actual device to read all those A, C, G and Ts. Although there is the old fashioned manual solution (run it on a gel) it still costs a lot of reagents, not to mention a lot of time.
In theory you're right that you could make a lot of those instruments at home, but I don't think it would work in practice. Besides you're still left with the problem of expensive enzymes, you want to make those yourself too? You'll be busy for years constructing your devices and isolating your enzymes before you can even do your first experiment. And where did you say you got that pipette to accurately add 2 uL of solution?
Actually we share 60% of our genes, not DNA with fruitflies, same for chimps. Which means that for 60% of the genes in our genome you can find a similar gene in fruitflies, although the structure of that particular gene has changed in fruitflies and humans independently over time.
Since neanderthals are much more related to humans one would expect the number of gene orthologs between humans and neanderthals to be between 98% and 100%. All the genes they mapped will probably genes that humans also have, the interesting bits may come from differences in those genes between the two species. And of course the genes that humans have and naederthals not (or vice versa) but my guess is they haven't mapped those yet. It's easier to map a gene if you know what you're looking for (human ortholog).
Maybe so, but when scientists from academia are applying for grants to support their research, these things WILL matter.
I realize for most drug companies the US will be the main market they focus on, but there are other countries with better health care systems, where affordability for patients will be less an issue.
Besides - there needs to be reasonable penalties. Just because a company has 100 million in assests/revenue does not mean they need to be fined 100 million for any infraction of any law. That would be prejudicial and wrong. It would be along the lines of how drug laws are racist (cheaper drugs, which tend to be used mroe by low socio-economic people aka minorities, get stiffer penalties then those who use more expensive drugs.)
Or, those drugs are cheaper because of the more heavy penalty involved when caught? I'm sure it will affect the price/demand somehow
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I would like to add:
Whether you want to fork up 1000 dollar for your newborn is a though ethical decision and I guess it also depends on your financial situation. If you can easily miss it, why deny your kid a possible cure? But to be honest, since most people don't put their baby's umbilical cord cells in a bank, most research will focus on cures where those are not required, because there's more potential to save lives.
You are quite optimistic about the current state of stem cell research, I think it will take much longer.
I agree though that chances are equally well that, when useful stemcell related cures are on their way, no umbilical cord cells are needed for these. Perhaps somatic cells can be reprogrammed. More likely scientists will find a way to make "more determined" stem cells, for example colon stem cells or hair stem cells, more pluripotent and use these.
In South Africa it was fairly straightforward to follow the SABC (state-owned; think BBC) Afrikaans news but had no chance whatsoever understanding what was said in bars in small towns.
Well the same holds true for the Netherlands I guess;-)
This was exactly my point, I'm not claiming that colonization was a good thing, but I don't see how Dutch colonization was any worse (or better) than any other country's.
I'm not sure what you are referring at, but I'm quite sure the Dutch East Indies corporation was (largely) responsible for making the Netherlands one of the richest countries on earth (at that time) and initiating the Dutch "golden century". So define "worst" colonizers?
Honouring my Dutch blood, I couldn't agree more with the second part of your post:-)
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Except it is marketed as not being a medicine (homeopathic) otherwise it would have been required to mention said loss of smell as a side effect.
Actually zebrafish embryos are the perfect model for large scale small compound screens, they are vertebrates like humans unlike other model organisms suitable for large screens like yeast, worms (C. elegans) and fruitfly (D. melanogaster). Why do you think zebrafish embryos are that much different then humans? A large portion of the zebrafish proteins are very homologous to human ones. If a compound has the desired effect on zebrafish it's very easy to verify in a tissue culture setting if it has the same effect on the human homologue.
You realize that the species in the example you give (banteng (a bovine species) and a cow) are much, much more related than anything we have walking around right now will resemble a dinosaur, right?
To be honest I didn't know cross-species cloning was possible, also I don't think it will never be possible to clone a dinosaur, just not right now. I just wanted to point out that it is not as easy as putting some DNA in a cell and let it grow. PS: morphologically similar doesn't say much, birds are still more closely related. Although alligator appearance didn't change much over the course of millions of years doesn't mean that some essential mechanisms like embryogenesis did.
According to Jack Horner, professor of palaeontology
Yes, I'm sure a professor in paleontology will now everything about the genetic problems that will arise...
To name a few: Mere DNA is not sufficient for an fertilized oocyte to develop, generally an oocyte contains maternally provided protein and RNA, where are you going to get those? Second is epigenetics: The DNA generally contains a lot of modifications to "switch on or off" genes, during embryonic development the DNA is heavily reprogrammed, those cues are probably very species specific, again where are we going to get an dinosaur oocyte??? I'm sure there are even more difficulties to overcome.
As a scientist working with a lot of imaging data I can tell you that Photoshop is provided by my institution and our license allows installation on private computers as well (as long as you are employed). So using photoshop cost me nothing, but requires me to leave that windows partition on my computer.
So since I already have photoshop at work and know how to use it, why whould I bother to learn how to use GIMP so I can do some work at home? To be honest, I might if I had to pay for it but not very likely, I would just make sure I wouldn't need to do any such work at home at all.
Of course the star will function as the light source, but as I understand the current method of finding exoplanets is looking for regular fluctuations in star spectra caused by their orbiting planet(s). In order for *this* to work light reflected on the planet needs to be intercepted.
How would resetting them horizontally help in that case either? Seems to me that putting them on roofs spreads the chance of breakdown. Sure some roofs can be blown of, but not all of them. If that hurricane passes right over that solar power generator you risk losing all power at once.
Good point, I wondered about this too. I lived in Boston for a year and realize it is considered perfectly normal in the States, but WHY is the normal local police not sufficient for a campus? Especially in say Boston College where the campus is located within the city? When I was there I never had the feeling that crime is so bad as to justify hiring extra police to do that job...
I like your reductio ad absurdam, but by the same reasoning, suppose the hardware salesman is the only one in town and suddenly decides that hammers are worth 1 million dollars. Now this dead cat is starting to look mighty appealing, also maybe this road where the cat was found has other things to offer, like rocks!
Anyway, my point is price is never irrelevant, but free is not always better either.
He was talking about making *better* coffee, which includes grinding beans on a regular basis to ensure you have fresh coffee...
So, we are all waiting for the Chinese version of this device without all the lockdown and including all the obvious useful fetures?
sequencing software != sequencer, which the actual device to read all those A, C, G and Ts. Although there is the old fashioned manual solution (run it on a gel) it still costs a lot of reagents, not to mention a lot of time.
In theory you're right that you could make a lot of those instruments at home, but I don't think it would work in practice. Besides you're still left with the problem of expensive enzymes, you want to make those yourself too? You'll be busy for years constructing your devices and isolating your enzymes before you can even do your first experiment. And where did you say you got that pipette to accurately add 2 uL of solution?
Don't worry, I have a feeling those nationalists are being protected from reading slander like that ;-)
Actually we share 60% of our genes, not DNA with fruitflies, same for chimps. Which means that for 60% of the genes in our genome you can find a similar gene in fruitflies, although the structure of that particular gene has changed in fruitflies and humans independently over time.
Since neanderthals are much more related to humans one would expect the number of gene orthologs between humans and neanderthals to be between 98% and 100%. All the genes they mapped will probably genes that humans also have, the interesting bits may come from differences in those genes between the two species. And of course the genes that humans have and naederthals not (or vice versa) but my guess is they haven't mapped those yet. It's easier to map a gene if you know what you're looking for (human ortholog).
I wonder if the 10% improvement in fuel efficiency only counts for roads in Boston, how about cities with decent roads?
Maybe so, but when scientists from academia are applying for grants to support their research, these things WILL matter.
I realize for most drug companies the US will be the main market they focus on, but there are other countries with better health care systems, where affordability for patients will be less an issue.
Besides - there needs to be reasonable penalties. Just because a company has 100 million in assests/revenue does not mean they need to be fined 100 million for any infraction of any law. That would be prejudicial and wrong. It would be along the lines of how drug laws are racist (cheaper drugs, which tend to be used mroe by low socio-economic people aka minorities, get stiffer penalties then those who use more expensive drugs.)
Or, those drugs are cheaper because of the more heavy penalty involved when caught? I'm sure it will affect the price/demand somehow
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I would like to add:
Whether you want to fork up 1000 dollar for your newborn is a though ethical decision and I guess it also depends on your financial situation. If you can easily miss it, why deny your kid a possible cure? But to be honest, since most people don't put their baby's umbilical cord cells in a bank, most research will focus on cures where those are not required, because there's more potential to save lives.
You are quite optimistic about the current state of stem cell research, I think it will take much longer.
I agree though that chances are equally well that, when useful stemcell related cures are on their way, no umbilical cord cells are needed for these. Perhaps somatic cells can be reprogrammed. More likely scientists will find a way to make "more determined" stem cells, for example colon stem cells or hair stem cells, more pluripotent and use these.
yes I do, I also recognize bad taste when I see it...
The British I guess? We traded (were being forced to trade) New Jersey (and Manhattan) for Surinam with them.
In South Africa it was fairly straightforward to follow the SABC (state-owned; think BBC) Afrikaans news but had no chance whatsoever understanding what was said in bars in small towns.
Well the same holds true for the Netherlands I guess ;-)
This was exactly my point, I'm not claiming that colonization was a good thing, but I don't see how Dutch colonization was any worse (or better) than any other country's.
I'm not sure what you are referring at, but I'm quite sure the Dutch East Indies corporation was (largely) responsible for making the Netherlands one of the richest countries on earth (at that time) and initiating the Dutch "golden century". So define "worst" colonizers?
:-)
Honouring my Dutch blood, I couldn't agree more with the second part of your post
if
if you don't trust Netflix
silly me!