If only Calc had built-in histogram capability. I was able to find a macro to do the job), but it becomes a little clunky when one has reams and reams of data (as bioinformatics are likely to produce). Certainly I realize that OOo isn't meant for hard-core statistics. But it's often nice to do these kinds of little tests to know if a trend is worth rigorously following up.
Re:Source of creation, or evolution?
on
The Los Alamos Bug
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Eugene Koonin and William Martin just came out with a fascinating paper on the LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor).
Link to Article on Pubmed
In brief: the RNA/DNA/protein worlds evolved at hydrothermal vents in inorganic chambers. At some point, the information molecules sheathed themselves in lipids and sugars, and free-living cells emerged from the vents.
In response to at least one of your questions: the LUCA to cell transition may have taken 500 million years (primordial soup = 3.5bya, 1st evidence of prokaryotes = 3bya). That's not very long on a geologic, or even evolutionary, time scale (about 20x the time for humans to diverge from apes). But it could have been happening at thousands and thousands of vents worldwide, in thousands and thousands of inorganic chambers per vent. All of that combinatorial power adds up.
Actually, processing power matters greatly in modern macromolecular structure. Many new programs or techniques require a lot of computing time, either because their implementation is brute-force (that's sometimes what gives the best results), or because what they're trying to do is so hoary. Of course, some programs just blaze by and require only seconds of processor time. But others are only possible in the era of cheap, fast computers.
For example, I'm currently processing data from a technique known as small angle X-ray scattering. Producing a consensus model of the scattering molecule takes a week on a 2.4GHz processor with 2GB of RAM. And that's for a relatively *small* molecule (46 kilodaltons). A friend is working with a molecule 40 times as large (a 2 megadalton complex), and his job has been running for almost a month with no sign of convergence.
Upon re-reading my comment, I think I was a little harsh on SGI's support. We've always gotten what we asked for. Sometimes is was a little late in coming. And sometimes we wondered why we even needed to ask (e.g. DVD-ROM support in mid-2004). And sometimes it's taken a lot of back-and-forth to really get a solution. But, in their favor, SGI has always been decent about supporting their platform. They just can't keep up with an army of talented volunteer pros and hobbyists.
As a crystallographer, let me say that SGI had better not be depending on those support contracts. Crystallography and scientific visualization is running away from SGI as fast as it can. In the last few years support from SGI has dwindled more and more quickly, and it's now painfully obvious that they just don't give a damn about us, even though we still have a service contract. Needless to say, we don't plan on renewing the contract. Our lab has set up a few linux workstations to replace dying SGIs, and getting fixes from the community is bar none easier than getting fixes from SGI. In the former case, it's a matter of RTFMing and then asking detailed questions. In the latter case, it's a matter of hoping and praying that an SGI engineer will be able to pencil you in sometime next Tuesday.
The only crystallographic / vis software that has not been ported to linux (AFAIK) is GRASP. And several groups are working on alternatives to that even as we speak. ccp4, HKL, CNS, o, etc., etc., etc. on a decent linux box all smoke even our fastest SGI. Some users will even wait for a linux machine when an SGI is open. Which is fine by principal investigators, who have limited grant-based budgets and are now discovering that they can save up to $10k per computer by going with x86/linux.
If it'll save some of our boys, I have just one thing to say: Red is positive, black is negative. I'm all for fighting gentlemanly... with gentlemen. With the kind of enemy we find over there, observing the nicest rules of war while they fight the dirtiest way they can is just fighting with one hand tied behind our back.
Don't care much about the moral high ground, do you? We're fighting an amorphous war that is supposedly based on values. What kind of a message does it send across the globe when we can't uphold the values we're fighting for?
Torture doesn't just happen "over there". It's actively used in Guantanamo Bay, where american citizens are sent. Those tortured are not necessarily guilty. But they're tortured anyway. So, being a middle-class caucasian, it's easy for you to make a joke about electrocution. But what if you were an american citizen of middle eastern descent? Would you joke about the very real threat of torture then? Guantanamo Bay is real. Innocent people are mistakenly sent there. And to justify torturing them because maybe, just maybe, one of the other people you torture could know something reveals your monstrousness.
Ahhhhh, so that's why it did it. This is definitely information that Apple should supply up-front. It seemed logical to just have iTunes use my current root mp3 folder as the iTunes Music Folder, and hey, why would I not want a music organizer to keep the Music Folder organized?
In retrospect, I really should have let iTunes choose its own Music Folder rather than asking it to put things where I wanted them. But thankfully others can learn from my mistakes.
iTunes is *supposed* to leave your music where it is when you add a folder to the library. However, this is not always what actually happens. When I pointed iTunes to the root dir of my MP3 collection (as the reviewer did), I was horrified to discover that iTunes MOVED all of my already-sorted MP3s into various folders based on the artist/album information in the ID3 tag. How many of your MP3s have complete ID3 tags? I thought as much.
The end result is that, in addition to having much of my music resorted according to iTunes' own style, I now have a folder called "Untitled Artist - Untitled Album" which contains several thousand unsorted mp3s. These were previously well-sorted into "artist - album" directories. But because they didn't have ID3 tags, iTunes lumped them all together.
I can only assume that the aforementioned behavior is a bug. But it's a pretty heinous bug. Downloader beware.
Membrane proteins are ridiculously hard to crystallize. In part, this is because they have large hydrophobic surfaces (for sticking into the membrane), so when you attempt to purify them they just form aggregates. It's a little hard to set crystallization trays 10-20 mg/ml when the protein isn't even soluble in cell lysate.
Did anyone else connect the reported dimensions with the reported mass? It's supposed to be a 6" tall x 4" wide cylinder...that weighs SIX POUNDS. That's incredibly tightly packed! Which I guess makes sense if you're going to fit a balloon antenna, motors for standing up via the fins, and a CPU in that small package. I wonder if/when the public will reap the benefits of that kind of miniaturization?
I've ordered several things from iDOT and never been disappointed. In fact, when I first ordered from them, someone noticed that I lived only 15 miles away from their warehouse. So they offered to refund my shipping costs and hold the parts for me to personally pick up! Even more surprising, they noticed that I had separately ordered the parts for a more-than-barebones system, and offered to assemble the hardware at no extra charge.
So consider this customer satisfied. If you're going to order one of these diskless PCs, you certainly won't have any reseller problems if you order from iDOT.
It is a sad day when group love and touchy-feely wins out over technical excellence.
And it's a sad day when people start to think that the job and its technical merit is all that matters. It sounds like this guy was doing more than bashing his coworkers about their coding skills. And I'm willing to bet it was a very regular occurrence. So the question becomes, "Do we employ X number of good coders all working together towards a common goal, or one highly talented asshole that thinks he owns the world?"
I just saw Susan Lindquist (as far as I know, the woman who came up with this whole idea) give a talk on Hsp90 (the protein in question) yesterday. Since NewScientist isn't exactly forthcoming with the article, here are a few alternate resources.
There's really no need for a gene-GPL. Prior art is fantastically easy to establish. All an academic institution has to do is publish a paper in a journal (even a crappy journal....it doesn't have to be Cell to prove that you found it first) about the gene.
Second of all, I take issue with your issue that all scientists should put the needs of mankind first. Most postdocs make $30-40k/year and work 50-80 hours a week. Think about that. We're talking about 4 years of undergraduate work, followed by at least 5 years of graduate work just to get to the aforementioned position. Can you blame some people for putting their own needs before the needs of mankind? Personally, I've chosen not to go into industry. But I'm not about to demonize everyone that does simply because they want a more comfortable and less stressful lifestyle.
Oddly enough, I have never had a problem with a refurbished Palm device (even the ultra-old 3Com Pilot I bought long ago worked like a charm until I ditched it voluntarily). I know it seems counterintuitive, but maybe the best bet now is to go with something that has already broken once in the past (and has now been fixed and extensively retested by Palm). Plus, the refurbished devices can be half as expensive.
At the moment only the m500, m505, and Vx are available in the refurbished section, but sometimes older (and even cheaper) equipment pops up.
I *used* to agree with Katz on many of his movie analyses. Not so with this one. His basic thesis is as follows:
"Simpler movies are better movies."
And he's not just talking about "better" as in "makes more money." What's this crap about Joseph Campbell and the simple hero myth? If I hear that overblown windbag quoted one more time, I think I'm going to puke. He's not the only mythologist out there, but he sure gets quoted like he is.
I appreciated that complexities of the latest Star Wars movie. There were many different factions, all trying for various goals (some hidden and some obvious). And the members of each faction weren't always ACTUALLY working for that faction.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Spiderman. But it wasn't better than Star Wars because the story was less complex. It was better than Star Wars because it was better written, better acted, and better edited. Don't confuse simplicity with quality.
Well, if something were actually 50% mouse and 50% human, it would probably die while still in the womb. Making a sheep/goat hybrid is doable because these are very similar organisms.
However, there are myriad differences between a mouse and a human. So much so that the a protein meant to do the same job in a human and a mouse may differ in sequence, and even in structure. So the mouse cells might not react correctly to the stimuli being put out by the human cells, and vice versa. If the humouse were really feasible, it would probably have to be at least 90% mouse, with a few human cells thrown in to function as the diagnostics for drug action.
However, because the scientist in the article is trying to make a point, he's decided to fantastically exaggerate the facts in order to scare the public.
Gosh, you can't patent your perfume? That's because people have already figured out how to make perfumes. You can register your new kind of perfume so that everyone knows that you made it. But you didn't invent perfume. You can sell your perfume, though, so you end up having some sort of monetar compensation for your work.
Now how about if you spent your whole life working, and finally discovered protein or gene X. You're just supposed to register that you discovered it? I'm sure biotech companies will gladly tip their hat to you on their way to sell the new drugs they developed based on your discovery.
Some genes (note the qualifier there) should be patentable because they're useful and novel. I'm against patenting large segments of the genome when even the researchers don't know what those segments do. But if someone puts in the bench-time, characterizes a gene, figures out what that gene does, and has some ideas about how that gene can be useful, then I'm all for that gene being patentable.
Science is a long, hard road with very little payoff. Now that some people have started to license their discoveries, everyone harps about how scientists have no right to patent the human body. As far as I remember, the patent system is around so that the little guy that had the idea can still make money when the big companies come in and industrialize the idea. To me, that sounds *exactly* like a researcher making a discovery, then licensing the discovery to a biotech company, who makes a multi-million-dollar drug out of it.
So what should be done? Remember, we're talking about lifetimes poured into research. And not everyone can make these discoveries...it takes a certain kind of genius to see this sort of thing. Let's say that someone finally *does* figure out how to get a human to regenerate lost body parts. Why should that person not be awarded a patent, but the person that figures out how to make a safer airbag should? Just because it's your body, doesn't mean that you should own any and all improvements on it. I know that sounds horrifying, but consider what it actually means.
Let's say you're part of a study to design a way for a human to regenerate body parts. You've donated tissue samples, undergone countless tests, and had the therapy performed upon you. Would you think, "My body is human, so it's wrong to patent this improvement upon it." Or would you think, "Well, it's *my* body, so why should someone else get the patent?" Where does the scientist come into this? Why is their hard work and dedication unworth of reward, just because they chose to work with the human body?
Patenting the human body is just a buzzword. When someone patents a gene, they're not even thinking about making profit off your body. They're thinking of making profit off the therapies (drugs, etc.), that are wholly based on their discovery. Just to press the point home, I'll repeat it again: Why is the product of a biologist's lifetime of hard work undeserving of a patent, but discoveries in other professions are worthy?
Let's think this through for a second. To a non-scientist, making an organism that's part mouse, part human probably sounds like something out of a science-fiction nightmare. So they react with violent emotions, imagining something with a human head, intellect, and feelings, but a mouse body. "How *dare* they suggest something could be used for medical experimentation! The patent office *must* be changed!"
In reality, if they could even get it to work (human/mouse hybrid is a *far* cry from sheep/goat hybrid), a humouse would probably look and behave like a normal mouse. The only difference would be that some of its cells would be human cells. So before you get up in arms, think about the people that have had pig heart translants. They are humans that are not partially made of animal cells. But they don't make your heart leap in fear, do they?
I definitely agree that there should be limits on what can and can't be patented (as well as what should and shouldn't be attempted). But I don't think the humouse falls into this category. To make such a creature would take YEARS and YEARS of careful research and testing. Why shouldn't someone that figures out how to do it receive a patent? Remember, we're not talking about patenting a slave-person, here. We're talking about patenting a mouse who might have half of its cells of human origin.
The guy has a great point...that there are problems in the system. But seeing someone that *knows* how these things really work purposefully leading the public astray through incredible exaggeration just gets my goat.
You seem to have missed the point. NASA's experiment was by no means a carbon copy. The original Miller-Urey experiment was in a simulated atmosphere with electric arcs. The NASA experiment was in simulated DEEP SPACE, with radiation. It's the difference between an early earth-like environment and the depths of the universe. If you really think the two are similar, then I guess moving your house to deep space wouldn't be much of an inconvenience, eh?
I can tell from your comments that you don't understand science well. Or at the very least, you're a Popular Scientist that thinks they know everything about science. Well, I'm sorry, but science doesn't work the way you want it to. Discoveries proceed by increments, not by leaps and bounds. Sure, I'd be impressed if someone synthesized a biologically important protein from scratch. But I'd also be INCREDIBLY doubtful, since it would mean the researchers ignored all the preliminary work that needed to be done and just jumped in randomly.
You keep thinking of proteins as millions of chemical bonds, which they are. But behind those millions of chemical bonds are amino acids, which are themselves about 20-30 bonds. So this NASA experiment shows that those relatively complex 20-30 bond components can be made in deep space. After that, just use a single bond to string them together. Do that enough times, and you've got a protein. Maybe not a functional protein, but a protein nonetheless. Repeat billions and billions of times over the history/area of the universe, and maybe you'll end up with something useful.
Slashdot Mirror
If only Calc had built-in histogram capability. I was able to find a macro to do the job), but it becomes a little clunky when one has reams and reams of data (as bioinformatics are likely to produce). Certainly I realize that OOo isn't meant for hard-core statistics. But it's often nice to do these kinds of little tests to know if a trend is worth rigorously following up.
Eugene Koonin and William Martin just came out with a fascinating paper on the LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). Link to Article on Pubmed
In brief: the RNA/DNA/protein worlds evolved at hydrothermal vents in inorganic chambers. At some point, the information molecules sheathed themselves in lipids and sugars, and free-living cells emerged from the vents.
In response to at least one of your questions: the LUCA to cell transition may have taken 500 million years (primordial soup = 3.5bya, 1st evidence of prokaryotes = 3bya). That's not very long on a geologic, or even evolutionary, time scale (about 20x the time for humans to diverge from apes). But it could have been happening at thousands and thousands of vents worldwide, in thousands and thousands of inorganic chambers per vent. All of that combinatorial power adds up.
Actually, processing power matters greatly in modern macromolecular structure. Many new programs or techniques require a lot of computing time, either because their implementation is brute-force (that's sometimes what gives the best results), or because what they're trying to do is so hoary. Of course, some programs just blaze by and require only seconds of processor time. But others are only possible in the era of cheap, fast computers.
For example, I'm currently processing data from a technique known as small angle X-ray scattering. Producing a consensus model of the scattering molecule takes a week on a 2.4GHz processor with 2GB of RAM. And that's for a relatively *small* molecule (46 kilodaltons). A friend is working with a molecule 40 times as large (a 2 megadalton complex), and his job has been running for almost a month with no sign of convergence.
Upon re-reading my comment, I think I was a little harsh on SGI's support. We've always gotten what we asked for. Sometimes is was a little late in coming. And sometimes we wondered why we even needed to ask (e.g. DVD-ROM support in mid-2004). And sometimes it's taken a lot of back-and-forth to really get a solution. But, in their favor, SGI has always been decent about supporting their platform. They just can't keep up with an army of talented volunteer pros and hobbyists.
As a crystallographer, let me say that SGI had better not be depending on those support contracts. Crystallography and scientific visualization is running away from SGI as fast as it can. In the last few years support from SGI has dwindled more and more quickly, and it's now painfully obvious that they just don't give a damn about us, even though we still have a service contract. Needless to say, we don't plan on renewing the contract. Our lab has set up a few linux workstations to replace dying SGIs, and getting fixes from the community is bar none easier than getting fixes from SGI. In the former case, it's a matter of RTFMing and then asking detailed questions. In the latter case, it's a matter of hoping and praying that an SGI engineer will be able to pencil you in sometime next Tuesday.
The only crystallographic / vis software that has not been ported to linux (AFAIK) is GRASP. And several groups are working on alternatives to that even as we speak. ccp4, HKL, CNS, o, etc., etc., etc. on a decent linux box all smoke even our fastest SGI. Some users will even wait for a linux machine when an SGI is open. Which is fine by principal investigators, who have limited grant-based budgets and are now discovering that they can save up to $10k per computer by going with x86/linux.
If it'll save some of our boys, I have just one thing to say: Red is positive, black is negative.
I'm all for fighting gentlemanly... with gentlemen. With the kind of enemy we find over there, observing the nicest rules of war while they fight the dirtiest way they can is just fighting with one hand tied behind our back.
Don't care much about the moral high ground, do you? We're fighting an amorphous war that is supposedly based on values. What kind of a message does it send across the globe when we can't uphold the values we're fighting for?
Torture doesn't just happen "over there". It's actively used in Guantanamo Bay, where american citizens are sent. Those tortured are not necessarily guilty. But they're tortured anyway. So, being a middle-class caucasian, it's easy for you to make a joke about electrocution. But what if you were an american citizen of middle eastern descent? Would you joke about the very real threat of torture then? Guantanamo Bay is real. Innocent people are mistakenly sent there. And to justify torturing them because maybe, just maybe, one of the other people you torture could know something reveals your monstrousness.
Ahhhhh, so that's why it did it. This is definitely information that Apple should supply up-front. It seemed logical to just have iTunes use my current root mp3 folder as the iTunes Music Folder, and hey, why would I not want a music organizer to keep the Music Folder organized?
In retrospect, I really should have let iTunes choose its own Music Folder rather than asking it to put things where I wanted them. But thankfully others can learn from my mistakes.
iTunes is *supposed* to leave your music where it is when you add a folder to the library. However, this is not always what actually happens. When I pointed iTunes to the root dir of my MP3 collection (as the reviewer did), I was horrified to discover that iTunes MOVED all of my already-sorted MP3s into various folders based on the artist/album information in the ID3 tag. How many of your MP3s have complete ID3 tags? I thought as much.
The end result is that, in addition to having much of my music resorted according to iTunes' own style, I now have a folder called "Untitled Artist - Untitled Album" which contains several thousand unsorted mp3s. These were previously well-sorted into "artist - album" directories. But because they didn't have ID3 tags, iTunes lumped them all together.
I can only assume that the aforementioned behavior is a bug. But it's a pretty heinous bug. Downloader beware.
Membrane proteins are ridiculously hard to crystallize. In part, this is because they have large hydrophobic surfaces (for sticking into the membrane), so when you attempt to purify them they just form aggregates. It's a little hard to set crystallization trays 10-20 mg/ml when the protein isn't even soluble in cell lysate.
Your laptop might be mighty compact, but it's still an awful lot larger than 6"x4". And it can't survive being dropped from a plane.
Did anyone else connect the reported dimensions with the reported mass? It's supposed to be a 6" tall x 4" wide cylinder...that weighs SIX POUNDS. That's incredibly tightly packed! Which I guess makes sense if you're going to fit a balloon antenna, motors for standing up via the fins, and a CPU in that small package. I wonder if/when the public will reap the benefits of that kind of miniaturization?
Like everyone said...that reseller ratings post was me.
Both iDOT and TigerPC allow you to add a HD before purchase. The base model is HD-free, though.
I've ordered several things from iDOT and never been disappointed. In fact, when I first ordered from them, someone noticed that I lived only 15 miles away from their warehouse. So they offered to refund my shipping costs and hold the parts for me to personally pick up! Even more surprising, they noticed that I had separately ordered the parts for a more-than-barebones system, and offered to assemble the hardware at no extra charge.
So consider this customer satisfied. If you're going to order one of these diskless PCs, you certainly won't have any reseller problems if you order from iDOT.
And it's a sad day when people start to think that the job and its technical merit is all that matters. It sounds like this guy was doing more than bashing his coworkers about their coding skills. And I'm willing to bet it was a very regular occurrence. So the question becomes, "Do we employ X number of good coders all working together towards a common goal, or one highly talented asshole that thinks he owns the world?"
I just saw Susan Lindquist (as far as I know, the woman who came up with this whole idea) give a talk on Hsp90 (the protein in question) yesterday. Since NewScientist isn't exactly forthcoming with the article, here are a few alternate resources.
There's really no need for a gene-GPL. Prior art is fantastically easy to establish. All an academic institution has to do is publish a paper in a journal (even a crappy journal....it doesn't have to be Cell to prove that you found it first) about the gene.
Second of all, I take issue with your issue that all scientists should put the needs of mankind first. Most postdocs make $30-40k/year and work 50-80 hours a week. Think about that. We're talking about 4 years of undergraduate work, followed by at least 5 years of graduate work just to get to the aforementioned position. Can you blame some people for putting their own needs before the needs of mankind? Personally, I've chosen not to go into industry. But I'm not about to demonize everyone that does simply because they want a more comfortable and less stressful lifestyle.
Palm.com refurbished store.
Oddly enough, I have never had a problem with a refurbished Palm device (even the ultra-old 3Com Pilot I bought long ago worked like a charm until I ditched it voluntarily). I know it seems counterintuitive, but maybe the best bet now is to go with something that has already broken once in the past (and has now been fixed and extensively retested by Palm). Plus, the refurbished devices can be half as expensive.
At the moment only the m500, m505, and Vx are available in the refurbished section, but sometimes older (and even cheaper) equipment pops up.
I *used* to agree with Katz on many of his movie analyses. Not so with this one. His basic thesis is as follows:
"Simpler movies are better movies."
And he's not just talking about "better" as in "makes more money." What's this crap about Joseph Campbell and the simple hero myth? If I hear that overblown windbag quoted one more time, I think I'm going to puke. He's not the only mythologist out there, but he sure gets quoted like he is.
I appreciated that complexities of the latest Star Wars movie. There were many different factions, all trying for various goals (some hidden and some obvious). And the members of each faction weren't always ACTUALLY working for that faction.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Spiderman. But it wasn't better than Star Wars because the story was less complex. It was better than Star Wars because it was better written, better acted, and better edited. Don't confuse simplicity with quality.
Well, if something were actually 50% mouse and 50% human, it would probably die while still in the womb. Making a sheep/goat hybrid is doable because these are very similar organisms.
However, there are myriad differences between a mouse and a human. So much so that the a protein meant to do the same job in a human and a mouse may differ in sequence, and even in structure. So the mouse cells might not react correctly to the stimuli being put out by the human cells, and vice versa. If the humouse were really feasible, it would probably have to be at least 90% mouse, with a few human cells thrown in to function as the diagnostics for drug action.
However, because the scientist in the article is trying to make a point, he's decided to fantastically exaggerate the facts in order to scare the public.
No, tha'ts not what my argument boils down to.
Gosh, you can't patent your perfume? That's because people have already figured out how to make perfumes. You can register your new kind of perfume so that everyone knows that you made it. But you didn't invent perfume. You can sell your perfume, though, so you end up having some sort of monetar compensation for your work.
Now how about if you spent your whole life working, and finally discovered protein or gene X. You're just supposed to register that you discovered it? I'm sure biotech companies will gladly tip their hat to you on their way to sell the new drugs they developed based on your discovery.
Some genes (note the qualifier there) should be patentable because they're useful and novel. I'm against patenting large segments of the genome when even the researchers don't know what those segments do. But if someone puts in the bench-time, characterizes a gene, figures out what that gene does, and has some ideas about how that gene can be useful, then I'm all for that gene being patentable.
Science is a long, hard road with very little payoff. Now that some people have started to license their discoveries, everyone harps about how scientists have no right to patent the human body. As far as I remember, the patent system is around so that the little guy that had the idea can still make money when the big companies come in and industrialize the idea. To me, that sounds *exactly* like a researcher making a discovery, then licensing the discovery to a biotech company, who makes a multi-million-dollar drug out of it.
So what should be done? Remember, we're talking about lifetimes poured into research. And not everyone can make these discoveries...it takes a certain kind of genius to see this sort of thing. Let's say that someone finally *does* figure out how to get a human to regenerate lost body parts. Why should that person not be awarded a patent, but the person that figures out how to make a safer airbag should? Just because it's your body, doesn't mean that you should own any and all improvements on it. I know that sounds horrifying, but consider what it actually means.
Let's say you're part of a study to design a way for a human to regenerate body parts. You've donated tissue samples, undergone countless tests, and had the therapy performed upon you. Would you think, "My body is human, so it's wrong to patent this improvement upon it." Or would you think, "Well, it's *my* body, so why should someone else get the patent?" Where does the scientist come into this? Why is their hard work and dedication unworth of reward, just because they chose to work with the human body?
Patenting the human body is just a buzzword. When someone patents a gene, they're not even thinking about making profit off your body. They're thinking of making profit off the therapies (drugs, etc.), that are wholly based on their discovery. Just to press the point home, I'll repeat it again: Why is the product of a biologist's lifetime of hard work undeserving of a patent, but discoveries in other professions are worthy?
Let's think this through for a second. To a non-scientist, making an organism that's part mouse, part human probably sounds like something out of a science-fiction nightmare. So they react with violent emotions, imagining something with a human head, intellect, and feelings, but a mouse body. "How *dare* they suggest something could be used for medical experimentation! The patent office *must* be changed!"
In reality, if they could even get it to work (human/mouse hybrid is a *far* cry from sheep/goat hybrid), a humouse would probably look and behave like a normal mouse. The only difference would be that some of its cells would be human cells. So before you get up in arms, think about the people that have had pig heart translants. They are humans that are not partially made of animal cells. But they don't make your heart leap in fear, do they?
I definitely agree that there should be limits on what can and can't be patented (as well as what should and shouldn't be attempted). But I don't think the humouse falls into this category. To make such a creature would take YEARS and YEARS of careful research and testing. Why shouldn't someone that figures out how to do it receive a patent? Remember, we're not talking about patenting a slave-person, here. We're talking about patenting a mouse who might have half of its cells of human origin.
The guy has a great point...that there are problems in the system. But seeing someone that *knows* how these things really work purposefully leading the public astray through incredible exaggeration just gets my goat.
Actually, while the reference within the post is towards a ST:tNG episode, ST Microscope refers to a Scanning Tunneling Microscope.
You seem to have missed the point. NASA's experiment was by no means a carbon copy. The original Miller-Urey experiment was in a simulated atmosphere with electric arcs. The NASA experiment was in simulated DEEP SPACE, with radiation. It's the difference between an early earth-like environment and the depths of the universe. If you really think the two are similar, then I guess moving your house to deep space wouldn't be much of an inconvenience, eh?
I can tell from your comments that you don't understand science well. Or at the very least, you're a Popular Scientist that thinks they know everything about science. Well, I'm sorry, but science doesn't work the way you want it to. Discoveries proceed by increments, not by leaps and bounds. Sure, I'd be impressed if someone synthesized a biologically important protein from scratch. But I'd also be INCREDIBLY doubtful, since it would mean the researchers ignored all the preliminary work that needed to be done and just jumped in randomly.
You keep thinking of proteins as millions of chemical bonds, which they are. But behind those millions of chemical bonds are amino acids, which are themselves about 20-30 bonds. So this NASA experiment shows that those relatively complex 20-30 bond components can be made in deep space. After that, just use a single bond to string them together. Do that enough times, and you've got a protein. Maybe not a functional protein, but a protein nonetheless. Repeat billions and billions of times over the history/area of the universe, and maybe you'll end up with something useful.