Watson and Crick did not come up with the concept of the 3 base codon. That was Crick and Sydney Brenner.
To learn more, read this:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0879 696362/qid=1049381159/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-967590 7-2981552?v=glance&s=books
So what you're asking for is a world without textbooks, or perhaps a world where textbooks are insanely expensive. I work for a science publisher. Textbook prices are very high because you're always dealing with an economy of scale--if you're going to make a big colorful book and sell it to a few thousand people, you've got to charge enough to at least cover the printing costs. If teachers are allowed to copy entire books and distribute them for free, there would be no way we could continue to produce textbooks.
Well, I bought the book, despite it being available for free.
But that's not the real point here. It was a book with a small print run by a first-time author. He's gotten way, way more press for putting it up for free than he would have otherwise. There was never a publicity budget for this tiny book, but tons of people know all about it now.
He's got a new book, coming out from a larger publisher this fall. I assume this one won't come out for free, and will probably reap the benefits of the attentioned garnered by Down & Out.
Interestingly, Crick is supposed to have been offered a knighthood but turned it down, while Watson accepted his. Crick has pretty much lived in the US since the double helix days, but Watson is much more of an Anglophile.
---Co-authorship on the the paper. A standard practice for someone who gives you the crucial bit of data---
Clearly you're not a scientist if you think things really work this way. Go to any meeting and you'll see people furiously taking notes, then running out to use their cel phones to call their labs...
Regardless, Franklin's data was published in her own paper in the very same issue of Nature. (see http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html to view the originals). Do you think she would have been better served as a junior author on Watson and Crick's paper describing model building that she had no part of, or publishing as the first author on a paper showing her own work?
Nature has a whole section on the 50th Anniversary:
http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/index.html
Also, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (which is run by Watson) is holding a meeting starting Wednesday night to celebrate the anniversary. The whole thing is supposed to be streamed live over the web for free. Not sure of the exact link for this, but the general site is:
http://www.cshl.org/
And their 50th Anniversary site is:
http://www.dna50.org/main.htm
The original Watson/Crick paper specifically thanks Dr. R. E. Franklin. What more would you have them do? Franklin reportedly felt no slight, and remained friendly and corresponded with Watson and Crick through her remaining years. And yes, had she been alive, she would have been given the Nobel along with them, but the awards are not given posthumously.
Think about it, humans have been music makers forever. Only in the last 50-100 years has the technology for reproducing recorded music existed. Only in that tiny window has a musician been able to make a living from selling those recordings. Who's to say that this isn't a blip, an oddity, one whose time is rapidly passing. And that musicians will go back to making a living the way they always have, through live performance (not that ClearChannel makes that any easier these days).
The problem with your comment is that it's not a "free market" at all. You have 5 companies, all in collusion, who control every aspect of the market. You have one company that controls nearly every aspect of exposure.
If these companies actually had to compete, you'd have 1) lower cd prices, and 2) better treatment of artists.
You'd prefer the academy's standard operating procedure, giving the award to yet another piece of Randy Newman pablum from a Disney cartoon written to sell Happy Meals?
So a few scratches in the paint make it a bad laptop? I've beaten the hell out of my TiBook for the last 2 years or so, and yes, it's got dents and scratches, but yes, it still works perfectly well.
---if these guys didn't steal software and music, prices would be lower and quality would be higher---
You mean like when MS put product activation into Windows XP and then with the savings they were able to lower prices? What's that, XP is the most expensive Windows yet? Even without pirating? Funny how that works.
I haven't noticed lower prices on any copy-protected music cds either.
I work for a publisher, and our production department is indeed waiting for Quark to switch to OSX. Every other program we use is available for OSX, and we regularly update our software. The only thing holding us back is Quark.
We would just switch to Adobe, but:
1) we take competetive bids from a variety of printers, many of whom are Quark-only
2)the learning curve for InDesign is more of a worry than the learning curve for OSX
The record companies make a lot more money if one album sells 10 million copies, than if 10 albums each sell 1 million copies, or 100 albums each sell 100,000 copies.
Each album has inherent costs in promotion and distribution. The record company has to pay to get it played on the radio, pay for a video, and pay MTV to play it.
They don't want you being exposed to a wide variety of music. It means less profit and more work for them. Hence the killing of internet radio and the attempts to kill sharing.
If you only get to hear Britney and *N'Sync, then that's all you'll buy, and that's all the record company has to pay to promote.
Crick's central dogma is still essentially correct. I don't know of anyone who thinks it is the ONLY way things work--alternatives have been proven time and time again. So I'd argue that pretty much everyone has stepped outside of it. Look at David Allis' "Histone Code" theories, that chromatin structure is a major determinant in gene regulation. These have been well received. How far outside would you suggest one steps? In any science, if you're going to propose something radically new that contradicts everything proven before, you'd better have some strong evidence to back it up.
That said, funding is indeed a mess these days. Most granting agencies and their review groups want to fund simple projects that they know will work--essentially the busywork of science. Truly groundbreaking basic science is certainly harder to find funding for.
"I would be hard pressed to think of a statement I disagree more strongly with than this one. Sorry, not at all, not even remotely so. Traditional biology is the biology of the un-living."
The current state of biology features a massive shift away from in vitro experimentation (and looking at fixed specimens) towards an in vivo approach. Transgenic technologies, use of GFP as a marker and advanced imaging techniques are all making this possible, so I would hardly think of the research I have done as "biology of the un-living". As far as complexity, have you ever seen any of the circuit diagrams currently favored by systems biologists? These are insanely complex, and probably not the best visual metaphor to get the point across. But most scientists are very aware of them, and very aware of the complexity of processes like regulation of the cell cycle or signal transduction. Maybe you're hanging out with bad scientists, because anyone who doesn't realize this obvious truth isn't all that smart.
Remember that the "rough draft" took some 20 years to complete. Do you really expect everything it tells us to be completely understood in less than 1/10 of that time? How is this draft "vaporware" in any way whatsover? It is what it claims to be, and has been incredibly useful to researchers, particularly those locating disease genes.
As far as not yet having a complete gene count, it would help if you could provide a complete and accurate definition of a "gene". The full sequence has raised more questions on this front than it has answered. Can you really call something a "gene" just from looking at the sequence? Does an open reading frame really mean something is actually transcribed? How do you separate out the psuedogenes from the real ones? What about alternate splicing to create alternate proteins--does this count as one gene or several?
You're dealing with 3 billion bases and a highly variable definition of what you're looking for. Why do you expect a final answer to be that easy?
While I agree with your central point--his primer is way too simplistic (for example, DNA looping brings together proteins binding elements that are vast distances apart), I will take issue with your characterization of attitudes toward the "central dogma".
The central dogma, proposed by Francis Crick, basically states that DNA is used to make RNA which is used to make protein. Although it is essentially correct, many exceptions to the rule have been added over the years. For example, the reverse transcriptase found in retroviruses makes DNA from RNA, a reverse of the first step. Many RNA molecules act as simple enzymes.
These things are all common knowledge among molecular biologists. This would mean that everyone disagrees with the central dogma and according to you, no one would ever receive any funding. Get real, where do you think the phrase "close enough for biology" comes from? Everyone understands the complexity and variety seen in living organisms, and no scientist worth his salt would act like the strawman you've imagined here.
Intergenic sequences contain vast amounts of regulatory elements. These elements play important roles in when a gene is turned on/off and how much transcript is generated. So it is indeed the content that really matters.
The classic definition of an "enhancer" is that it is position and orientation independent--it can be moved elsewhere and/or flipped and still work. They can be found within genes or massive distances away. I don't know of any studies where the physical size of the intergenic sequence makes a difference, as long as all the elements are there.
As for evolutionary studies, most focus on the mitochondrial DNA, as that is (with extremely few controversial exceptions) solely inherited from the mother.
Er, chronologically one needs to start with the Velvet Underground, followed by Bowie/Iggy, leading into the MC5 and NY Dolls. Then you get the Ramones, Television and Patti.
The best information source you're likely to find on all this is "Please Kill Me" an oral history of NY Punk put together by Legs McNeil. It's a spectacular read.
Sad to see that so many have bought into McLaren's grand vision of himself. Do yourself a favor, read "No Black, No Irish, No Dogs", Johnny Lydon's autobiography, or see "The Filth And The Fury" and find out that Malcolm was just a self-centered wannabe artist riding on Lydon's coattails while simultaneously stealing every penny the band made. Don't revere this useless bastard!
Oh, and he totally screwed up the New York Dolls as well.
Wow, so you're saying that XP doesn't need drivers for digital cameras, that it NEVER crashes and that it is now impossible to get the BSOD? Amazing, and contradictory to everything I've heard about it.
---I am pretty sure you can find OS 8 in some store somewhere.---
I'd love to see you find it. OS 8 came out in 1997, so the comparison of using this versus Win 98 is incorrect.
---It is probably pretty hard though because it sucked balls and only about 1% of all mac users still use it.---
1% use it, then it's a terrible comparison. What percentage of Windows users still use 98? 60% plus at least. Meaning it's a much more valid comparison.
---The truth is that most of the stuff stated in the mac commercials is horribly outdated or just plain moronic. They are aimed at only the most ignorant home users and tried to convince them that spending $2K on a mac is better than spending $100 on XP Home Upgrade.---
Moronic? Real people's real life experience? Fair enough, but then you're labeling every non-computer savvy person in the world a moron. And there are a lot more morons than there are MCSE's, so who does it make more sense for Apple to go after? As far as upgrading to the lame and crippled XP Home, how many people who are considering buying a completely new rig have an older machine capable of running XP?
---They compare Mac OSX to Windows 95/98, not to XP (or even 2000) which would be the fair comparison.---
Where in the ads does it specifically state which version of Windows they're talking about? How do you know they're talking about 98 or 95 or XP? Do you need drivers for a digital camera in XP? Do you get the BSOD in XP? Does it crash and you lose unsaved work? If none of these things can possibly happen in XP, then you have a point, otherwise you don't.
Also, think about who these ads are targeted at, people who are going to buy a new machine. How many people with XP are shopping for a new system? Odds are most people looking for a new machine are using 98 (as it is STILL the most popular version of Windows). Why not compare what they can expect from Mac to what they've already experienced? How is this disingenuous?
---I mean you could compare Windows XP to MacOS 8 and see which one "just works".---
OS 8 has been discontinued and is no longer for sale or supported by Apple. Windows 98 is still available for sale (at least you can buy it from PC Warehouse). Comparing one available product to another available product is a lot more fair than what you're asking.
As for other posts that wonder if the Mac switchers are real people or not, head over to:
http://www.boingboing.net
and you can find Mark Frauenfelder and ask him yourself if he exists.
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Watson and Crick did not come up with the concept of the 3 base codon. That was Crick and Sydney Brenner. To learn more, read this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0879 696362/qid=1049381159/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-967590 7-2981552?v=glance&s=books
So what you're asking for is a world without textbooks, or perhaps a world where textbooks are insanely expensive. I work for a science publisher. Textbook prices are very high because you're always dealing with an economy of scale--if you're going to make a big colorful book and sell it to a few thousand people, you've got to charge enough to at least cover the printing costs. If teachers are allowed to copy entire books and distribute them for free, there would be no way we could continue to produce textbooks.
Well, I bought the book, despite it being available for free. But that's not the real point here. It was a book with a small print run by a first-time author. He's gotten way, way more press for putting it up for free than he would have otherwise. There was never a publicity budget for this tiny book, but tons of people know all about it now. He's got a new book, coming out from a larger publisher this fall. I assume this one won't come out for free, and will probably reap the benefits of the attentioned garnered by Down & Out.
Interestingly, Crick is supposed to have been offered a knighthood but turned it down, while Watson accepted his. Crick has pretty much lived in the US since the double helix days, but Watson is much more of an Anglophile.
---Co-authorship on the the paper. A standard practice for someone who gives you the crucial bit of data--- Clearly you're not a scientist if you think things really work this way. Go to any meeting and you'll see people furiously taking notes, then running out to use their cel phones to call their labs... Regardless, Franklin's data was published in her own paper in the very same issue of Nature. (see http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html to view the originals). Do you think she would have been better served as a junior author on Watson and Crick's paper describing model building that she had no part of, or publishing as the first author on a paper showing her own work?
Available from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. It is not cheap, but comes with a license for public showing. http://www.cshlpress.com
Nature has a whole section on the 50th Anniversary: http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/index.html Also, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (which is run by Watson) is holding a meeting starting Wednesday night to celebrate the anniversary. The whole thing is supposed to be streamed live over the web for free. Not sure of the exact link for this, but the general site is: http://www.cshl.org/ And their 50th Anniversary site is: http://www.dna50.org/main.htm
The original Watson/Crick paper specifically thanks Dr. R. E. Franklin. What more would you have them do? Franklin reportedly felt no slight, and remained friendly and corresponded with Watson and Crick through her remaining years. And yes, had she been alive, she would have been given the Nobel along with them, but the awards are not given posthumously.
Think about it, humans have been music makers forever. Only in the last 50-100 years has the technology for reproducing recorded music existed. Only in that tiny window has a musician been able to make a living from selling those recordings. Who's to say that this isn't a blip, an oddity, one whose time is rapidly passing. And that musicians will go back to making a living the way they always have, through live performance (not that ClearChannel makes that any easier these days).
The problem with your comment is that it's not a "free market" at all. You have 5 companies, all in collusion, who control every aspect of the market. You have one company that controls nearly every aspect of exposure.
If these companies actually had to compete, you'd have 1) lower cd prices, and 2) better treatment of artists.
You'd prefer the academy's standard operating procedure, giving the award to yet another piece of Randy Newman pablum from a Disney cartoon written to sell Happy Meals?
Isn't Opera the leading browser for mobile devices like cel phones? Gee, can't guess why MS would want to discredit them.
Isn't Opera the leading choice of browser for mobile devices like cel phones? Isn't this a market MS wants to own?
So a few scratches in the paint make it a bad laptop? I've beaten the hell out of my TiBook for the last 2 years or so, and yes, it's got dents and scratches, but yes, it still works perfectly well.
---if these guys didn't steal software and music, prices would be lower and quality would be higher--- You mean like when MS put product activation into Windows XP and then with the savings they were able to lower prices? What's that, XP is the most expensive Windows yet? Even without pirating? Funny how that works. I haven't noticed lower prices on any copy-protected music cds either.
I work for a publisher, and our production department is indeed waiting for Quark to switch to OSX. Every other program we use is available for OSX, and we regularly update our software. The only thing holding us back is Quark. We would just switch to Adobe, but: 1) we take competetive bids from a variety of printers, many of whom are Quark-only 2)the learning curve for InDesign is more of a worry than the learning curve for OSX
The record companies make a lot more money if one album sells 10 million copies, than if 10 albums each sell 1 million copies, or 100 albums each sell 100,000 copies. Each album has inherent costs in promotion and distribution. The record company has to pay to get it played on the radio, pay for a video, and pay MTV to play it. They don't want you being exposed to a wide variety of music. It means less profit and more work for them. Hence the killing of internet radio and the attempts to kill sharing. If you only get to hear Britney and *N'Sync, then that's all you'll buy, and that's all the record company has to pay to promote.
Crick's central dogma is still essentially correct. I don't know of anyone who thinks it is the ONLY way things work--alternatives have been proven time and time again. So I'd argue that pretty much everyone has stepped outside of it. Look at David Allis' "Histone Code" theories, that chromatin structure is a major determinant in gene regulation. These have been well received. How far outside would you suggest one steps? In any science, if you're going to propose something radically new that contradicts everything proven before, you'd better have some strong evidence to back it up.
That said, funding is indeed a mess these days. Most granting agencies and their review groups want to fund simple projects that they know will work--essentially the busywork of science. Truly groundbreaking basic science is certainly harder to find funding for.
"I would be hard pressed to think of a statement I disagree more strongly with than this one. Sorry, not at all, not even remotely so. Traditional biology is the biology of the un-living."
The current state of biology features a massive shift away from in vitro experimentation (and looking at fixed specimens) towards an in vivo approach. Transgenic technologies, use of GFP as a marker and advanced imaging techniques are all making this possible, so I would hardly think of the research I have done as "biology of the un-living". As far as complexity, have you ever seen any of the circuit diagrams currently favored by systems biologists? These are insanely complex, and probably not the best visual metaphor to get the point across. But most scientists are very aware of them, and very aware of the complexity of processes like regulation of the cell cycle or signal transduction. Maybe you're hanging out with bad scientists, because anyone who doesn't realize this obvious truth isn't all that smart.
Remember that the "rough draft" took some 20 years to complete. Do you really expect everything it tells us to be completely understood in less than 1/10 of that time? How is this draft "vaporware" in any way whatsover? It is what it claims to be, and has been incredibly useful to researchers, particularly those locating disease genes. As far as not yet having a complete gene count, it would help if you could provide a complete and accurate definition of a "gene". The full sequence has raised more questions on this front than it has answered. Can you really call something a "gene" just from looking at the sequence? Does an open reading frame really mean something is actually transcribed? How do you separate out the psuedogenes from the real ones? What about alternate splicing to create alternate proteins--does this count as one gene or several? You're dealing with 3 billion bases and a highly variable definition of what you're looking for. Why do you expect a final answer to be that easy?
While I agree with your central point--his primer is way too simplistic (for example, DNA looping brings together proteins binding elements that are vast distances apart), I will take issue with your characterization of attitudes toward the "central dogma". The central dogma, proposed by Francis Crick, basically states that DNA is used to make RNA which is used to make protein. Although it is essentially correct, many exceptions to the rule have been added over the years. For example, the reverse transcriptase found in retroviruses makes DNA from RNA, a reverse of the first step. Many RNA molecules act as simple enzymes. These things are all common knowledge among molecular biologists. This would mean that everyone disagrees with the central dogma and according to you, no one would ever receive any funding. Get real, where do you think the phrase "close enough for biology" comes from? Everyone understands the complexity and variety seen in living organisms, and no scientist worth his salt would act like the strawman you've imagined here.
Intergenic sequences contain vast amounts of regulatory elements. These elements play important roles in when a gene is turned on/off and how much transcript is generated. So it is indeed the content that really matters.
The classic definition of an "enhancer" is that it is position and orientation independent--it can be moved elsewhere and/or flipped and still work. They can be found within genes or massive distances away. I don't know of any studies where the physical size of the intergenic sequence makes a difference, as long as all the elements are there.
As for evolutionary studies, most focus on the mitochondrial DNA, as that is (with extremely few controversial exceptions) solely inherited from the mother.
Er, chronologically one needs to start with the Velvet Underground, followed by Bowie/Iggy, leading into the MC5 and NY Dolls. Then you get the Ramones, Television and Patti. The best information source you're likely to find on all this is "Please Kill Me" an oral history of NY Punk put together by Legs McNeil. It's a spectacular read.
Sad to see that so many have bought into McLaren's grand vision of himself. Do yourself a favor, read "No Black, No Irish, No Dogs", Johnny Lydon's autobiography, or see "The Filth And The Fury" and find out that Malcolm was just a self-centered wannabe artist riding on Lydon's coattails while simultaneously stealing every penny the band made. Don't revere this useless bastard!
Oh, and he totally screwed up the New York Dolls as well.
---I guess he has a point then.---
Wow, so you're saying that XP doesn't need drivers for digital cameras, that it NEVER crashes and that it is now impossible to get the BSOD? Amazing, and contradictory to everything I've heard about it.
---I am pretty sure you can find OS 8 in some store somewhere.---
I'd love to see you find it. OS 8 came out in 1997, so the comparison of using this versus Win 98 is incorrect.
---It is probably pretty hard though because it sucked balls and only about 1% of all mac users still use it.---
1% use it, then it's a terrible comparison. What percentage of Windows users still use 98? 60% plus at least. Meaning it's a much more valid comparison.
---The truth is that most of the stuff stated in the mac commercials is horribly outdated or just plain moronic. They are aimed at only the most ignorant home users and tried to convince them that spending $2K on a mac is better than spending $100 on XP Home Upgrade.---
Moronic? Real people's real life experience? Fair enough, but then you're labeling every non-computer savvy person in the world a moron. And there are a lot more morons than there are MCSE's, so who does it make more sense for Apple to go after? As far as upgrading to the lame and crippled XP Home, how many people who are considering buying a completely new rig have an older machine capable of running XP?
---They compare Mac OSX to Windows 95/98, not to XP (or even 2000) which would be the fair comparison.---
Where in the ads does it specifically state which version of Windows they're talking about? How do you know they're talking about 98 or 95 or XP? Do you need drivers for a digital camera in XP? Do you get the BSOD in XP? Does it crash and you lose unsaved work? If none of these things can possibly happen in XP, then you have a point, otherwise you don't.
Also, think about who these ads are targeted at, people who are going to buy a new machine. How many people with XP are shopping for a new system? Odds are most people looking for a new machine are using 98 (as it is STILL the most popular version of Windows). Why not compare what they can expect from Mac to what they've already experienced? How is this disingenuous?
---I mean you could compare Windows XP to MacOS 8 and see which one "just works".---
OS 8 has been discontinued and is no longer for sale or supported by Apple. Windows 98 is still available for sale (at least you can buy it from PC Warehouse). Comparing one available product to another available product is a lot more fair than what you're asking.
As for other posts that wonder if the Mac switchers are real people or not, head over to:
http://www.boingboing.net
and you can find Mark Frauenfelder and ask him yourself if he exists.