The DSCAM gene in the brain is also spliced in multiple steps to allow a huge complexity of proteins to be made. The Dscam gene contains 95 alternative exons that are organized into four clusters of 12, 48, 33, and 2 exons each. Each protein picks an exon from each cluster, yielding 38,016 possible forms. It is probably used to tag cells with a surface marker not expressed by neighboring cells.
One poor aspect of the Sargasso Sea paper is that most of the sequences they generated were to two very abundant species of bacteria. So they massively over-sequenced those genomes to completion, and then got lots of parts of others.
They could have cultured out as many bacteria as possible and sequenced each one equally, but then they would have missed all the bacteria they didn't know how to culture. There are also ways to equalize the contribution of genomic DNA from each species, but that also tends to lose some and bias in other ways.
One way to tell what a gene does is an association study. Proteins that work closely together in a complex are sometimes found in a genome as a single "super gene" that has both functions.
So if you sequence one genome, it is hard to tell. But if you get even sketchy sequence from hundreds of genomes, you may see an unknown gene merged up with a gene that has already determined to be an exotic metal metabolizer. And that would give you a clue about the unknown gene's function.
It rolls, but it squeaks and the front left nucleotide-cart gets stuck at a right angle.
Re:Let me be the first to say...
on
Metal Velcro
·
· Score: 1
Gee... how come no one has patented a security fence covered in Velcro before?
Could it be the object is NOT to provide a simple means to climb up the security fence?
"1. We don't know what else fat cells do in your body. They may have other roles than fat storage."
For instance, fat contains stem cells that can heal fractures too large to heal by themselves. It seems likely that any reduction in blood flow would kill off the stem cells as quickly as the fat cells themselves. It would be unfortunate to be finally skinny, then break something because you lack your normal "fat cushion", then you are unable to heal yourself because you lack your fat derived stem cells!
I'm not going to say this is a sure thing. However, it helps that they are merely using the presence of the protein in blood vessels supplying fat cells as a marker for attaching the cell death factor. They aren't trying to tweak a metabolic pathway, which would require the interplay of all the components to be preserved between mouse and human. Instead, they are just killing blood vessels that contain a particular protein.
It seems like this is a little simpler and requires fewer caveats than a metabolism-altering drug. It is true that human fat cells may respond to the absence of blood vessels differently than mouse fat cells, but most parts of the body do poorly without oxygen or nutrients or waste removal.
I guess I am an idiot. So a scientist must write up every single thing they do and put it on the web? That sounds bizarre to me. And then they must use their grant money to host a web server to put their research on for anyone to browse?
I may be an idiot, but I don't think making scientists, who are trained to do science and not web publishing, responsible for making their research accessible is an efficient use of taxpayers money. If you want all research to slow down, then your system is a good one.
So, if my paper gets rejected from a journal I can just tell them it is publically funded and MUST be published? If I can't find a journal that wants to publish my work, I must somehow order a print run of my work and bind it and pass it out on street corners?
If the government decides that all publically funded research must be publically available, then it better develop a publishing system for doing just that. No one else is obligated to do anything.
This sounds promising. However, so does a similar approach by another company, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, which first published results in 1996 in Science. Their virus only attacks cells lacking a working "cell suicide" pathway, which most cancers lack. The results looked great. Maybe they still do. But it is now 7 years later. So this one may take a while as well, or not pan out.
A gene in fruit flies was named hedgehog. Genes in fruit flies are named after how they look as mutants (so the gene white was named for flies with white eyes). The hedgehog mutation causes fruit fly embryos to be hairy, so they look like little hedgehogs.
Mammals have duplicate copies of most genes in animals like flies. So the multiple hedgehog genes have to have elaborations like "Indian hedgehog" and "Sonic hedgehog" to differentiate them. Since most genes involved in development were discovered in flies, get used to names like "faint little ball, tinman, shaggy, dunce" and other fun fly names.
The letter announcing the cluster says they will be able to attract new federal grant support with the new capabilities. In the sciences, grant money includes up to 50% overhead money that goes to pay off creating and maintaining infrastructure. Most schools recognize that having high-quality research programs brings in enough money to make those units self-supporting or even help subsidize other aspects of the university. So for a few million dollars, they'll hope to bring in a few million a year in grants, as well as attract high-quality researchers who will bring in more grant money.
Compare that to the usual revenue gamble at universities-- spend 100-200 million on new football stadiums and facilities to vie for bowl game money that will hopefully pay off year-to-year costs. Usually, the stadium expansions get approved when a team hits a win streak, and by the time it is built other teams are better and they are left with half-full stadiums.
And if they could reproduce what bacterial defense genes do, we'd be able to use these "anti-biotics" for ourselves!
However, I agree with you that it isn't always easy. The one I'd like to see is being able to replicate the way gecko toes harness Van der Waal forces to be super sticky.
In the U.S. life sciences and many other technical areas, anyone who wants an academic job gets a Ph.D. and then undergoes another 3-5 years of performing original research as a post-doctoral fellow to set up a system to pursue in their own lab. It sounds like a informal, but no less required process than the 2-step post-bac you describe. The U.S. rightly reduces the formal dissertations required, because anyone getting a job and a half million dollar start-up package is going to be evaluated by every means possible.
I have known many excellent Europeans and Russians who have done post-doctoral fellowships at U.S. universities. Many of them good, some not so much, but in my view not presenting any solid evidence their early and rigorous start had any difference in their research.
Slashdot Mirror
The DSCAM gene in the brain is also spliced in multiple steps to allow a huge complexity of proteins to be made. The Dscam gene contains 95 alternative exons that are organized into four clusters of 12, 48, 33, and 2 exons each. Each protein picks an exon from each cluster, yielding 38,016 possible forms. It is probably used to tag cells with a surface marker not expressed by neighboring cells.
One poor aspect of the Sargasso Sea paper is that most of the sequences they generated were to two very abundant species of bacteria. So they massively over-sequenced those genomes to completion, and then got lots of parts of others. They could have cultured out as many bacteria as possible and sequenced each one equally, but then they would have missed all the bacteria they didn't know how to culture. There are also ways to equalize the contribution of genomic DNA from each species, but that also tends to lose some and bias in other ways.
One way to tell what a gene does is an association study. Proteins that work closely together in a complex are sometimes found in a genome as a single "super gene" that has both functions.
So if you sequence one genome, it is hard to tell. But if you get even sketchy sequence from hundreds of genomes, you may see an unknown gene merged up with a gene that has already determined to be an exotic metal metabolizer. And that would give you a clue about the unknown gene's function.
It rolls, but it squeaks and the front left nucleotide-cart gets stuck at a right angle.
Gee... how come no one has patented a security fence covered in Velcro before? Could it be the object is NOT to provide a simple means to climb up the security fence?
"1. We don't know what else fat cells do in your body. They may have other roles than fat storage." For instance, fat contains stem cells that can heal fractures too large to heal by themselves. It seems likely that any reduction in blood flow would kill off the stem cells as quickly as the fat cells themselves. It would be unfortunate to be finally skinny, then break something because you lack your normal "fat cushion", then you are unable to heal yourself because you lack your fat derived stem cells!
I'm not going to say this is a sure thing. However, it helps that they are merely using the presence of the protein in blood vessels supplying fat cells as a marker for attaching the cell death factor. They aren't trying to tweak a metabolic pathway, which would require the interplay of all the components to be preserved between mouse and human. Instead, they are just killing blood vessels that contain a particular protein. It seems like this is a little simpler and requires fewer caveats than a metabolism-altering drug. It is true that human fat cells may respond to the absence of blood vessels differently than mouse fat cells, but most parts of the body do poorly without oxygen or nutrients or waste removal.
If your "can" eats spiders then you should get on Stupid Human Tricks for sure.
I guess I am an idiot. So a scientist must write up every single thing they do and put it on the web? That sounds bizarre to me. And then they must use their grant money to host a web server to put their research on for anyone to browse? I may be an idiot, but I don't think making scientists, who are trained to do science and not web publishing, responsible for making their research accessible is an efficient use of taxpayers money. If you want all research to slow down, then your system is a good one.
So, if my paper gets rejected from a journal I can just tell them it is publically funded and MUST be published? If I can't find a journal that wants to publish my work, I must somehow order a print run of my work and bind it and pass it out on street corners? If the government decides that all publically funded research must be publically available, then it better develop a publishing system for doing just that. No one else is obligated to do anything.
This sounds promising. However, so does a similar approach by another company, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, which first published results in 1996 in Science. Their virus only attacks cells lacking a working "cell suicide" pathway, which most cancers lack. The results looked great. Maybe they still do. But it is now 7 years later. So this one may take a while as well, or not pan out.
A gene in fruit flies was named hedgehog. Genes in fruit flies are named after how they look as mutants (so the gene white was named for flies with white eyes). The hedgehog mutation causes fruit fly embryos to be hairy, so they look like little hedgehogs. Mammals have duplicate copies of most genes in animals like flies. So the multiple hedgehog genes have to have elaborations like "Indian hedgehog" and "Sonic hedgehog" to differentiate them. Since most genes involved in development were discovered in flies, get used to names like "faint little ball, tinman, shaggy, dunce" and other fun fly names.
The letter announcing the cluster says they will be able to attract new federal grant support with the new capabilities. In the sciences, grant money includes up to 50% overhead money that goes to pay off creating and maintaining infrastructure. Most schools recognize that having high-quality research programs brings in enough money to make those units self-supporting or even help subsidize other aspects of the university. So for a few million dollars, they'll hope to bring in a few million a year in grants, as well as attract high-quality researchers who will bring in more grant money. Compare that to the usual revenue gamble at universities-- spend 100-200 million on new football stadiums and facilities to vie for bowl game money that will hopefully pay off year-to-year costs. Usually, the stadium expansions get approved when a team hits a win streak, and by the time it is built other teams are better and they are left with half-full stadiums.
And if they could reproduce what bacterial defense genes do, we'd be able to use these "anti-biotics" for ourselves! However, I agree with you that it isn't always easy. The one I'd like to see is being able to replicate the way gecko toes harness Van der Waal forces to be super sticky.
In the U.S. life sciences and many other technical areas, anyone who wants an academic job gets a Ph.D. and then undergoes another 3-5 years of performing original research as a post-doctoral fellow to set up a system to pursue in their own lab. It sounds like a informal, but no less required process than the 2-step post-bac you describe. The U.S. rightly reduces the formal dissertations required, because anyone getting a job and a half million dollar start-up package is going to be evaluated by every means possible. I have known many excellent Europeans and Russians who have done post-doctoral fellowships at U.S. universities. Many of them good, some not so much, but in my view not presenting any solid evidence their early and rigorous start had any difference in their research.