Today I had jury duty summons. Great experience. My questioning by the judge in the screening process led to rather heated debate, and at the end came down to him pointing out that I needed to leave my knowledge at the door and allow the expert to be the sole purveyor of interpretation of the data from the breathalizer.
(Judge's words:) "We have to all have reasonable trust in the expert when he tells us results from the tool... err... uhh... uhh... what's the word I'm looking for? Umm..." to which after several seconds I just jumped in and stated my last word in the courtroom, finishing his sentence, "instrument?"
I was promptly thanked and excluded from the jury by the prosecutors.
10/31/2012
9/28/2012
Warning: Dubstep and Gore
However, a beautiful piece of artwork: Kill The Noise - Kill the Noise Part 1 (Official Music Video)
9/26/2012
9/20/2012
Gene silencing in E coli with small RNAs
Sharma et. al describe a strategy to identify small RNAs that effect bacterial gene regulation, much like siRNA in mammalian systems. The authors write: "We anticipate that the artificial sRNAs will be useful for dynamic control and fine-tuning of endogenous gene expression in bacteria for applications in synthetic biology."
This could definitely save time when testing perturbations in bacterial metabolism to synthesize new products, enabling testing of hypotheses before the need for genome manipulation.
Read the abstract (or article if you have access) here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/sb200001q
This could definitely save time when testing perturbations in bacterial metabolism to synthesize new products, enabling testing of hypotheses before the need for genome manipulation.
Read the abstract (or article if you have access) here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/sb200001q
6/08/2012
5/15/2012
Predators in Grassland Ecosystems
The way things are going, grassland ecosystems may cease to exist. I wonder if that's troubling to this research group in terms of the relevance of their work and its longevity.
Seminar Poster
I suppose I do see the value of this, as it will be cited by the planetary terraforming company, as they are install the animal ecosystem on World 928CX00Bk7.
Seminar Poster
4/06/2012
4/03/2012
3/07/2012
Here's to boatcraft
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
2/19/2012
1/07/2012
Thought question
Is sanity linked to the desire to conform?
In insane/crazy are those with dramatically different ways of thinking that make them either unable to operate with majority society, or cause them to be ostracized to the extent which they become confined to the fringe.
Without a reasonable amount of conformity, society would never have been able to expand to support so many people. No immediate judgement on whether this has been a good or bad thing.
Only those who think outside of the box can come up with 'new' ideas, which drive our technology and cultural evolution. Pure conformists would cause total stagnation, while pure insanists would cause total destruction.
Where are you on the sliding scale?
In insane/crazy are those with dramatically different ways of thinking that make them either unable to operate with majority society, or cause them to be ostracized to the extent which they become confined to the fringe.
Without a reasonable amount of conformity, society would never have been able to expand to support so many people. No immediate judgement on whether this has been a good or bad thing.
Only those who think outside of the box can come up with 'new' ideas, which drive our technology and cultural evolution. Pure conformists would cause total stagnation, while pure insanists would cause total destruction.
Where are you on the sliding scale?
1/03/2012
HIV protease protein sequence alignment
For fun and curiosity, I pulled the peptide sequences of all the HIV protease entries on Uniprot, and aligned them using Vector NTI.
The HIV protease is essential for HIV particle maturation, and hence the virus life cycle. If one could design or isolate a small molecule that could specifically inhibit the protease, it should greatly decrease the spread of HIV.
It is important to note that a specific protease inhibitor would drive selection for a variant protease sequence that is not inhibited by the small molecule.
Hence, by aligning the known protease sequences, we can begin to identify the sequence in the protease that is most flexible/amenable to variation, as well as identify the conserved residues that are likely important for the protein's overall structure and function.
Perhaps a cocktail of small molecules that inhibit all possible isoforms in the HIV protease sequence space would be effective at putting the breaks on HIV spread.
Screen/dream away.
The HIV protease is essential for HIV particle maturation, and hence the virus life cycle. If one could design or isolate a small molecule that could specifically inhibit the protease, it should greatly decrease the spread of HIV.
It is important to note that a specific protease inhibitor would drive selection for a variant protease sequence that is not inhibited by the small molecule.
Hence, by aligning the known protease sequences, we can begin to identify the sequence in the protease that is most flexible/amenable to variation, as well as identify the conserved residues that are likely important for the protein's overall structure and function.
Perhaps a cocktail of small molecules that inhibit all possible isoforms in the HIV protease sequence space would be effective at putting the breaks on HIV spread.
Screen/dream away.
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