Author Archive for Larry Moran Page 2 of 20
Sequence alignment is one of the crucial steps in deciding whether two genes/proteins are homologous. The two sequences are aligned from one end to the other and the number of identical, or similar, residues is counted. If this number reaches a significant percentage of the total length (usually >25%) then the two sequences are homologous—they descend from a common ancestor.
Sequence alignment
The Institute of Medical Studies (IMS) at the University of Toronto is a large department with many graduate students. Many of them are M.D.s doing clinical research.
The department has instituted a graduate student oath that beginning graduate students recite at their first meeting. The idea is to teach students the value of social and moral responsibilities. Beginning graduate students also
Sandra Porter at Discovering Biology in a Digital World brings up an issue that has been bugging me for two decades [Biologists vs. the Age of Information]. The issue is the accuracy of information in biological databases.
Let's begin with GenBank - GenBank is the main database of nucleotide sequences at the NCBI. Sequence data are submitted to GenBank by researchers or sequencing centers. If
Kristin Roovers was a post-doc at the Ottawa Health Research Institute in Ottawa (Canada) until last week. Her job was abruptly terminated when OHRI learned that she had been convicted and punished for falsifying data while she was a graduate student and a post-doc at the University of Pennsylvania. Apparently they first heard that something was wrong from an article in The Chronicles of Higher
An unusual science conference was held recently in Azeroth. Many of you, like me, who know where Azeroth is. It's the virtual world of World of Warcraft. There were more than 200 people in attendance.
The three days of meetings were packed full of interesting discussion about science, or so I'm told. What was most exciting were the social events, culminating on the last day when all of the
Gunther Stent was one of the leading figures in the 'phage group, a group of molecular biologists who transformed the science of biology back in the 1940's, '50's, and 60's. He died on June 12th [Gunther Stent, an Early Researcher in Molecular Biology, Is Dead at 84].
Today's Citation Classic from John Dennehy is the book The Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses by Gunther Stent. In keeping
You've Been Left Behind is a very special website.
If you are sure that you've led a good Christian life then you can expect to be raptured. This could happen at any time. What about the friends and relative you leave behind? You've Been Left Behind will automatically send out email messages telling everyone where you've gone. It might give them one last chance.
We all have family and
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1972.
"for their discoveries concerning the chemical structure of antibodies"
Gerald M. Edelman (1929 - ) and Rodney R. Porter (1917 - 1985) received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for elucidating the structure of immunoglobulins (antibodies). They determined that immunoglobulins were composed of two heavy chains and two light chains. There
Bora Zivkovic asked this question on A Blog Around the Clock: How long does it take to synthesize a molecule of leucine anyway?.
A dozen or so years ago, I drove my Biochemistry prof to tears with questions - she had 200 people in front of her and she tried hard to make Biochem interesting enough not to get us all bored to tears, and she was pretty good at that, as much as it is possible not to
Eva Amsen is writing her thesis. It is very easy to get distracted when you are writing your thesis—everyone needs a break from time to time. Eva found a fabulous website while she was surfing the net looking for references to put in her thesis and she blogged about it on [Expression Patterns].
The website is called Wordle. Here's what it does ...
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds”
Come to the Centre for Inquiry's lecture by Gretta Vosper.
With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe
Starts: Friday, June 20th at 7:30 pm
Ends: Friday, June 20th at 9:30 pm
Location: Centre for Inquiry Ontario, 216 Beverley St, Toronto ON (1 minute south of College St at St. George St)
Lecture and Book Launch:
Gretta Vosper, United Church Minister at West
Name this molecule, being as specific as you can.
There's a direct connection between today's molecule and a Nobel Prize. The prize was awarded for discovering the basic structure of the molecule, although not at the level of detail depicted here. That came later.
The first person to correctly identify the molecule and name the Nobel Laureate(s), wins a free lunch at the Faculty Club.
CAFÉ SCIENTIFIQUE PRESENTS
The future of medicine: help, hope or hype? (download the poster)
What lies in the future for medicine and health care? Over the next 50-100 years, how will we conquer illnesses and stay healthy? Join the discussion and debate at the next Café Scientifique, The future of medicine: help, hope or hype?, where experts will peek at the potential for robotics, genomics,
Jeff Tamblyn, the director of Kansas vs Darwin will be in town this week for the ReelHeART International Film Festival. The film will be shown on Thursday evening. Here's the trailer, details below ...
Kansas vs. Darwin screening Thursday, June 19, 7:00 PM
ReelHeART International Film Festival
RHIFF MAIN PROGRAM B Tickets $8
INNIS THEATER 222
Innis College, University of Toronto
2 Sussex
Fernando was one of ABBA's biggest hits. There's a lot of debate about which war it refers to. The song mentions crossing the Rio Grande and that prompts many people in America to think of the Mexican revolution of 1910-1920. However, there aren't many examples of fighting that took place near the Rio Grande and there aren't too many examples of revolutionaries who crossed into Mexico from the
This is a follow-up to a posting back in January where I mentioned a recently published article by Budden et al. (2008) [see Bias Against Women?]. That article claimed to show evidence of a systematic bias against papers with women as first authors. The bias was mitigated when a particular journal switched to a double-blind reviewing system. This resulted in a significant increase in the number
Alex Palazzo of The Daily Transcript has been in Toronto for the past few days. We were able to get together for lunch on Wednesday and for some light liquid refreshments on Wednesday evening. It should come as no surprise that we were able to find several things we agree on and several more that we don't. It was a lot of fun. (I made a bet with Alex on Wednesday evening. He'll reveal it on his
Alex Palazzo of The Daily Transcript met with Eva Amsen of easternblot, John Dupuis of Confessions of a Science Librarian, and Phillip Johnson of Biocurious.
Eva posted photos and a description of what they talked about [Science Bloggers].
It's Friday the 13th and the bikers are gathering in Port Dover. This year they're hoping to set a new Guinness record for the most bikes (>10,000).
Friday's Urban Legend: FALSE
[reposted from April 13, 2007]
Having a morbid fear of Friday the 13th—paraskevidekatriaphobics—is one of the most widespread superstitious beliefs in western industrialized nations. Believe it or not, there are many people who refuse to leave their house on Friday the 13th because they fear that bad luck will befall them if they venture outside. (Apparently, the
The latest issue of Tangled Bank is #107. It's hosted at Syaffolee [Tangled Bank #107: The CYOA Edition].
You're trapped on a cruise ship in the South Pacific, bored out of your mind. The swimming pool holds no appeal. Gambling is pointless because the advantage is on the house. The books you brought with you have long been finished. You've even resorted to registering for a cha-cha class to
Coming to theaters near you in October [Religulous].
[Hat Tip: Brian Larnder at Primordial Blog]
With 72,000 students, you can appreciate that graduation ceremonies need to be spread out over several weeks at the University of Toronto. At this time of year we have graduations every day and sometimes twice a day.
Today it was the turn of St. Michael's College. It was such a beautiful day that I couldn't resist taking a picture of the graduating class as they walked across the front campus
I was taking Bryant Ing1 to lunch today when we decided to check out what was happening at the Royal Ontario Museum. There was supposed to be a big anti-racism rally led by "Dr." Charles McVety. He's the man who claims that Charles Darwin was a racist [Canadian Creationist: Charles McVety].
Here he is (left) speaking to his supporters right in front of the museum where the Charles Darwin
"Dr."1 Charles McVety is President of Canada Christian College in Toronto.
McVety is currently promoting the movie Expelled in Canada. He claims that it exposes the racism behind "Darwinism" as well as revealing how universities repress academic freedom by firing creationists.
I presume that Canada's Christian College is one of the last bastions of academic freedom where academics are allowed
One of my colleagues, David Tinker, has retired and moved to the Annapolis valley in Nova Scotia (Canada). He sent me a picture of a woodland path and it's so beautiful that I thought I'd share it with Sandwalk readers. Another one of my colleagues, Michael Paul, just retired and left yesterday to live near David in the Annapolis Valley. I can see why.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1972.
"for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active centre of the ribonuclease molecule"
Stanford Moore (1913 - 1983) and William Stein (1911 - 1980) were awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for working out the role of amino acid side chains in the mechanism of catalysis by
Enzymes are protein catalysts that speed up reactions. In the most extreme cases the catalyzed reaction will take place 1023 times faster than the rate of the uncatalyzed reaction. Typical values are about 1014. What this means is that a reaction that would normally take years can occur within a second inside the cell because the reaction is catalyzed by an enzyme.
How do enzymes do this? The
John Brockman runs a website called The Edge. Most (all?) of the contributers are authors and many of them are clients of Brockman. He is, among other things, a literary agent for prominent authors (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond). If you want to understand what The Edge is all about, read Brockman's essay on The Third Culture.
Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman have just published
The 3rd issue of the Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival has been posted by Bertalan Meskó at ScienceRoll [Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival #3: Animations].
It’s my pleasure to host the 3rd edition of the Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival. This is the first time I host a non medicine-related carnival, so I really hope you will like the posts I found.Submit your articles here.
The
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