Reproducibility is really important in science. The most stringent form of reproducibility is the requirement that experiments be independently reproduced by a different laboratory. Hence we were very happy to see that our epitope tagging method, considered to be too good to be true by some, was successfully used to engineer V5-Hey2 by Ian Scott's laboratory. Check out their paper here!
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Links to three awesome papers on Neuregulin 1 signaling in heart regeneration
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7548/full/520445a.html Now onto "not science but important anyway" stuff For all of you trying to decide between Grad School and Med School: Being a doctor is a career http://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-much-money-doctors-actually-110000302.html While college teaching is more of a hobby. See page 3 in the first link and page 1 in the second http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/pdf/2015/the-high-public-cost-of-low-wages.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cuf.asp That’s likely after you do a postdoc: http://www.nature.com/news/the-future-of-the-postdoc-1.17253 The last sentence obviously applies to those thinking about graduate school, too. If you are a woman competing for a tenure track job in the academia, perhaps you will not be discriminated against: http://www.nature.com/news/leading-scientists-favour-women-in-tenure-track-hiring-test-1.17322 There has been a pro-male bias for a long time. Remember McClintock? Positions in academia are of course few and far between. So brush up on your computer skills: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7546/full/nj7546-253a.html Enjoy! This time we will zoom in on a few worthwhile technical development papers:
In vivo visualization of transcripts in zebrafish http://dev.biologists.org/content/142/7/1368.full Has been done in other systems, but cool nonetheless. Tissue-specific CRISPR/Cas9: http://www.cell.com/developmental-cell/fulltext/S1534-5807%2815%2900075-1 Same here. The race for fully conditional CRISPR/Cas9 is on… Smaller Cas9 for packaging into AAV http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14299.html All these sequences of semi-random genomes are good for something after all... And here is an exercise in futility: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6230/18.full Why would anyone care? Now onto “career stuff". Some pharma jobs are moving out of Philly: http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20150403_GlaxoSmithKline_moving_Philly_vaccine_R_D_jobs_to_Maryland.html Fortunately not too far. As career advice goes, this is pretty good: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2015_03_31/caredit.a1500080 I suppose one could call her a grad school dropout. But then again, she clearly had a more rewarding career than many of her fellow students who did not drop out. I keep bringing up the tough job market for PhDs. Here the postdoc seems to have just realized that: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2015_03_30/caredit.a1500078 But while much of the advise is spot on, there is a little too much feel-good baloney for my liking. Enjoy. A very nice paper on head skeleton evolution:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7540/full/nature14000.html Maybe someone will pick this paper for the journal club... One of the “new” big questions in biology that is also a bit of a recurring theme here: how does an enhancer know which promoter to activate? http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7540/full/nature13994.html I know we have not made a plasmid in a while, but this is a cool method nonetheless: http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/42/20/e154.long Apparently there has been a dramatic increase in animal usage in biomed research: http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/02/peta-study-finds-dramatic-rise-use-lab-animals-united-states Here is a “funny" thing: by head count, my lab may have as many animals as the rest of Temple University. Hereby I copyright “show skin, not scales” slogan. Apparently it is very hard to teach things you don’t know: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6226/1054.full Who knew? But things you do know can be tricky to communicate, too: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6226/1047.full Can something useful be learned by watching other students give talks and poster presentations? If birds can do it, students should be able to do it too, right? http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7540/full/nature13998.html This applies to things other than posters, too. Just a hint. Have a good weekend. One of the classical processes in developmental biology - interdigital apoptosis - turns out to involve vascularization:
http://dev.biologists.org/content/142/4/672.full The latest issue of Nature is all about epigenetics: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7539/full/518314a.html Now onto more "fluffy" stuff A fine reading at the intersection of genomics and linguistics: http://www.nature.com/news/steppe-migration-rekindles-debate-on-language-origin-1.16935 I keep hearing about the shortage of girls in STEM fields, especially in academia, with recruitment and retention being thrown around as solutions. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7539/full/nj7539-447c.html Or is it that girls are smart enough to realize that as things are, the reward is not worth the effort? Recruitment and retention… Cheap grad student and postdoc labor with a topping of "feel good”. Here is to those trying to decide: Grad or Med? http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6224/918.full Does not really help to decide, but encouraging nonetheless. An if you do decide to become a scientist, you must hurry up not to waste your creative years: http://www.nature.com/news/young-scientists-lead-the-way-on-fresh-ideas-1.16934 According to Nature, using buzzwords makes you innovative. Indeed. Have a good weekend everyone. We’ll go easy on the actual hard science his week.
Now, we finally have a gene for Darwin’s finches' beak shape: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14181.html Positive selection is the real deal. With our Department turning more and more evolutionary, perhaps I should post an evolutionary paper every now and then. http://www.biotechniques.com/news/biotechniquesNews/biotechniques-356685.html?utm_source=BioTechniques+Newsletters+%26+e-Alerts&utm_campaign=ca37b4ad04-weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5f518744d7-ca37b4ad04-87700457#.VN05s3a-8_E I would not have guessed that 0.5% of males worldwide are descendants of Genghis Khan. My guess is that all Nobel laureates’ stats combined will not be as good a few hundred years from now. Evolution at work? Many of us have something Rand Paul can only dream about: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/02/13/rand-pauls-claim-twice-in-one-day-that-he-has-a-biology-degree/ Maybe that explains his recent vaccine BS. I must point out that there also are some differences between being a crown prince and being a junior biomedical researcher... http://www.nature.com/news/nih-plan-to-give-ageing-scientists-cash-draws-scepticism-1.16895 One of them is "hidden" in the numbers in the last sentence. Then there are a few more numbers in this article: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2015_02_12/caredit.a1500039 Have a great weekend everyone. Better late than never…
A really cool way to monitor nuclear translocation of beta catenin in specific tissues. http://dev.biologists.org/content/142/3/497.full In zebrafish of course. Optogenetics taken to a new level: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7537/full/nature14128.html Playing with LEGOS is never a waste of time: http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/02/lego-contraption-allows-scientists-safely-handle-insects?rss=1 Apparently being a part of highly hierarchical group makes you succeed. Or die trying. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/5/1338.full From now on, lab members may no longer address me by first name. Isn’t it reassuring to know that your graduate school does care about you. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7537/full/nj7537-129c.html But only until you graduate… Which means that you must find a balance between working in the lab and schmoozing: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2015_02_04/caredit.a1500032 And please do not take the urban dictionary literally on this one... Darius My apologies for dropping this list for a month and a half. Now lets try to ease back.
An absolute must-read paper: http://www.cell.com/developmental-cell/abstract/S1534-5807%2814%2900735-7 As well as accompanying commentary: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1534580714008338 How do enhancers know which gene to activate? http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13994.html Another way how obesity may run in families http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867414014366 Watch what you eat before you procreate... Now let’s have some fun: http://www.biotechniques.com/news/biotechniquesNews/biotechniques-356366.html?utm_source=BioTechniques+Newsletters+%26+e-Alerts&utm_campaign=671dbcbc6f-weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5f518744d7-671dbcbc6f-87700457#.VMuvynZNk_F Or, if singing is not your thing, perhaps reading is. Here is a list of who-is-who in classical Molecular Biology and Genetics, with enough book titles to comprise a high school reading curriculum. http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004887 Have a great weekend! Darius A very cool study of recombination hot spots in humans:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6211/1256442.abstract I guess it is much more enjoyable to read than to donate tissue to… The title oversells it a bit, but mind controlled cellular factories is a great concept: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141111/ncomms6392/full/ncomms6392.html Not to be out-done by Nature, Science also has a great idea to oversell - DNA memory: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6211/1256272.abstract I suppose both papers are major breakthroughs. Different (publication) trajectories of different model systems: http://www.genetics.org/content/198/3/787.full The part that surprises me (probably because of my ignorance) is the difference between C. elegans and D. melanogaster. I know quite a few female faculty who would strongly disagree with the assessment that sexism no longer exists in academia: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2014_11_06/caredit.a1400279 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6211/798.full Being underrepresented by choice (“underrepresentation … rooted in … choices") is a concept that I can’t quite wrap my mind around. But it sounds like something on the Colbert Report. Have a great weekend. A fantastic paper on FGF signaling in lateral line development:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v515/n7525/full/nature13852.html My little summary sentence doesn’t do it justice. It turns out Argonaute plays a role in RNA splicing. By binding enhancers. http://www.pnas.org/content/111/44/15622.full Do not try this during an exam, but “it’s complicated” is often the correct answer... Should you really aspire to get a Ph.D.? http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2014_11_05/caredit.a1400277 Or will you need to spend a lot of time reminiscing about your undergrad days? Why? Because happy thoughts make you … (drum roll) … Happy! http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v515/n7525/full/515011c.html And you may actually end up working on a really important scientific problem. Because Guy Noir is not the only one trying to answer life’s persistent questions. Scientists do, too: http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/11/mystery-solved-where-penis-comes I am surprised major news outlets have not picked up on the story… Enjoy your weekend. |
Weekly sciencey bitsDisclaimer: This started as a "weekend reading list" meant to encourage students in the lab to think about science and their own future in it. Do not take it seriously: I myself may no longer agree with whatever I wrote here last week. Archives
December 2018
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