A really cool (and simple) way to make induced Pluripotent Stem cells.
http://www.nature.com/news/acid-bath-offers-easy-path-to-stem-cells-1.14600
The editors at Science took on the challenge to out-Cyrusify (see my Jan 10 blob) Nature. 

First: ladies, stay away from Neanderthal men. Your male offspring my turn out to not be so great after all.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6170/471.summary
Second: stay away from men altogether- if you want to live long:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6170/491.summary
That's pretty much the whole issue. Yep.

Metabolism of retinoic acid in lens regeneration:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012160613006982
We do have a gene trap allele of the zebrafish cyp26c1, but there may be too much redundancy…

And last but not least, here is an awesome tool for functional analysis of enhancers:
http://dev.biologists.org/content/141/3/715.full
Better yet- it's available in the lab. I know, I have no shame and my self-promotion has no limits :-)

Have fun!

Darius

Hi everyone,

Saturday night is a perfect time to get started on your weekend reading :-)

Precise engineering of a mutation to establish causality:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/12/13/1317008111.full.pdf+html
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/01/15/1322645111.full.pdf+html

HDAC inhibitors can make you forget things:
http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674%2813%2901589-4
Only it was that easy…

Guys: drinking soda or eating cupcaces is bad for your children. Literally.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/01/16/1321195111.abstract
Be a man and stick to beer and burgers, will ya.

You know the times are bad when everyone rejoices at less-than-terrible news:
http://www.nature.com/news/budget-offers-recovery-hope-1.14558
I wonder if physical sciences did beter than biomed because they said they were about to figure out black holes...

Right. And now Steven Hawking says black holes are BS:
http://www.nature.com/news/stephen-hawking-there-are-no-black-holes-1.14583
I'm trying to come up with  good analogous example from biology. Please help me.

A good read even if for a sad occasion:
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/3/883.full
A Nobel laureate's take on a two-time Nobel laureate...

Two papers describing genetic screens using CRISPR/Cas9 in human cells:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6166/80.full
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6166/84.full
Looks like a little bit of inernal competition at the Broad Institute. The lab with just under 70K sgRNAs lost :-)

It turns out Wnt is not really a morphogen in the classical sense. Or is it?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7482/full/nature12879.html
Note the precise engineering of the membrane-tethered allele.

A nice evo-devo paper on FoxD3
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012160613006106

Now onto "easy" readings:

Migraine: it's all in your head
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/6/218/218ra5.full
Could there be a similar placebo effect in your experiments?

Editors of Nature appear to have an obsession with sex lives of the early hominids.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7481/full/nature12847.html
Is it cyrusification of science?

An interesting trend in scientific publications
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2014_01_09/caredit.a1400008

And last but not least, is anyone surprised that some ballers are not readers?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/09/us/ncaa-athletes-unc-response/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
It just makes the academically strong student athletes (and we do have plenty of these) look bad.

Enjoy!

Darius