High School Guest Post: Fight for the Cure
Last week, I wrote about the high school science bloggers in Ms. Baker’s biology classes at Staten Island Academy. Over the next few weeks, I will be publishing several guest posts that have been...
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Fractaltastic Evolution
One of the iconic metaphors of evolution is that of the ‘tree of life’ – it is the image we all have for how species relate to each other in evolutionary time. In a perspective article last year, David...
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The Thanksgiving Genome
Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers! In honor of the holiday, I’m posting a link to an old piece of mine–a slideshow about the genomes of many of the ingredients that make up a traditional Thanksgiving...
View ArticleBacterial Evolution – The Movie
Recent advances in sequencing technology have brought us the complexity of microbial metagenomes from oceans, soils and guts. These massive datasets of the combined genome sequences of hundreds or...
View ArticlePlaying Roulette with Seven Sexes
Have you ever watched “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”? There are these seven brothers and, well you get the idea… But that was complicated enough with the two sexes that we boring old humans have –...
View ArticleMycobacteria get all the advantages of sex with none of the downside
Despite the sales pitch, sex is frankly a bit of a hassle, isn’t it? The champagne, the flowers, the desultory conversations in overpriced restaurants – and all with no guarantee of passing your...
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Putting CpG islands on the map
You won’t find CpG islands on any ocean chart, but they do feature in a different sort of map – the map of the mammalian genome. And in genome maps, CpG islands act as navigation points for gene...
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The Birth of the Ecosystem within Us
When Chana Palmer started collecting baby poop from new mothers in 2006, few outside the halls of academia had heard anything about “microbiomes” in the environment let alone the thriving microbial...
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Scanning for Recent Human Evolution
Survival of the fittest is a concept that is well known to most of us. Heaven knows, many of us strive to remain fit enough to try and extend our life expectancy and survive. But in its original...
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The First Individual Genome: One Is the Loneliest Number
When Craig Venter published the complete sequence of his genome in PLOS Biology in 2007, in some ways, it was old news. Though Venter didn’t admit it until he left Celera as president in 2002, many...
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A Magical Mystery Tour (of Personal Genomics)
Anyone looking for last-minute Christmas gift (or a belated Hanukkah gift, or a very early gift for Flag Day) for a science lover would be well-advised to consider Here Is a Human Being, by my fellow...
View ArticleThis week in PLOS Biology
In PLOS Biology this week you can read about cataloging microbial life, how spider silk is made, a new class of Alzheimer’s drug and an insight into repairing nerve damage. A new Community Page, by...
View ArticleReanalysis: No health benefits found for pursuing meaning in life versus...
NOTE: After I wrote this blog post, I received via PNAS the reply from Steve Cole and Barbara Fredrickson to our article. I did not have time to thoroughly digest it, but will address it in a future...
View ArticleHow Much of Your Genome Is Functional?
On the 24th of July, 2014 PLOS Genetics published an article entitled: “8.2% of the Human Genome Is Constrained: Variation in Rates of Turnover across Functional Element Classes in the Human Lineage”....
View ArticleHow to critique claims of a “blood test for depression”
Special thanks to Ghassan El-baalbaki and John Stewart for their timely assistance. Much appreciated. “I hope it is going to result in licensing, investing, or any other way that moves it forward…If it...
View ArticleThis week in PLOS Biology
In PLOS Biology this week, you can read about the notion of the “balance of nature“, female mate choice in fruit flies, and the role of heterochromatin in chromosome cohesion. The “Balance of...
View ArticleThis week in PLOS Biology
In PLOS Biology this week, you can read research articles about the regulation of glial cell activation, zinc regulation in E. coli and a new regulator of Wg/Wnt signalling. Also read articles from our...
View ArticleMonitoring progress in translational bioinformatics
It is with great enthusiasm that the PLOS Computational Biology Education Editors present this invited blog post from Russ Altman, in what we hope will be a yearly feature for PLOS Biologue. It is a...
View ArticleThis week in PLOS Biology
In PLOS Biology this week, you can read about the sequence of the centipede genome, alternative publication metrics, how we pay attention to our sense of touch, and the information bandwidth of human...
View ArticleThis week in PLOS Biology
In PLOS Biology this week, you can read about neural activity in bird song, the utility of mathematical models in evolutionary biology, how diet can shape the genome and the robustness of protein...
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