CharonY

Transcription can occur in either strand. As mRNA is of much shorter length and is synthesized as a single continuous molecule it does not have the same issue as DNA-replication. That being said, there are interactions e.g. of the transcription and replication apparatus that can result different properties, depending on which strand the gene is being transcribed.

In addition to the misunderstanding what races are (or not), the largest genetic diversity is found within Africa.

Others have touched by it, but it is the very consequence of the definition. To be precise, she is the most recent common ancestor of all currently living humans in a matrilineal descent. We trace the line back so far that it converges (by definition). And as pwagen already mentioned, the offspring of other women of that time are likely to be around. Only they have a broker maternal line.

You do not get criticized for stating that she was/is infected, but the rest of your statements and especially your conclusions ("billions are going to die" really?). And if you think that level of scrutiny is considered crucifixion, well your threshold for criticism is fairly low then. Certain people like to see data that point to issues rather than extrapolating from a random point and let their gut do all the data analysis. Otherwise you may end up with politicians that are publicly in favor of euthanizing infected people. Oh wait...

From what I saw on the website this seems to be the case. Part of the description makes me think that they do not even need to affect each other, They only say that there are interactions on the level of mutants. For example, mutation in either A or B has little effect, but A/B at the same time is lethal. That would indicate that they have some common function, but as long as one is active the organism survives. As I said, it is a very broad definition essentially only meaning that on one level or another, the functions of gene A and B have some sort of intersection. Thus, A/B mutations will look different than mutations in A and B alone (in my example). The issue I have with that point of view is that if we take a global perspective (say, genome or proteome-wide) pretty much everything intersects at some level with something else. There are very few (if any) pathways that are so specialized and isolated that there are no effects whatsoever. More likely it is just not observed under a given test condition (e.g. in laboratory culture).

And in areas where we have less maths (e.g. due to complexity of the system, or maybe just incompetence ) we tend to overthrow models very fast once new experiments roll in.

Well, I am not sure what parameters they measure, but as an example, you got your mutant A and measure some parameter (could be expression, could be something else). Then, they look at mutant B and do the same. Finally they look at mutants with deletion in A and B. Say, they look at expression. If you delete A, B goes up, if they delete B A goes up (and in that case AB would just be a negative control). Looking at their definitions they would consider that a genetic interaction (could be direct or indirect via different regulators). The same could be done by looking at other parameters, such as a different target gene could be used. They use a very broad definition for genetic interaction (as opposed to physical ones).

What seems to be the issue in understanding it? I.e. what does not "click" with you?

From what they wrote it appears that they compare single mutants with double mutants in order to elucidate interactions.

Endemic refers to localized phenomena, whereas epidemic refers to something widespread. I think it is a term that I have only heard from medical microbiologists. More commonly in the microbiology community one would refer to host range, I believe.

Obviously during the height of the outbreak dozens of surrounding countries were depopulated by ebola and a massive pandemic swept across Europe and North America. Or at least that was what some people believed. It is weird how that has not happened. Still claiming that while the situation is stabilizing requires a very specific mind set. Working xenophobia into the whole thing is just the icing.

I have heard abou the novel. Maybe time to pick it up. That is strange, I thought it was derived from a city name. Edit: talked to a native speaker, apparently both could be true. It is a rare name, though, with less than 0.2% of the population carrying it.

Hopefully final follow-up: For a week no new cases of Ebola have been reported in the three affected countries. BBC

Ha! When working with bacteria I tell them to put their phones away in order not to cover them with bacteria or other infectious material. You can smell the panic rising. Almost like Sophie's choice. And still I have to shout at people not to put it on the bench/use phones while wearing protective gloves/putting it under the frigging biosafety bench!

Well, other Nobel prize winners clearly had it easier. In addition to the training limitation, the system was just incredibly bad. After graduation it took 25 years to promote her to researcher status and only 21 years after that (age 71) she was allowed to supervise doctoral students. Further, her work was published first at age 47 anonymously (which was typical as self-promotion and similar things were not quite possible after the cultural revolution), quite a sharp contrast to what normally happens (i.e. you scream any finding as loudly as possible at any conference you get to.... And then you have to consider that she carried out much of her work during the turmoil of the cultural revolution with all the dangers of being branded an intellectual carried. Not to mention that she tried out extracts on herself first. Quite a remarkable that, to my shame, I had no knowledge of.

Actually one of the negative aspects that I noticed could be a reduced attention span. It appears to me that students now tend to fail time-critical, lengthy lab procedures more often than they used to. Often it is because they had trouble memorizing multiple steps so they have to stop and check more often, which can fail the experiment. Or sometimes they completely forget elements. Worst case is that some randomly stop in order to check things on their phones. Related to that is that there are more complaints once they fail. I am not sure whether I would call that entitlement, but it seems that the willingness to redo boring tasks is lower than it used to. Not all of the students, obviously. But while a decade or so ago I had at most 1-2 complaining (typically "that guy") now the situation is pretty much reversed. I think it has something to do with a lower frustration resistance paired with a higher expectation if short-term gratification. I feel it may be connected to having almost constant feedback (via phone social media etc.). Being out of a cocooned environment and having to deal with troubleshooting without googling the answer, or getting other immediate feedback probably stresses them out more.

Also, is the course more chemical or more biological. In the latter you can nicely tie in physiology. In the former general themes, branches and variations are sometimes useful to convey concepts. Or, conversely deal more with the proteinbiochemistry involved by highlighting specifics.

I just read her wiki article. Her achievements are quite astonishing considering that China had not postgraduate degrees then and she never studied abroad.

This is one of the weirder interpretations of sexual selection mixed up with other effects that I have seen. I am not even sure how to address this.

That is absolutely true. That is why commonly it is only used within a narrow range of cell concentrations (usually not much more than one order of magnitude) and you use dilutions to get into that range. Turbidimetry is sometimes used, which is technically superior. But since a photometer is more versatile more people stick to photometers. There are other approaches, too, including measurement of protein content as proxy for cell mass.

I am not sure whether you can do that. Typically cell count using optical density is based on scattering of light on the cells. Thus, you want to prevent lysis during the measurement. Sonication is usually too harsh for many cells and you would be better off by just vortexing (carefully). I am actually also not sure how well it works once you dried samples. I have only either measured dry weight or did a quick OD measurement, but never tried drying, then resuspending. My feeling is that drying down and then resuspending would skew results quite a bit (though a calibration using e.g. dry weight could take of that).

I think it goes back to a general misunderstanding of the concept of selective forces. The latter does not necessarily mean that an external force eliminates genotypes. Rather, selection occurs if certain genotype provide reproductive advantages. Even in a niche with virtually unlimited resources, certain sub-populations may be more effective in reproducing in this environment (e.g. they feed just a bit faster or have a higher reproductive cycle). Also consider the opposite. Assume that there is one dominating, overbearing selective force that is the limiting factor of reproduction (say, the ability to forage and use a specific resource or escape predation). Under these circumstances any mutations affecting this specific trait negatively will be heavily selected against. I.e. negative traits vanish quickly but even small advantages would spread rapidly. OTOH, mutations not affecting it can still persist and even slightly negative traits may persist longer than in the absence of the given assumed selector (as the relative advantage would be higher). If a new niche opens up or is explored, a whole host of other effects become more important, including non-selective forces (such as drift).

Re: Freud, it is widely accepted that his main contribution is the realization that a lot of is going in the subconscious. Anything else has been pretty much superseded with finding in neurobiology as well as psychology. As such Freud is more of historic value than anything else. I guess it is somewhat to be expected. There is now too much info. Without some at least some background it is often not that easy to filter out the nonsense and even if you get legitimate sources, it may not be easy to understand it. However, since you can get access to so many sources easily it can give you the illusion that you understand the topic. On a high level I see a similar issue with students. The ability to actually sift literature for relevant info has been declining in the past 10 years or so.

The relative fitness is the important bit here. If you have low selective pressures it still means that over time those with even slight advantages will be more prevalent. It extends the timeline, though. The main issue is of course that if talk about diversity we cannot simply use a simple one-dimensional approach focusing exclusively on selection as drivers. If you inspect biodiversity at any time point it is relevant whether the selective force has been present for a long time, or whether it is something that arose recently, for example. It is well known that changes in the environment can lead to rapid evolutionary responses (e.g. by opening new, or closing off ecological niches). Well-studied recent examples include invasive species such as can toads and how the invasive species themselves but also the native species change due to adaptive as well as non-adaptive processes. See e.g. Shine 2011, Evol Appl. 5:2

I am not even sure about the tech savvy part. Similar to earlier generations it is true for a certain sub groups (which may or may not be larger than the last generation), but what I noticed is that many are rather used to simple tech solutions (simplified software, googling answers etc.). I think tech actually got easier and people have to deal less with workarounds or need to know less about certain fundamentals to get things to run. As a consequence, it seems to me that younger people actually give up faster when trying to troubleshoot or solving tech-related problems. Of course there are still coders and real tech-fanatics, but I am not sure that I see more of them. But maybe it is indeed me getting old. I should add that there is the added of issue that job prospects are pretty bad for the last years so those entering the work force likely have to work harder for the same result. I think that in at least some cases being overwhelmed by this task can be misunderstood as entitlement.