CharonY

Well, the basic tenets are not that terribly surprising for people in the field as the last 20-30 years have seen massive increase in our knowledge in molecular biology. The "modern" synthesis, however, has been derived sometime in the 40s. Since then people have more or less constantly poking holes into it (not the way that creationisms would like to have it, but that is another topic). In fact, the knowledge about molecular components and interactions have exploded to such an amount that so far it has been more or less impossible to integrate everything into a smooth framework. This is to no little extent also due to the fact that for many components we do not clearly know functions and, more importantly, modes of interactions and how these can result in certain biological outcomes. Noble is by no means the first to propose a new synthesis of evolutionary biology, his focus appears to be more on the physiological side (and there are even a couple of threads about this on this forum). But my feeling is that we need to fill quite some more gaps to have a truly integrative view on evolution. I would not state that any of the views are blatantly incorrect, it depends a lot on the system under investigation and the scope of the conclusions you want to draw. The reason being that biology is bloody complex and with our current knowledge a singly focused perspective is just not going to cut it.

I would argue that life and death is a rough but useful categorization that for complex organism is not as binary as it appears. Obviously once a complex organism has fatal failures of vital organs the cells within the body will remain alive for quite some time, until their microenvironment changes to a point where they are unable to remain viable anymore. (The general rule for cells tends to be the lack of a membrane potential as it implies the inability to generate energy and maintain cellular integrity, but I believe there was an exception to that but details elude me right now). And of course there is the issue of identity, which is also convenient, but not necessarily reflected in biology. Say for instance a bacterium differentiates into a dormant spore during which much of its former cell body dies. Is it dead or alive? Is it the same cell? Obviously this is more a philosophical question and is well placed in this section, but because of that it won't have a definite answer.

So what you are saying is that putting you fingers in a shredder gets you the same effect as putting it on a hot stove? I must be using my kitchen wrong.

The underlying thought process is truly astonishing. If I submitted a paper in journals that I identified as potentially suitable and (barring submissions to journals with high rejection rates such as Nature or Science) got rejected not once, but seven times on the editor level, I would be strongly questioning the quality of my work. Especially if the rejections includes not the common "out-of-scope" reason, but rather states that the work is unsuitable as a whole. Yet certain persons are apparently unable to find mistakes in themselves. This is a pity, as it implies that those persons are also unable to improve themselves.

I am not sure if they would do better. I have the feeling that they have not adapted to a new world in which facts can be checked in a matter of seconds. However, it is possible that much of their voter base does not care for facts too much so that they are not really forced to adapt. That is likely to change in the near future as the demographics is inevitably going to change.

Well, that depends on what precisely the test is looking for and what type of vaccine is being used.

In addition autoclaving is generally a bad idea, as often your pH shifts promoting precipitation or oxidation of metals, for example. Sterile filtration is usually better. However there may be other salts with which the lead could potentially react, depending on what you use as medium. From what I recall (and it has been a long while) Pb-Ac is quite soluble in water (IIRC the stock solutions were maybe around 20-30%). But routine use for certain test media are likely not more than 1%.

Intelligence per se is definitely not the defining factor of student success (as already mentioned). It depends more on acquiring certain skill sets, including e.g. good time management and the ability to organize knowledge. Do not confuse the latter with memorizing huge amounts of stuff, either. While that will help short term, it is easy to get overwhelmed if you try to stuff very little detail into your head. One of the key elements of organization is to figure out what of a given chunk of information is the real crucial bit and how can you use that as building block that helps you understand a subject, rather than just parroting some random information. Another aspect is that in order to excel at a subject, one should try to be genuinely interested in it. People who are very good at certain disciplines are not good because they are geniuses, but because they spend much more time thinking and researching a subject (independent of class) because they are fascinated by it. So obviously picking a topic that you think that may be important, but for which you do not really interest you will feel like uphill battles every time. Also, do not confuse with passion with the the general topic with true and deep interest. It is easy to be passionate (for a time) about certain "cool" elements, but you also should be interested in the nitty-gritty of the subject. But if you are, the work does not appear to be that hard anymore, since at some point it suddenly becomes fun. With regards to respect, I would suggest treating everyone (professor or not) with some basic respect. Finally, college education is more a general ticket to a variety of career choices, but by itself it does not offer or guarantee one. While science careers require degrees, a career inside or outside academia does not crucially depend on your undergrad choices. While you need not worry too much about it at this point, you should be aware that academic jobs are hard to get. But regardless, age does not play crucial rule whatsoever. On a personal note, I enjoyed college much more than high school, but that is mostly because the topics that interested me were not covered sufficiently on the high school level (also, the local library was not so well stocked and internet was pretty much useless too). Also, it was easier to find like minded people there (where else can you discuss over lunch what your favorite parasites are, without appearing to be weird). But honestly, at this early stage it is hard to predict whether either choice will have any significant impact on a career path. Most of the time it often boils down to being at the right spot at the right time and there is only so much that you can do to optimize your chances. As such my advice would be that you should do it if you can enjoy the work that it requires. You should not do it just because you think it is critical for your career. The really important choices come later.

With regards to the extinction part, I remember faintly that issue, and I think it was based on extrapolation with bad math that was subsequently blown up in public space but had little impact on the science side. The thing is that the Y chromsome has little potential to degrade further as anything more would be negatively selected against. See for example "Strict evolutionary conservation followed rapid gene loss on human and rhesus Y chromosomes, Hughes et al. 2012, Nature".

What Ringer said. What you propose simply does not work. And it would require a fundamental lecture in basic genetics to make you understand why it is so. For instance, the DNA composition is identical in each of our cells, there is not difference regardless of position. Simplified, genes mostly work by coding for proteins, and those (mostly) biological actors. The key aspect is that expression is finely tuned by regulatory mechanisms that result in certain biological actions such as cell differentiation. But really, I would suggest that you at least check the wikipedia pages for DNA and some genetics and then read up in a text book, if you are genuinely interested. There is no way to impart that amount of info within a short post.

As swansont mentioned, you are referring to food calories, which confusingly are actually equal to 1000 "proper" calories (i.e. 1 kcal). As such the recommended daily intake is 2100-2700 kcal or about 8786-11297 kJ. I still fail to see your point, however.

I doubt that there are any serious scientist (in the biological area that is) that subscribe to either of the notion you described. At least not in the presented form. Functionally, line of inheritance is as such not terribly special either way, as as quantity of genes means little in terms of function. it is all about organization and interplay. Just to give a rough idea, the difference in number of genes between humans and a simple bacterium is somewhere between 5-10 fold only. Thus making any kind of inference based on numbers alone (either way) is a bit silly. I believe what you may have heard is that in males are more susceptible to X-chromsomal diseases, as they are basically homozygous, whereas women can be heterozygous and thus do not express he phenotype. As for the other assumption, we all share too many alleles (and all the genes) to make a distinction like "Jewish" meaningful in any genetic sense. The only difference are probably highly inbred populations. These tend to have a very high occurrence of genetic defects, for example. But if one does an in-population study (i.e. just focusing on a particular group), Y linkage indeed should show less variability than X linkage (with all the disadvantages that may entail). From a biological viewpoint any assumption of specialness is just human inference rather than of any real biological basis. One thing that I wanted to add, there is a limited recombination between X and Y, too.

I would have to spend more time to read it all, but there are some red flags. In no particular order: - the website is promoting a book, rather than referencing primary literate. Moreover, the book is is self-published, which is also somewhat unusual. - the author is apparently not an active researcher - the constant reminder that the theory is revolutionary and unusual. If at all I find the reasoning slightly confusing and as far as I know (and I am no expert in this area) there are already approaches to recast neuroanatomic structures into circuit systems in order to utilize physical models for simulations. In short I fail to see what is revolutionary (or even just informative) the whole thing is. There could be something hidden among the gazillion links, but I highly doubt it. If I had something important to say, i would explain it within the first paragraph. - fonts, color, ugly (k not a very good criticism, but for some reasons it is part of crackpot material) - claims affiliation with some weird company -caution page? Really? If the science is sound you do not need to warn someone. - where is the math? I do not see any (and this is one of the biological systems where it is really needed) In summary I would say that someone is out to make money from gullible people.

I think this types of discussions fit much better into the speculations section.

If the test only consists of the quantification of the antigen(s) on which the vaccine is based there is a certain chance of positive detection. Most data has been obtained on the Hepatitis B surface antigen, which is used as vaccine as well as for diagnostic purposes. As a rule of thumb the levels drop continuously, until it reaches the (diagnostic) detection limit of standard tests (about two weeks). The rate appears to to vary considerably between individuals and it should be noted that most data has been obtained from hemodialysis patients that are continuously monitored. So it may not perfectly reflect the average population. Many tests use several parameters, which reduces the risk of false positives to some extent (in case of hepatitis the core antibody is normally also tested, for example).

Urea is only a chaotrope and as such does little to degrade cell wall and membrane. Without further treatment the lysis rate would be very low and not suitable for most molecular biological applications.

Depends on what you mean with chimera. Genetic exchange is very common in bacteria and especially viruses (they are essentially mobile genetic elements themselves). This does not require chimeras of any sorts. The problem with viruses is that that are generally nucleic acids packed in proteins. Their advantage is that they do not really live and as such have no requirements such as other organisms in terms of metabolism. On the other hand their simple structure only offers so much protection from environmental influences and they generally degrade fairly quickly in the environment. Bacteria on the other hand can be extremely resilient buggers and in dormant states (e.g. spores) they can survive almost anything. Though generally bacteria that are adapted to the life within hosts (which include pathogens) tend to be on the soft side, as they are generally not exposed to such extreme conditions. In well conserved tissues decades should be feasible. In soil not so much, for example. Bacteria have no issue with that. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find any patch of anything that does not contain bacteria. Remember, most bacteria are actually not living within hosts. The only exception is probably very arid areas, and even there they may be laying dormant. But then most are not pathogenic (but in a novel they may very well be). Viruses again are a different matter. We call it "adaptation" and again, that is why bacteria are everywhere (and again, viruses are tied to hosts). It is not very likely for something like that to happen. Damage by viruses is generally caused because they hijack host cells to multiply, which takes some time and only after a number of cycles do they start creating symptoms (i.e. incubation periods is within days). Also note that many early symptoms such as fever are not so much caused due to damages by pathogens per se, but it is a reaction of our immune system to them. Think of allergies as an analogy. To make it more complicated many pathogenic bacteria are not pathogenic all the time, only when multiple parameters, which may include cell density, immune deficiencies and lesions come together do they suddenly become harmful. Think of the plague. The bacterium responsible is Yersinia pestis, the causative agent for the plague. Would it surprise you that you can find them in many soil samples? However they are present in such low amounts that they cannot really infect any hosts. It is simply not very competitive compared to other soil bacteria (usually only very sensitive methods allow their detection in the first place). Only when a lot of things come together do they successfully infect potential hosts. So to summarize, persistence for bacteria is not an issue (viruses are a totally different matter). However those well-adapted to hosts tend to be a bit on the weak side outside (but nothing that some artistic freedom cannot tweak). Quick symptoms are the really odd things. A few cells simply cannot wreak havoc on much larger organisms in such a short time (otherwise we would have much more trouble). However considering that symptoms are what our immune system does to ourselves one can go down that route. Poor misunderstood bacterium triggers immune system to such extent that it kills off the body it is supposed to protect. Also note that pathogens are not dangerous because they are persistent per se but rather when we a) do not have a suitable immune response to them and b) medications do not work.

The scramble is just a negative control and should have no effect on viability (usually). What is more likely the case is that there are issues with cell handling. Typical issues include working too slow, getting contamination into the culture (either during handling or due to contaminated chemicals, including water), too much agitation etc. I would check with other lab members whether they have any issues and ask a senior member to look over your shoulders while you do the experiment to see whether they can spot any errors during handling.

I am not saying that we cannot do anything with it. What I am saying that unless someone comes up with a good way to interpret the data we will remain descriptive in nature. E.g. we may see differences between different states, but if it is anything like omics data, we will have at least two challenges. The first is that most like the differences will be subject to quite a bit of biological noise. I.e. we are likely not getting clear-cut and reproducible difference between a "baseline connectome" (which is more or less arbitrarily what we define as normal) and pathologic states. The exceptions could be in the extremes where major differences start happening. But that does not necessarily teach us a lot of how the brain normally works. That leads to the second challenge. How do we translate these descriptive information into something that is of physiological relevance? Of course, there may be approaches that may be viable and since I am not an active researcher in this field it may be just my ignorance. However, articles are these posted in OP sound awfully the same as the issues we are facing in the omics field (which happens to fall into my area of expertise).

Or in some cases they just show what does not work, which by itself can also be rather valuable (though often not highlighted for obvious reasons). However, as a reviewer I would gladly throw the same money on a more limited study that provides approaches to make something with the data. Unfortunately sometimes the big ones are an easier sell as people oftentimes still prefer to fund the next big thing (especially if bigshots are involved) rather than going for slower but incremental gain of knowledge. Even if the big thing eventually amounts to less in the end. Though this arguably due to the the semi-politization of science funding.

There is way more to it In addition to transcriptional we also have translational and post translational control. However this is generally true for all regulatory elements and is not limited not to cell differentiation. Although it is involved in it, of course. Suffice to say that no quick summary would do the complexity of the issue justice.And if more details are needed a textbook is going to be a much more valuable source of information.

My feel is that it could be useful, but far from being revolutionary (i.e. pretty much the same as the author of the linked article). If we use the same analogy of genomics, it does provide a lot of useful information, at the same time we cannot really keep up with interpreting the same. The reason is that lack a strong theoretical framework in which we can interpret the data. Often times we see differences in omics data (e.g. diseases vs healthy, stress vs unstressed etc.), get a set of changes and have no clue how that translates into biological outcomes. The thing we learned from the omics revolution is that massive measurements will give us massive amounts of data, but by itself will not help us interpret that data in a biologically meaningful way. I have to add that this is not my specialty, but the articles I have read are very similar to those about omics in the late 90s. A lot of enthusiasm and a strong focus on the technical aspects, however not enough insights in what to do with the data.

Well, powerhouse is a simplification. What has been found are the components and their localization necessary for respiration of oxygen. Discoveries in biological sciences are rarely made just within one or experiment or even within a single group but tends to be built from the consensus of many studies. Elements that lead to the discovery of the function of mitochondria are the discovery of an oxygen reductase, the cytochrome C, the successful isolation of mitochondria and subsequent investigation of the oxidizing properties of mitochondria. The most famous names associated with this work include Warburg, Lehninger, Kailin and Kennedy, and many more that I either forgot or who were involved but were not that prominent. On top you could add people involved in the identification of ATP, the formulation of the theory of chemiosmotic gradients and the discovery (and elucidation of the function) of the ATP synthetase. As you can see, biology is very complex in nature and if you look at some simple statements such as "powerhouse", "information storage" etc. you will find that really they are the summation of many many elements, each with their own history of discovery. Depending on context (e.g. whether you are a biochemist, cell physiologist, microbiologist, medical scientist, etc.) you will find that there will be vastly different viewpoints of these elements, too. Bottom line: biology is full of complexity and findings are rarely straightforward and the result of a single discovery event.

I would imagine that different (mammalian) cell types will most likely taste very similar (if much at all). Much of the taste is the way the tissue is grown, which again is the result of how the animal lived (including what it is being fed). Chances are that those protein products will heavily rely on processing to get any sort of taste into it.

We have a few threads about it somewhere. But bottom line is that we do not have a definite answer but a number of hypotheses. One "textbook hypothesis" is that it results in larger genetic variance. However most models do not explain how that can overcome the two-fold cost of sexual reproduction (as only half of the genome would be inherited). Other models explain it in a more mechanistic way by genetic elements that evolved from nuclear elements that coordinate inheritance. And by "enforcing" sexual reproduction, they make sure that they also get inherited (as seen in the context of selfish genes). But currently there are no definite answers. Also it is clear that benefits of sexual reproduction will not in every case outweigh the disadvantages, considering that we still got plenty of asexually reproducing organisms.