CharonY

You certainly can. You just have to prove that it works through the trials. it should be noted that a whole study section of the NIH has worked on proving the efficacy of alternative medicine, and much to their astonishment they came up with little positive to report. Oftentimes the approaches work on specific individuals but fail if used in larger cohorts (i.e. did not show better outcomes than control groups using placebos). In many cases studies are still lacking, but I am not certain about the current status of ayurverdic approaches. Certainly, any extract that can be proven to have therapeutic effects can be treated as any other drug.

I have not clicked on the link, but live-dead deteaction using stains is pretty much standard practice to estimate e.g. culture quality and is also used in a number of other assays.

Well a more appropriate title is probably that the study may lead to experiments that may improve our understanding if ribosome interactions. Among others, in the far far future that knowledge may assist in finding novel compounds that may act upon these interactions. Provided that they are non-toxic to eukaryotes (or less so) they may have uses as antibiotics. Also they may provide insights into potential evolutionary paths of early life, I am uncertain whether these synthetic studies will provide much insights into abiogenesis per se. At least for now.

Technically we do have quite some tools for rapid identification of bacteria, but the actual implementation is tricky in a clinical setting. For example, a small sample could be taken to amplify ribosomal sequences and compare with database to identify the strain. This is actually been done for high-priority cases, but due to the precision needed during sampling and sample preparation it is prone to errors e.g. due to contamination. And of course on-site sequencing facilities are often limited and one needs trained personnel. While theoretically a higher turnover (in terms of wait times) is possible to a certain degree, the amount of samples, available resources (both instrumental and personnel) limit actual implementation on a large scale.

I think the documentary is severely distorting facts (also note that the documentary was produced by Burzynski, so clearly not an unbiased report). The bottom line is that there is no evidence that the treatment actually worked. There were indeed several trials filed to the FDA, but no data has been shown to indicate efficacy of antineoplaston treatment. This is the reason why the treatment has not been approved. Also,a filed phase III trial has not even commenced. In addition, at least one case of severe adverse reaction in a child has been found, which led the FDA to put a halt on treatment of children. Adding to the fact that no mechanism has been proposed (except some handwaving parts), the absence of serious preclinical data demonstrating efficacy available and some ethical issues in the way people were attracted to the study, it is more likely a case of someone wanting to make money off desperate people rather than some poor philantropist being oppressed by the evil FDA. Edit: wrote that down from memory and realized that i did not included references. I have followed the story on and off and it would take a bit of work to dig everything out. But here is a recent blog article deconstructing the narrative built around the "documentary" http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/06/03/in-which-the-latest-movie-about-stanislaw-burzynskis-cancer-cure-is-reviewed-with-insolence/

There is quite some knowledge about how tissues grow and organisms develop and it is not related to quorums sensing per se (though the principles have some commonality). Quorum sensing really refers the population density sensing of populations of independent cells (or organisms). The short version for tissue and organ growth is that the cells produce signaling molecules and by the way cells part slight imbalances are produced. These gradients are responsible to cells to form polarity (as they they will affect cellular regulation in dependence on their concentration). This differential growth again leads to more regulatory changes and the cells start forming in certain ways based on what their surrounding cells "tell" them. In other words cell differentiation is not hard-coded in the genome (as each cells start with the same genome) but rather is the result of cell-cell signaling and gradients of signaling molecules.

Essentially if you claim therapeutic effects it has to be be tested for that. Food supplements, i.e. stuff that does not claim that it works tend not to fall under the same rule, for instance.

Also good books on lab protocols are a good investment (also, if you do instrumental work, the manuals are often useful). I would also suggest to ask as much as possible. People generally prefer to answer questions (even if reluctantly) rather then to deal with fallout when someone messes something up.

I would not think that it is a problem. For a well-controlled hybridization temperature control is in the small volume (say, picoliter range) is good enough (too strong agitation is potentially detrimental at this step). You should also note that often hybridizations are more efficient in immobilized assays, whenever possible. Also there are droplet based assays that have excellent volume control. That being said, for some situations where volume is larger and/or fast buffer and mixing is relevant, or where gradients are desired there are quite a few options already on the market. Some include (3d) diffusive mixing, manipulations with switching electric fields, pneumatic mixers etc. The weirdest was definitely using flagellar movement of a bacterium. So integrating mixing into MF devices is a quite a big field under investigation with quite some more or less novel approaches.

Or win every lottery and hire people to do so.

I am not sure what you mean with detecting DNA. What part of the DNA? Detecting, or sequencing/amplification? In any case there are already plenty of lab on a chip (LOC) devices that manipulate, amplify, quantify and even sequence DNA (some are commercially available). Mixing is really only needed if the reaction volumes are larger, but in many chip devices the reaction chambers are small enough so that diffusion is sufficient. Also note that there are many options for actual on-chip mixing. The whole idea of LOC is that it integrates as many steps as possible within a single device.

I know what Venter claimed and note that i did not mention abiogenesis either. I object to the synthetic life as he essentially just removed DNA from a cell and introduced DNA that, while artificially produced, holds the same (albeit reduced) sequence of the organism it was taken from. He did a couple of variations but essentially he introduced DNA into a cell, which does not make it a synthetic lifeform (at least not much more than all the mutant strains created to date).

a) Craig Venter still did not create synthetic live b) introducing DNA of extinct species was not really successful so far (i.e. the clones died rather prematurely). At this point saving DNA and use it to revive species is not more than a speculation. Of course, it may be that in future the process will be optimized. There are several limitations, however. The first is that you will have a collection with sufficient genetic diversity and also store these samples. That is going to be very costly. Second, you will have to clone and implant the organisms (or otherwise have them develop). Depending on species that again is likely to be a very costly process, especially if you want to create a viable population. Finally, you need compatible host cells, though I assume that most animals and plants have sufficiently close relatives to harvest (but may not be true in all cases).

If the OP is asking about bacterial capsules, they are generally exopolysaccharides. Most bacteria (also quite often in Gram+) produce them, but only if they produce enough of it that it becomes a recognizable, discreet structure it is being referred to as capsule. The production can be quite different depending on species, some just throw them out all the time, others have a low base production but ramp it up under a variety of conditions (sometimes under stress, sometimes in presence of a lot of food, or presence of other bacteria etc.). They do have a lot of additional functions, again depending on the organism, but also include adhesion, infection, biofilm formation. A note on the Gram stain, the reason why Gram- are not stained is not due to resistance to staining via the additional layer, but rather due to the inability to retain stain as their peptidoglycan layer is so thin. In fact, crystal violet treatment generally stains Gram- as well as Gram+ bacteria, only the destaining step really allows you to distinguish those two. As a rule of thumb, the shell of Gram- is weaker than those of Gram+, who often have additional protective, sometimes crystalline, layers on top of their thick peptidoglycan.

I think the discussion is far more appropriate for the politics section.

It depends a lot on each individual university, what they accept and what not. As such, you should. as others have noted, ask universities that you are interested in for options. I.e. there is no generalized path valid for all universities in the US or UK (at least none that I am aware of).

Or what they want us to believe they are thinking. I do not trust those sneaky bastards.

While it is pretty cool, I kind of dislike that science journalist really have to add things like "a situation unique to biology", as similar relationships have been described earlier. While I am not sure whether non-parasitic interactions of bacteria in bacteria are known, there have been plenty metabolic symbioses between say, protists and bacteria within arthropods are well known. But I guess this is more of a pet peeve of mine and should detract from the interesting points of the paper.

Actually I think that those engaged in the debate were as non-biased as possible. We had another thread discussing this topic a while ago and the basic reason is obviously that what the researchers found could fairly easily happen in nature. Understanding the underlying mechanisms would enable the development of improved vaccines. Without it, there would be no defenses. Honestly, I am more worried about novel naturally occurring viruses rather than man-made pandemics. While the latter certainly sounds much more dramatic, the prior has occurred already fairly often.

Depends on a lot factors, including complexity of the device and the underlying principles. Fundamentals are often established by analytical chemists and specialized areas of physics. They often do proof of principle work and papers. Engineers generally tend to pop up only in rather specialized areas (e.g. microelectromechanical systems) and often expand on those principles. Often not in the same depth (though obviously it really depends on the research focus of the respective groups) as analytical people, however. Engineers tend to play a much bigger role in the commercialization of these products, i.e. turning proof of principle or very base prototypes into a product that other people actually may want to use. This is generally done with application specialists that include, depending on the system, analytic chemists and/or bioanalytic experts. Software, unfortunately, tends to be slapped on the systems. Often it is an engineer tasked with building a workable driver with something like Labview and a slapped-on GUI with 60s aesthetics.

No, I agree, with current knowledge we cannot rule out that panspermia occured on Earth. Of course that means that someplace else abiogenesis must happened. That however, is relatively unrelated to the question of extremophiles as those are masters in living (and metabolizing) under extremely harsh conditions. But space would be too much for that. And conversely, known bacteria that produce spores are mostly mesophiles.

Actually myxospores normally only refer to spores of myxobacteria. The rest would commonly just be known as spores. Spores can likely survive exiting the atmosphere, but obviously there would be virtually no metabolism considering the lack of water and the low temperature, for starters.

I am not sure whether I understand the question. If you are asking about gens that are shared by everyone, then this would apply for most of our genome. if you mean allele variants, it would apply genes that are fixed (i.e. the existence of only one allele). I remember vaguely that I read in an old textbook that heterozygosity on the protein level was estimated to be around 10% (i.e. around 90% would be fixed or near-fixed). On the DNA level this would expected to be higher due (as not every DNA mutation would also change an amino acid). But this data is likely to be outdated as the book must have been printed sometime in the 90s, well before the large sequencing projects started to take off. But even assuming for a large margin of error, you would expect quite a lot of them being found around the globe.

I may be wrong, but from what I have seen (mostly in Trypanosoma) trailing flagellum really refers to the flagellum that is directed towards the posterior but not necessarily located there. So using Trypanosoma as example, there are two flagella located at the anterior, but one is directed forwards and another backwards, known as trailing flagellum. A posterior flagellum would always refer to on located at the posterior. In other words, one term refers to the direction, the second to the location.

swansont explanation is right on the spot. In biology we often assume steady state conditions for metabolic fluxes, which is obviously almost never true, but it allows to come to do calculations (of, say, flux into a certain metabolite) that we then can measure. The results will never be 100% identical, but it will help us to understand whether our current model is seriously lacking (if the deviation is huge) or reasonably accurate. Unfortunately that way of thinking is common in the science world, but sometimes teachers (and students) overlook that part because pre-college education tends to be too focused on simple right and wrong answers.