CharonY

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.

This is news to me. to you have a reference? Hong Kong and some other territories have picked it up, but mainland China would be a big surprise to me. The single largest country with English as official language is, to my knowledge, India.

In this context it is interesting to note that newspeak is a very reduced language aimed at the limitation of expression and forcing specific thought patterns. A constantly and freely evolving language would be almost the opposite to that.

Richet discovered anaphylaxis but his work never explained (and to date we do not know) why it occurs in certain individuals. Again, if the mechanism would work as you described, everyone would be allergic to all foods as the micro lesions in our gums would expose us to food proteins almost all the time. The real question is what leads to sensitization (and again, the exposure is only the trigger that has to work in conjunction with something else). If that is not shown, highlighting Richet's work is nothing more than an appeal to authority. Vaccine safety is important of course, but generally it is better to figure out where real problems and concentrate on strong links rather than speculations. Especially since no strong study exist to show that such a mechanistic link exists in the first place. One thing some are investigating is whether adjuvants can mediate immune responses in a negative way, but again, the links are so weak that it is unclear if any changes would really have any benefits whatsoever. The only strong data point we have are those that iNow highlighted. I.e. that vaccines do protect against diseases. For the others more studies are needed, though existing ones generally fail to find a link.

I find it disingenuous that you edited a cop/paste of a wikipedia article to make it appear as if food proteins automatically sensitize the immune system. The article highlights the process what happens IF sensitization, by whatever source occurs. The important point that is neglected by OP is that not everyone has allergies and the actual causes are far from known. What is clear is that simple exposure is insufficient (otherwise we would basically react to everything), but rather genetic links appear to be relevant as well environmental factor (as explored by the hygiene hypothesis, for example). Can vaccines trigger allergies? Certainly. Can they sensitize a person with a disposition? Yes just like any exposure can. Do they cause it? Certainly not directly via a simple molecular link as OP implies. One potential way is that certain vaccines may increase responsiveness to histamines, but these results are not well reproduced (and thus hint at a genetic basis for whatever may have happened). Another is again the hygiene hypothesis, i..e. vaccinated children have a lower infection burden and that may lead to higher rates of sensitization. Again, the studies are not terribly conclusive (and thus indicating that more complex factors are involved). Some studies did manage to correlate vaccinations with allergies, but many do not, the usual issue with epidemiological data. One issue is of course that allergies are still a relative rare event in the cohorts, i.e. most children are vaccinated, but only a very small sub-set actually develops allergies, whereas control groups of non-vaccinated children tend to be outliers of sorts (e.g. in isolated rural areas). One study found a weak correlation, but only in a sub-group children that rarely visit physicians. Those with more regular care showed no differences (McKeever et al. Am J Public Health. 2004).

I have seen those before. Absolutely fantastic and many beat the average instagram.

No. But that is because I secured a position that requires a PhD (in academia). The answer is will depend a lot on what the goals of the respective person is and in what position he/she ends up in. E.g. if you do not manage to get a tenured position in academia (over 80% of PhDs) you may still get a job in the market that requires one. I would think you would mostly regret it only if a) you hate the job you end up with or b) end up in a job that has no PhD requirement to begin with Relative to what? The PhD time itself was certainly not monetarily rewarding. The subsequent post-doc time was tough (a lot of moving that ate into money). Also up to the point where you are tenured you do not have a lot of stability (most postdoc positions are terms of 1-2 years). It is going to be tough if you have a family or intend to do have one. Potentially. I got decent citations on a number of my publications, including from my PhD time. But from that time there was nothing truly groundbreaking (nor did I expect it to be). Actually I was probably less specialized than my peers, I branched out fairly wide during my PhD and continued what could be considered multidisciplinary work throughout my postdoc time. And for what it is worth, it was fun. Being less specialized made it very easy for me to find postdoc positions, but made it hard to find a faculty position. Whether it was worth it depends highly on what you want to get out of it. If the question is something that intrigues you, it may be worth it on a personal level. If the area is something that scores you a job and that is your goal, it may be too. If it is an obscure topic that you do not like and does not open doors, probably not. For me personally I would have said a few years ago that I should have specialized. But now I got one of the rare jobs where it was finally an advantage. So my personal answer would have changed over time. Unless the job is something that has similar intellectual challenges to what I am doing today, probably not. Also, I am not good with using free time. This is actually not necessarily true. It may depend on university but most people I know/knew were on yearly contracts Moreover, depending on funding situation many faculty do not have the money for 4 years per student banked. Rather, they may have funding for two years for a student and then have to get funding for more after that. In the German and I believe also the Dutch system professors often have negotiated permanent positions in their group that they can allocate to students. But most have more students and rely on soft money, too. Whether you will have independence will depend a lot on your supervisor. Though I would agree that in a company you will have more restrictions.