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As pwagen stated, eradication of bacterial diseases are only likely for those bacteria that are dependent on their human host for survival. Those that can also propagate outside can be kept in check with vaccination, but chances are that they will persist. In addition to that, vaccinations are not a 100% protection. They prime your immune system to effectively fight off infections, but as with all biological interactions, they are results are not absolute (though in many cases pretty close). With regards to vaccination of newborns, the immune system of babies are not fully developed. Generally it takes around two months until antibody production is really starting in the newborn and up to six month until higher levels are achieved (up until that point they are heavily dependent on the passive protection offered from the mother e.g. via breastfeeding). Also the protection of vaccinations can decline over time and have to be refreshed. Also it should be noted that stimulating immune responses can be a burden on the body. In adults this is not an issue, but for newborns, who are not really fully developed yet, one has to be a bit careful by how much it should be stimulated in one go.

Based on the available info the answer as well as the reasoning sound reasonable to me. Bonus if you want to do some digging: it is a cytochrome c oxidase subunit. Edit: After re-reading it appears that I may have misunderstood OP. To clarify, the hyrdrophobic run is the part that is located within the membrane. the rest would be intra- or extracellular, respectively.

Yupp, it is worthwhile to highlight things that have solid evidence or are otherwise tangible (time working in a lab, research experience, methods etc.) over pure "personality" stuff. Everyone is writing how engaged they are going to be, how they are going to improve mankind etc. That rarely stands out and/or survives scrutiny. If you are talking abilities, again focus on tangibles. E.g. just stating that you are self-motivated is far less impressive than actually providing evidence of it.

I am not sure what you mean to say. The first part is correct, ribozymes are nucleic acids. But they are not proteins and do not act as protein making factories. If at all, that role could be assigned to ribosome complexes.

Oh dear, sorry to say, but there is quite a bit of misinformation. First regards to gene splicing, in biology splicing refers mostly to RNA maturation. What is being described, most people would refer to as a cloning experiment (e.g. cloning a DNA fragment into another). I am aware that some people do refer to it as gene splicing, but I found that to be very rare in scientific literature (and usually in very specific contexts). As for the rest: Please, the bases are adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine (or uracil). 1) heat first opens up the double strand. To break the DNA sugar backbone you need to do something else. Restriction enzymes are used because they are one of the few techniques that actually allow precise sequence recognition. Using scissors is beyond ridiculous. Ten base pairs mount to roughly 2 nanometers, Good luck in finding those (never mind the impossible task of discerning the bases). 2) editing through light rays? Uh you could try to introduce UV mutations, I guess... 3) Claiming that something is possible does not make it so. Or even likely. Nor even slightly plausible. Also note that uracil merely replaces thymine. For what it is worth...

That is incorrect. A ribozyme is nucleic acid (RNA) with catalytic properties of sorts. A RNAse is essentially an enzyme with the ability to cleave RNA. The majority of which are proteins, but certain ribozymes also have RNAse activities.

The question with regards to the benefits of sexual reproduction is a fairly fundamental one and as such does not easily lead into questions of medical research. That being said, understanding physiology and genetics of other animals greatly benefits our understanding of human physiology and genetics, as the example of the snail genes in Drosophila have shown (and many, many other examples). It is a bit sad if fundamental research is often being slashed in favor of immediate applied research. I always feel that we really should do more to address biological fundamentals instead of aiming straight for cancer cure without properly understanding the underlying cell biology.

Ah the joy of name gene loci. As far as I recall one of the first member of this family was functionally characterized by Nuesslein-Vollhard in Drosophila melanogaster (i.e. fruit fly). I do not know precisely how the name was coined, though one should keep in mind that the naming conventions in those days (around the 80s) were much looser than after the all the genome sequencing projects. I believe it was initially termed sna (though I cannot really tell what the origin of that was). I guess that either it was colloquially called snail (e.g. based on using SNAI as the protein name) and it stuck. A different member of the same family was subsequently named esg (escargot) and a members of a new subfamily were termed slug. So basically they have little to do with actual snails. That being said, they are zinc finger (a special domain involved in DNA binding) proteins that regulate expression of genes that are involved in cell movement. Initially discovered for their role in embryogenesis (which requires significant cell rearrangements). Cancer cells share many similarities of undifferentiated (embryonic) cells and these regulators appear to be involved in this. Anything specific that you are wondering about?

There is not really such job as described in OP. Generally you are allowed to pursue research freely upon reaching tenure but there are major caveats. First, especially medical research requires serious funding. Thus, your research must be attractive for the major funding agencies. In addition, the ability to gain funding is a major point in getting tenure. Thus, what you want to research has to be within the scope of any given funding agency and can not be considered truly free. Note that as in a tenured position you are more heavily involved in managing science, as in running a lab, rather than doing the actual research and experiments (in most institutions). Your job will be mainly split between teaching (huge chunk of time), administrative duties and managing people. In short, as in any job you won't simply get paid to do whatever you want to, there are significant duties that may or may not be in your interest. That being said, you still will have more freedom in terms of research within academia than without. Just note that you will be dependent on funding sources and have adapt your research to it, if you want to be successful.

There could be advantages independent on the topic, depending on what the thesis entails. Especially practical work could be beneficial, but also learning different methodologies. Especially as an undergrad one is less exposed to doing actual science. If the thesis would be mostly busywork, it is probably less ideal of a time investment.

Well, if you cannot get sufficient selectivity FISH may be the way to go, unless you are exclusively interested in live titer.

A different question: what is your ultimate goal. I.e. why do you want to enter an ivy league institute rather than one of the other research unis?

DNA profiling can refer to a number of analyses. The most common one is based on the presence or (in case of repeats) length of a particular region that can (or cannot) be amplified via PCR. Usually at this point the DNA sequence is not really used anymore, it is generally just required to design primers for the PCR. Comparisons are then often made by e.g. comparing the presence and number of similar PCR products from different individuals. Other assays can also be termed DNA profiling, though. In the end it is a rather generic term and what is meant is determined by context.

In that case one should carefully define what one means with academic excellence. It is not terribly hard to excel in a system that is geared towards memorization, for example. One of the points OP argues (in my interpretation) is that the metrics we use to define academic excellence is woefully lacking. That being said, regardless whether such a system really accurately gauges academic excellence (and I believe most would argue it does not), I do not see how extroverts benefit from the system. The ability to memorize things is probably not necessarily controlled by either outlook. Extroverts may get gratification from good grades (and the positive feedback it may cause), introverts may be motivated by a given mental challenge all by itself. While it may be true that the US society may frown upon introversion, the academic setting often caters towards them. I would be surprised if in academia the ratio of introverts would not be higher than the population average. If we talk about post-graduation excellence, obviously either extreme may be detrimental. Though chances are that the extreme extroverts have a higher chance of landing a job as they are more likely to expose themselves to others and have a better network.

Eh, this is heavily in speculations. As a general rule, you can just stick things to metabolites such as neurotransmitters, because they a) are likely not able to perform their activities anymore and b) tagging these molecules is usually not possible in vivio in whole organisms. Even assuming that there are a lot of neurotransmitters attached to magnetic nanobeads and even if we assume that they still perform, what would a magnetic field do? The molecules are deposited within cells and are released by specific mechanisms after stimulation. What would a magnetic pulse actually do? In the best case you induce movement within the magnetic field, so the metabolites move a bit around in the cell. Chances are, however that you may need a field strong enough that has more effects on the rest of your body. In other words, you cannot specifically "activate" specific synapses with this scheme.

I am not absolutely certain about the specificity, so you should research it a bit more but IIRC inhibitors that are mostly selective for serine proteases include AEBSF, and PMSF (though both also inhibit papain, and potentially some other cysteine proteases). Then there is aprotinin, TLCK and TPCK which tend to be a bit more narrow in use. Obviously, if your protease is somewhat more exotic some testing is likely to be needed. And as I said, this is just stuff that I vaguely remember so it may be somewhat inaccurate.

Not all biotechnological applications are of equal use. Letting microbes produce metabolites has been done for some time (insulin being a textbook example), yet the utility for it for food is at best disputed. What is even more important is that the economic aspects of GMO food cannot be overlooked. I am not convinced that having patented strains under the control of biotech companies is a terribly good idea. These biotech products are rarely made available for free. The thing is that food as it is is already pretty good. We evolved to use it. We have more than enough food to provide basically everyone on earth with a healthy diet. The issue is that many cannot afford it. The very same that cannot afford resistant GMO strains (which usually have to be rebought). Craig Venter, according to him (or rather press releases) he created artificial life already twice. Third time is the charm? Finally, increasing biofuel harvest from algae sounds impressive, until one realizes that the yield is still incredibly low. Not that these may not be important progresses, but in this field there is a lot of fluff to wade through. Extrapolating that to everyday life is usually not that easy.

Yep, that is what generally is meant.

I would be careful in these disciplines, too.

Do I understand it correctly that you infected mice with fusobacteria and want to isolate them back from the colon? If so it is quite tricky. The simplest would probably use even more ABs (e.g. as being used in FSA agar). But it may also depend on what you want to do. If e.g. enumeration is the goal flow cytometry (somewhat tricky) or FISH may help you.

I would be surprised if the MIT undergrad curriculum would allow you the freedom that you describe. At that level you are supposed to learn some fundamentals which requires practice, and a certain amount of rigor.

Language itself is not unique to humans. Alex certainly did not use it in a stimulus response way, but he was able to associate properties such as color and shape with words. Note that not all communication has to be verbal. The main difference is the apparent depth and level of abstraction human language has. compared to what other animals are capable of (though more research would be needed). Same goes for tradition, the development of traditions have been extensively researched in macaques (see e.g. Leca et al 2010 Animal Behavior) and other animals. Again, it is not an all-or-nothing matter, but rather one of degree. As such there is not likely to be a singular turning point during our evolution.

I think one should also acknowledge that many differences, be it on the tribal, city or fiefdom level were often enhanced in order to create a type of unique identity. So in a way I would argue that the borders and differences were not necessarily natural lines determined by cultured and tradition, but it also worked the other way round. Tradition and culture were used as tools to create separate identities. To me cultural identity is at the same time incredibly stubborn yet sometimes changes in surprising ways (though, without doubt this is heavily influenced by me living in an academic environment and being a immigrant).. While most like to emphasize differences, I always felt that at least in the important matters we tend to be fairly similar. We agree on what we want, but we want to achieve the results in very different way (and often have issues with compromising).

I realized that my reply could have sounded a bit more harsh than I intended to. It is less a matter of bothering, but the fact that this is a discussion forum. Advertising your own blog is not a good way to start a discussion. I would have welcomed if you e.g. provided a succinct summary or highlighted some salient points that would be conducive for further discussions.

And how friggen smart they can become in such a short time. It is probably for the better. If they had many more years to live and learn, they would probably be our tentaculated overlords by now. Somewhat unrelated but quite interesting: Winkelmann et al. Proc. R. Soc. B 22 May 2013 vol. 280 no. 1759.