CharonY

Bleach is actually not that great, as it will render the bones brittle. IIRC a standard way was to macerate in warm water (which will take quite a while and is not terribly pleasant). Boiling is probably faster though, but has to be done somewhat carefully to preserve the skeleton. To bleach it up hydrogen peroxide can be used.

Moved to speculations.

The scope of the question is actually quite broad and not easily addressable in a short post. One has to understand that DNA is not a simple static molecule in which only the sequence of bases carries information, but it also has a certain dynamics which involves e.g. proteins that control actual expression of encoded genes. Among the factors that are actually inheritable, DNA modification (i.e. methylation). By methylating specific areas on the DNA, expression can be altered. These methylation patterns can be maintained and passed on. Reversion of mutations can occur on several levels. Either an additional mutation restores the former phenotype, or, the mutation site can mutate again back to the original base (or one that results in the same encoded AA, usually the third base in a triplet). The latter is not terribly common, but may be selected for. This means that while for any individual cell a reversion is unlikely to happen, within a large cell pool those revertants (i.e. cells that restore the original codon or a homologous one) may be selected for if cell functions are inhibited by the mutation. Hence, the rate of revertants may be higher than expected (again, provided there is positive selection). For regulatory areas more leeway may be there in terms of restoring functions, but one must keep in mind that regulation is based on equilibrium reactions and there are generally only quantitative changes (rather than on/off regulation). Note that one should not confuse it with epigenetic control as the modification of DNA (i.e. methylation) is generally not considered a form of mutation.

I am not sure whether we are talking about the same thing. A truly photographic memory would entail a high-detail (i.e. photographic detail) in your mind, regardless of the ability to e.g. draw or reproduce it. If the flight over New York was memorized photographically, he should be able to recall accurately the number of windows from on a building from a given point of view, for example. I.e. walk back in the saved memory and recall everything with absolute detail (again, something that would somewhat clash with the way we think perception works). The drawing itself, while providing quite some more details than most would be able to reproduce, have nowhere that amount of detail. It would be interesting to reproduce photographs from corresponding angles to see whether at least the rough details were accurate, though. To me, there appears to be discrepancies (though it could be a perspective thingy).

I would agree with that. Especially due to the way memories are re-created in the brain it is highly unlikely that something true photographic could exist (at least not with high level of detail).

I would be careful to extrapolate these studies. First of all we are talking about mice. Perinatal development is quite different to humans, so discussions into that direction are at best premature. It is quite interesting, though and it may be worthwhile to look at it more closely.

Well, AFAIK there is little evidence that photographic memory actually exists.

Using glasses with different dioptres can result in headaches until the brain adapts to it. In addition, the eyes (and long-term presumably also the brain) adapts to the different focus while using certain glass strength and after removing them they will focus wrongly. Continuous use of glasses of a wrong strength will result in your eyes adapting to them and may affect your normal eyesight. Ideally, you should have reading glasses that correct your eyesight as little as necessary (i.e. have it measured by an optician) to avoid larger problems.

None that are homologous to bacterial ones (AFAIK) or which are referred to as restriction enzymes. However, there enzymes with nuclease activities in eukaryotes. Often, they are involved in DNA repair. In addition there enzymes that are involved in DNA dynamics and replication with endonuclease activity. Generally they are not very sequence-specific however.

Both are commonly used interchangeably, but in my experience calibration curve is more used in settings where assays are being established or developed or when instrument tweaking is involved. "Standard curve" is more often used when a suite of (more or less) established analyses are being performed. This may due to the more flexible way to establish assays and the use of "standard" or "normalization" could be slightly confusing. But for the most part it is semantics.

For a calibration curve you would generally only use data points corresponding to dynamic range of the measurement. The reason is that in most cases you want to perform a linear regression analysis as a measure of the quality. For the most part these type of analyses follow linear or exponential functions and as such at most semi-logs are used. Log-log is more appropriate for power law relationships. In this particular case a log-log curve does not tell you much except (as ewmon pointed out) showing the part where the linear relationship fails and hence the calibration curve is useless. Not necessarily unimportant, but you can estimate that by eye, too.

A log or semi-log plot is easy to do, but I do not really see that it is necessary here. Just by looking at the values it is apparent that you are outside the dynamic range of the assay in certain areas of your graph (or assuming that you used absorbance reading in a standard photometer the dynamic range of the instruments is to blame). In any case, to make such a plot just calculate the logs using the =log function in excel or simply scale the axis to a log.

Actually I think it is part of the news embargo associated with Science articles and I think Nature has a similar policy (for the arsenic paper). Only after a certain amount of time you are allowed to publicly talk about accepted manuscripts. And this stuff is probably still somewhat far away from publication.

Forget what?

I would be surprised if they put in an ESI the chances for failure would be far too high (e.g. clogging, not to mention the requirement for liquid handling). My assumption is that it is mostly designed for gas phase analysis. As such I feel that the capabilities would be severely limited. In addition, I do not think that they put a high priority on the search for biological molecules, when they designed the system. I assume that the likelihood for finding something would be too low for the costs involved. Edit: I am being stupid, imatfaal posted what they had: a GC. Presumably it is coupled to the quad and TLS (with switchable lines for example). EI is the most likely ionization strategy, then.

AFAIK it is not clear whether eidectic memory actually exists. The memory of elephants is presumably pretty good, but I am not sure of extensive studies on this topic (and how much difference from average human memory capabilities are). Finally the discussion of memory is very broad. It can be be discussed on the biological/physiological level, or one could discuss memorization techniques.

Depending on ionization source these instruments can indeed be used to identify biological molecules, though I expect that the are primarily used to identify simple molecules and not for example proteins or peptides. Of course there are also smaller organic compounds that may be indicative of biological activity. To be honest, even if those were found I would not be terribly excited (as scientist). I would be more interested in the nature of the organism (and how similar or different they are from terrestrial lifeforms). Just finding evidence is somewhat intriguing but I feel it does not ultimately teach us much.

maybe you need to enable javascript? Alternatively you could try connecting with a proper irc client?

There is also a book on the topic: Peter J Feibelman "A PhD is not enough"

You may want to look into long-term potentiation as well as regulatory changes upon stimulation (e.g. channel and receptor synthesis).

Nutrient availability and use is another aspect to look into. What N and C sources can certain bacteria use that fungi generally cannot?

I am not sure what you consider normal. I found that memorizing to be far easier than actually organizing the information. For the latter you actually require a certain understanding of the material. In school the material is trivial enough that you can get by just by memorizing it prior a test. But anything past entry-level college material will require organization of the information as it is much more complex than just a list of "facts". The summary of a given topic in a few sentences is what is often referred to as elevator talk. It actually takes a lot of practice to summarize a more or less complex topic in such a way that it can be clearly expressed. It is certainly not normal. Some have a knack of speaking freely, but if they did not invest time in understanding and organizing the info, it comes over as bullshitting (trust me, a lot of students try that). I think you are overestimating the ability of people to absorb and communicate complex topics (note that speaking confidently is not the same as actually conveying info correctly). Unless previously prepared everyone should actually take a pause before answering.

I wonder how often this has to be discussed. Obviously, attempts to create a complete theoretical framework (note that such a thing has never truly existed) we have to integrate novel findings into existing systems. While the relative importance of certain aspects (say, importance of selection vs drift) or the realization that certain tenets are simply not easily applicable (e.g. species concepts in prokaryotes). But it is hardly a revolutionary process. Modern synthesis was established, what, around the 1940s? Of course new mechanisms have been detected since then and their relative relevance to evolutionary models have to be discussed. Obviously a certain amount of change in certain aspects is necessary and has been under discussion for a long time. Obviously this is more of an advanced discussion and since no complete, simple teachable framework has been established to replace the existing models, it is obvious that in most high-school and undergrad classes it is not taught in-depth. So what is actually the topic of this thread? Are these things wildly ignored within the scientific community? Of course not. Are they revolutionary? Not really. Are changes necessary? Obviously. As with basically (almost) any "fact" you learn in biology (just thing about the "dogma of molecular biology" and the holes in that commonly taught model). One thing detrimental to the discussion is the overall tone of the OP that is accusatory and regularly falls back on appeal to authority (i.e. posting links to paper instead of bringing forth a complete argument) and finally shifts in goalposts (e.g. challenges of modern synthesis vs. people are ignorant of evolution). For instance, what are the true limitations of the modern synthesis? From my point of view is the lack of integration of genomic plasticity, species definitions and their use as durable units and a focus on optimization of the organismal machinery and also a focus on hierarchical evolution. However, for basically anyone working in the area is aware of the issues. In many cases there is still a struggle in integrating it in a meaningful way (often HGT cannot be accounted for easily, for example), though efforts are underway. It is typical academic handwaving to call these paradigm changes, but unless it is complete replaced it is not the case.

Proximately you can get them from organisms that either synthesized them or obtained them from other organisms. Ultimately there are a number of plants and bacteria that synthesize them (and also certain animals). The synthesis pathways are dependent on the specific amino acid in question. If you eat meat, for example they will contain proteins that include essential amino acids that the animal may have obtained from various plant or animal sources, for example. Instead of synthesizing the respectiva amino acid our body degrades the protein to its constituents (i.e. the amino acids).

We (as other animals) basically lost the ability to synthesize a number of amino acids, presumably because there was no selective pressure to maintain the required genes (and hence, metabolic pathways).Thus it is not that we are any kind special in that regard, as other animals also lack the ability to synthesize all amino acids.