CharonY

You misunderstand me. What I am saying that if you splash yourself, if it comes to viral infections it is quite likely to happen well before it actually hits the stomach acids. You have a lot of mucal surfaces that can serve as entry points. Stomach acid will only be relevant if you drink a significant amount of liquid. Droplets will just work on you epidermis and mucosal surface in mouth, nostrils. The focus on stomach acid is quite misplaced.

What you describe is basically what gazillions of groups try to do (except attaching stuff to a cell, which does not precisely make sense to me). Basic issue is that cancer cells are a part of us, hence anything that harms it, also harms us. There will only be quantitative rather than qualitative traits that we can exploit.

Well, explained. That is why I urge myriam to figure out what precisely she had as a construct. Based on the description of the events it is not clear to me whether naming it an oncogene was based actual knowledge of the nature of the construct, or not.

The potential risk lies in the precise construct. With recombination it may be possible to introduce defects or deletion into p53 which may increase the chance of the transfected cell to start multiplying. The chances are low overall, though. As a whole, other stuff that we deal with on a daily basis are much more likely to increase cancer risk than a bit of a splash.

As I said, stomach acid does little (unless you started to drink a lot of it). The worrisome interactions will well happen before that (epidermis to some point, but mostly mucous surfaces in eyes, mouth, oesophagus). As I mentioned, you should figure out what it really was. However, p53 is not an oncogene and if you had one the BSL should have been bumped to 2+-3. So I assume there is little to worry there. The only question is really what kind of mutation your construct has.

Preparative LC is not terribly tricky (well establishing good condition can be a little bit). I would disagree that the upstream steps are easy in comparison. Getting the proteins to fold correctly can be a bloody nightmare. Also, in many cases additional purification via HPLC is not necessary.

It is pretty much the same, however you have to avoid denaturing conditions. Most of the time the kits work perfectly alright (Hist-tags are pretty standard, for example). I have dozens of protocols, but they depend quite a bit on what you want to purify and the principles are much better documented in standard protocol books (which I would recommend to beginners). Check out Molecular Clonin (Sambrook) for instance.

Well, if your goal is to look at spatial distance EM, STM and AFM can be your friend.

Unless used in very specific circumstances (as a local lab lingo, if you will) they generally mean the same.

Well there is data that the physiological effects of high levels of fructose may be different than equivalent levels of sucrose (i.e. the accumulation appears to be faster as the fructose exists in the free form). But obviously the overexposure is really the big issue. Exchanging it back to sucrose would do little to improve overall health status, if consumption stays at the high levels. It has also to do with the preference of Americans for the sweet taste (and I recall a study linking it to exposure to sweetened baby food, but can't recall the reference). What is of little doubt are the health effects of high levels of fructose consumption (by whatever source). I suspect that the demonization of HFC is a bit of a marketing trick so that some (maybe even the same) manufacturer can slap "made with real cane sugar" on their product to make the consumers feel better. The only way to make it better would put less sugar into the products. But then the consumer won't like the taste...

That is quite possible and of major concern as most tox studies are not suited to identify synergistic effects (just imagine the needed throughput). That is why I am a proponent of funding mechanism-based toxicology. But that is really getting off-topic now.

C57 are pretty much a standard all-purpose strain. CBA is similar, but IIRC they (or a substrain thereof) had a lower natural incidence of leukemia and is often used in tumor research. Beside the issue with translation to human health, we are also constantly challenged by pollutants in other sources that are likely to affect our germline. Women are especially susceptible, though (for obvious reasons). So it will boil down to the question of concentration. I also want to point out that the mice were exposed to two cigarettes daily, which is quite a a bit when measured against body weight.

Interesting. I would have to check those papers as I was not aware of strong effects. I will have to revise my statement with respect to smoking to a "maybe", then.

Actually that is not quite how it went down either, at least non-publicly. The issue here was the high-profile announcement of a extraordinary claim with little evidence. Main issue is that the none of the involved scientist were really microbiologist (the specialty of the senior authors include soil chemistry/geology and cosmology). So when that community took a look at the data (especially those with training in microbiology as well as analytical procedures) were quick to find errors and it was rather quickly dismissed in the respective communities (as extraordinary claims were not supported by extraordinary evidence). The published rebuttal paper was basically something that most already expected (actually, there were quite a few labs asking for samples to re-do the analyses). AFAIK there was not really ridicule going on, but quite some pity (as the lead author was still very junior, the senior ones were pretty much safe). The only thing close to ridicule is the fact that quite a few scientists did not like the overselling of the data (depending on whom you ask it may have been the senior author's influence). Especially microbiologist were unhappy that other (non-bio) folks were able to sell things that would (should) not have been published in that form in a proper microbiology journal (and which the authors apparently did not really understand). Still, Arete's point stands. The main difference being that the paper itself, was very weak (but sold very high) and it was not the subsequently performed experiments that casted it into a bad light (though it was necessary to solidify the criticism). A final point to add, quite a few felt that the error was not on the side of the junior lead author (though the NASA circus did not really help), but that in this case peer-review was not critical enough. A good example why new claims have to be met with skepticism.

In the olden days all the enzymes needed for cloning experiments were isolated by hand and not bought. It is not only semi-legal, but sometimes standard practice (also note that DNA ladders are, of course, not enzymes). For the rest, standard procedure is creating overexpression vectors, introduce them to suitable strains, overexpress and then purify them.

From a genetic viewpoint: no. With regards to other factors, it may increase fertilization chance (e.g. higher live sperm count) but for the most part the health status of the mother has a much higher impact on child health. But it is possible that there are studies suggesting otherwise that I am not aware of.

Note: not medical advice! First, I have to put up my biosafety hat on and comment that your work procedure needs revising. If you work with BSL2 (or above) you are required to work with face protection and in a hood in such a way that dropping your sample will not splash your face. I.e. the sash has to be closed that spills will not reach exposed body parts. That being said, infection processes are not initiated by ingestion. Direct contact with mucosal tissue (e.g. eyes, nostrils, mouth). The stomach acid is not going to factor in much. The rest depends on the type of vector you used and the inserts it carries. Normally, they are replication incompetent and if the insert is relatively harmless, it should have no effect (though I will not pretend to know what fiddling with p53 may actually do outside of cell culture). Considering that no precautions above BSL2 have been taken, I assume that it is mostly harmless. Still, inform yourself about the vector and associated risks. In fact, this is something you should always do before starting work. It is a prerequisite for working in a lab (and failure to do so counts as a safety violation). Regardless, for the future there are several things you should keep in mind: a) inform yourself about potential risks associated with your work (i..e know precisely the health risks and b) protect yourself properly. Revise procedures so that these kind of accidents do not happen (Googles, face masks, proper use of biosafety cabinets, etc.). Still, serious consequences from these incidents are rare. Maintain follow-ups and you should be fine. But again (and this is for everyone who may be working in a lab and reading this): inform yourself about the risk. I am aware that some labs have a lax safety culture, but it is your own frigging health on the line.

This is part correct, and part wrong. AB do not cause specific mutations that induce resistance. However, random mutation lead to the pool individuals that have this trait. Hence the term "natural variation" does not make much sense. Mutations are the cause of genetic variation. A simple experiment. Take a single bacterial clone and make a culture. Technically the whole culture should be genetically identical. But in reality a couple will already have mutations. And they replicate, too. So if you continuously sequence all the bacteria in a given pool, you could track the accumulation of mutations fairly quickly. Note that the majority will not have change phenotype (or only under specific conditions). But I suspect that confusion exists in terms of what variation means in this context (and what "normal" would mean in this respect).

That is my point. Modeling using multi-step reactions are notoriously inaccurate, except for a few very well known reactions (such as glycolysis, for example) for a number of well-characterized organisms. Those models tend not to be developed by using reaction constants, but rather empirical data (or if they do, it requires heavy tweaking). And again, for many we do not know. In fact, depending on organism, we do not even know the function for the majority of them.

Off topic, but for most reactions we do not have actual in vivo rection rates. Those few that we have are normally based on in vivo assays which can be quite different in actual cells (due to e.g. crowding effects, changes in microenvironment etc.).

Still does not contradict iNow's assumption.

In my opinion any further discussion down that route should be held in the speculations forum.

Also, technically there are no side-effects, only effects. One of the effects if aspirin is thinning of blood, which is the desired effect, but also the cause for described side-effects, including higher propensity of internal bleeding, associated pain etc. The side effect for one condition, can be the desired effect of another.

My eating schedule is pretty much determined by my job. But I cook everything I eat myself (from scratch) and I make an effort to balance things out a bit over the week. I.e. high vegetable/meat ratio etc (almost no processed food as I really dislike the taste). I do not keep track of calories, though. I found that I mostly gain weight when I have long stretches of just sitting (e.g. grant writing time), but I tend to lose it again when I am walking around more.

Note that even bacteria have altruistic behavior. Examples are fruiting body formations in which many bacteria give up the ability to reproduce so that others can form spores and pass on their genes. Also if we go down the "mind" route, it is still biology. Your mind is not something that works detached from matter. As such there is a genetic foundation on the plasticity that works on it. Also cannibalism is not terribly widespread in many animals (although ritualistic cannibalism exists in humans). Likewise certain social animals do take care of their weak. So nothing terribly special in humans in that regard.