CharonY

For starters I would just grab one of the manuals from one of the manufacturers (e.g.Qiagen/Repli-g-kit; GE/Templiphi, etc.). Alternatively you could just check the papers, depending on what you want to do.

Unfortunately, I do not think that his way of thinking was so much different from his contemporaries. Appealing to the masses was one of the reasons he got to power after all. As Moontanman said, in many ways there were many issues that facilitated what has happened. The desire for expansion and the glory of colonialism has been diminished but still existed at that point.People still believing that a strong country needs to expand to ascertain superiority (and have enough space for its people, the infamous "Lebensraum"). There was a strong fear of communism, which is why Hitler eventually also got support from the conservatives. National pride was an issue (after WWI) and strong authoritarian figures were highly popular. Antisemitism was rampant and a rather popular platform. There is quite a dispute in defining how special Hitler really was or whether he really just was a populist that grew into his role, if you will. I would argue it is less about a specific person, but more about someone having near unlimited power.

University of Oregon? University of Ohio? University of Ottawa? Typo in UFO?

Except of course that de-regulated cell growth and cancer is closely related...

So from the posts so far I gather that biology is hard on the outside and squishy-juicy on the inside?

Well, actually my reading comprehension seems to be crap. 333/33 is of course not 1:10. The correct dilution would have been 33/330, 33.3/333 or 30/300. Also admittedly the error is relatively low (but one should still avoid it, pipetting errors are going to be bad enough). *sigh* Posting without sleep (PWS) is not good...

Ah yes you are correct I read it as in 300 µl final volume, for some reasons. The growth rate is not the cell count, but rather the change of cells over time. It is usually expressed as generation time (i.e. time/number of generations). Using the cell number at the beginning and at the end of the interval, you can calculate the value. That value is dependent on growth conditions and relatively independent of initial cell count. However, if you are talking about about the total cell count, it refers to the number of cells you end with. In your description it is still not clear to which value you are actually measuring. That being said, you come back to the dilution of the media. What kind of impact do you think it has. Or in if you hypothesize, should the spent medium increase or decrease growth of the bacterium. And how?

Adding 33 µl of bacterial culture to 300 µl of medium is not a 1:10 dilution but it is rather slightly off. If you continue the dilution, errors will propagate. For the rest of the question, you will have to be careful with the words. The way you phrased it, it is e.g. not clear vs you refer to growth rate, or total cell count (which are quite different things). If you refer to the latter, it should be rather obvious, you start with less, you end with less.

A given protein can have a variety of epitopes. Polyclonals are essentially a mix of different ABs that may bind to different ones. Which one to use depends highly on what your assay is supposed to show. A monoclonal AB can, for instance be raised against a specific epitope, e.g. to identify proteins with a highly conserved structure (but which may be different in other respects). Conversely, you could raise a monoclonal that is highly specific for one particular protein only. In polyclonal you do not have that amount of control. Technically, if a polyclonal shows sufficient specificity you could use it in Western. However, you always risk that it will bind to other proteins, too. The unspecific binding is due to the fact that there may be IgGs that bind to epitopes that are not specific for that particular protein. But you generally would not know beforehand. The animal to use depends mostly on cross-reactivity and tend to be more relevant for sandwich-type assays or for specific immunoprecipitation/depletion methods that rely on somewhat unspecific binding (which is used in some purification processes, e.g. to deplete high abundant proteins from a sample). The source plays a relatively small role for the actual use of the antibody (it is more a production issue). However, one actual difference is found when using more distant organisms (e.g. chicken) which allows for a stronger reaction. That is, chicken IgYs can have higher avidty over mammalian IgGs, if raised against mammalian proteins (especially, highly conserved ones).

The world is a slightly smelly mollusk that gets eaten alive?

Monoclonal ones tend only to recognize a single epitope. For polyclonals are less specific in that regard.

1. It depends a little bit on the definition of species. I will use a fairly accepted, though in some cases outdated: the one of reproductive isolation. Species is then defined as a population of organisms that can interbreed and is isolated from other such groups. In order to explain how speciation may occur I will give the example of the so-called allopatric speciation. Imagine a species (i.e. group of interbreeding individuals). Now for some reasons a subgroup gets isolated and they stop interbreeding. Over time these groups may diverge so much that they cannot successfully interbreed , even if they are not isolated anymore. It is therefore to understand that speciation is a population event, not an individual one. Also it generally occurs over longer time-frames (for both reasons the example with the dog does not make sense). Also I just realized that there is quite a nice wiki page to this topic My link. I think I will leave it there for the moment and you may want to read up on it and maybe you can ask more questions, if you think that the article(s) need clarification? At higher taxa there is only reclassification if one realizes that the evolutionary history of organisms need re-arrangement, i.e. to conform with new genetic data. There will be no biological changes as all the taxonomy is only a way for us to order and categorize things. In nature only species exist (and even that is tricky, especially when go to prokaryotes) and it does not particularly care about hierarchies.

Also the book "Will to power" has now been recognized not to be written by him (published 1901 and then again 1906) but by his sister (who liberally used and abused his material). The link between Nietzsche's actual philosophy and Hitler's are tenuous, to say the least. He was, just to give an example, critical of antisemitism. Regarding morals he had quite a complicated stance, from what I remember. He was a proponent of individualism (quite in contrast to Hitler and they way he utilized group dynamics). Also, from what I remember he rejected absolute moral norms and saw them as a human constructs. But there is much more to it and quite a bit is open to interpretation. But unless we used the distorted version of his sister and ignore the bulk of his genuine work, there is really little to discuss his work of philosophy in relation with Hitler and national socialism (except to add that he was also quite anti-socialist and was at least somewhat critical of nationalism, too.). Note that national socialism (and facism) are opposed to individualism and liberalism. I think Mooey answered the part about Hitler's abuse of science quite well and have not anything to add there. Except maybe that in some cases he did not need to twist science. In the olden days there were far less standards in the non-rigorous areas of science (and many disciplines did not really exist in an established form). With so much junk around it was relatively easy to mine the parts that fits into your ideology. In fact, it is a good example what could happen if one politicizes science in order to make propaganda, rather than to seek the truth (and how dangerous extrapolations from half-truths can be). And from a historic viewpoint I think it is worthy to point out that the eugenics movement started in the US before it was implemented in Nazi Germany (and served to some extent as inspiration). Wiki

You missed his point. DNA alone does not have information. Only in conjunction with an elaborate transcription (and translation) system does it do anything. Actually pretty much the same as a hard disk without a head. It has been suggested that proto-life started with simple molecules with catalytic abilities (such as peptides and certain RNAs). Their information was then eventually transferred into a more stable molecule (DNA). I.e. the development is quite likely a bottom-up approach vs. a well designed top-down one.

There several issues with that. First of all, it is not a matter of degree per se, but in order to develop ideas above a certain level some kind of knowledge of the subject is kind of necessary. If I wanted to build a wardrobe I would have at least to invest time to figure out how to do it, what material to use etc. Even then it would be a lousy job. It would be quite childish of me to just nails some stuff randomly together and expect to get praise (especially from carpenters who actually spent time to learn the craft). Science has progressed to a point where in most areas random ideas without in-depth study of the current knowledge, is unlikely to yield novel insights. Not impossible, but highly improbable. To develop expertise takes time and the willingness to learn. Pretending, especially in science, will not do anyone anything good. I have no issues (and actually enjoy) talking to non-scientists about science. And I do not think anyone should shut their mouth if they do not understand something (quite the opposite, actually). But if someones idea is not planted on a very solid foundation, one has to expect to learn, why it is wrong (or otherwise lacking). And then, one should learn from there.

The answer is fairly simple. We will have more PhDs driving taxis. Note that this already happening. A PhD does not mean that you have specific place in society. You are just given more options (although you will be late to the game). What the Texas GOP means however, is to reduce the likelihood of challenging unfounded believes. The purpose for higher education in my mind is not really just to get a title or becoming an academic. Instead it should challenge things that you think that are true, but which are not necessarily so. In science it is often the way we perceive reality. The majority of the time you do not learn what reality is, but rather what it is not. You learn how solve generic problems, you learn (or should learn) to challenge your own viewpoint on a constant basis. Higher education is there to tell you that there is more out there. You do not have the pursue an academic career (and in many cases you really should not) but you should know that there is so much more out there to look at and regardless of your job, social status and whatnot, it is there for you to explore. In short, higher education is supposed to be there to expand your horizon not more, not less.

Regarding Nietzsche, his sister was an anti-semite and a supporter of the national-socialists in Germany. She deliberately distorted his writings to the extent that it supported the line of the nationalist party (especially his example of an Ubermensch was contorted to a caricature in order to promote the idea of aryan supremacy. (See Nietzsche’s Sister and the Will to Power: A Biography of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche by Carol Diethe).

Well, metal reduction (often dissimilatory) is a common process with which bacteria can reduce metal toxicity, provided that the reduced metal is actually less toxic, of course. Some resident bacteria are at least theoretically able to do so. However, considering that in the gut other electron acceptors may be available. On the other hand, contaminated soil often contain these metal reducing bacteria, so the worm may just take them up, too. But then they would have to compete with the other gut bacteria, that may be outcompeting them. However, the majority of the detoxification in earthworms and other invertebrates appears to involve the binding to proteins as e.g. via metallothioneins and they are quite likely to play a larger role for the overall adaptation.

There are also variations of the RNA world, including early role of peptides (some also propose a kind of parallel RNA-peptide world). It is then assumed that the RNA got reduced relevance in terms of enzmatic functions (which was taken over by more efficient peptides and ultimately proteins) whereas RNA became more of an information storage system (whose role was then taken up by DNA). Certainly there is no firm consensus yet, but with increasing knowledge of (novel) molecular functions (including in the area of synthetic biology) certain assumption become more (or less) likely (note that I only have a passing knowledge on this specific area).

The article is written rather badly. This may be the article that eventually came from that initial data. Note that all earthworms devour heavy metals. These are just more resilient, though I think they are still looking whether they use the same mechanisms (i.e. quantitative changes) or whether they may have developed novel strategies (bit less likely).

I like the performance and I see it like a kind of nice inversion of Haydn's symphony No. 45.

In fact, over the course of evolution we lost quite a number of metabolic abilities that prokaryotes still have.

The use of heavy metals such as iron, copper, manganese has a very long evolutionary history. Prokaryotes started using them and we just maintained it. Highly complex organisms usually have not the ability for radical changes, so utilizing the metals in novel ways is pretty much out of the question.

Well for the coding regions we can (with some uncertainty) predict the gene products, of which we only know a relatively small proportion the biochemical function (e.g. enzyme activity) and much less about their physiological role within the organism. This is basically true for most genomes, not only human. Junk-DNA is still a hot topic and we have at best from a small fraction functional information. The effect of quantitative changes is quite an ongoing topic in systems biological approaches, but in most cases we barely have qualitative information, much less quantitative one. The translation from genome functions and their quantitative interaction (the latter is really the crucial point) is barely in its infancy.

Depends on a lot of factors and unfortunately I do not have experience with long-term storage of bacteriorhodopsin. The good thing about storing it the way you propose is that proteolytic activities are probably low. However, I am not sure whether it will fold correctly in solution after long-term incubation in a solvent.