CharonY

The envelope of HIV (which is recognized by receptors) are glycoproteins. Upon binding to their respective receptors, fusion and entry events (mainly at the plasma membrane, but potentially also with endosomes) occur. So, the recognition zone is defined by the proteins, however the bilayer is important for the fusion event.

I think reading origin of species before knowing anything else is quite nice as it is a very nice intro into the whole matter without all the knowledge we have today. It will increase the wonder on how well this fits to what we figured out until now, if you read up the other books. However, the accessibility is much lower, considering that Dawkin's books are squarely aimed at the interested general population, whereas Darwin is a bit more of a scholarly text (but still very readable despite that).

There is no easy way to tell by just looking at the description. My feeling is that it would not be very useful for bacteria. Without phase contrast the image quality must be very good to be able to get decent pictures. And those that I have worked with were definitely in a way different price category. But in the end one would really need hands-on experience on it to really tell. You may want to ask them regarding their return policies.

Fasta is a file format, blast is an algorithm, essentially a local alignment tool, but it is more useful for searching large data sets as, say, Smith-Waterman. For details read up on Altschul et al (1990 J Mol Biol 215 (3)).

It depends on the mode of host-virus interaction. However, receptor binding is not necessarily 100% specific in any case (as most receptor-ligand binding reactions). Thus a virus does not necessarily need a specific protein for each cell type to be invaded. Note that in most cases one would only classify the receptor on the host's cell surface as a receptor. Parts of the viral envelope that bind to it are often termed by their more general function. E.g. one would say that the viral glycoprotein XY binds to the cognate host receptor. Or one would mention the specificity of the envelope protein XY to the whatever-receptor (i.e. the normal function of the receptor outside the unintended virus-binding) of the host.

Junk-DNA as whole are certainly not useless. A number of these have been associated with certain regulatory functions, for instance. Also note that the amount of junk-DNA is lower than in humans, but certainly not zero. And finally, it also depends on what is lumped together in the term junk DNA in the first place.

These are different aspects. One is surviving, the other is actively growing. Water bears are probably the most resilient animal and beat a number of prokaryotes, too. Chances are, however, that spores are among the top survivors.

Actually, the optimum temperature for Aquifex and Geothermobacterium is somewhere between 80-90º.

Hypersalinity is indeed very restrictive. However, halophilic (i.e. osmotolerant) prokaryotes can survive quite well under these conditions. Haloferax is an example of a halophilic archaea and I think it may have actually been isolated from the dead sea. Sterile environments are likely to be exceedingly rare. It is probably easier to think the other way round. Take the known limits of extremophiles (with the caveat that much of them are still unexplored and experimental results may be limited) and try to match an aquatic environment to that. Off the top of my head the T limits would be -20 to 125° C (excluding spores). Tolerance against salinity starts at around 15% NaCl though I would have to look up the upper limit. Combinations of several extremes would arguably also limit the possibility of survival.

It will be of lower efficiency than sticky end.

You may want to look at the Fulbright program (I do not know the specifics other than quite a few grad students are financed by it) http://www.iie.org/en. NSF and NIH are also obvious sources. I do not know what kind of funding may exist that are more specific for psychology (the mentioned sources are all not terribly specific to a given discipline). However, if you apply from overseas you may be limited to foreign exchange programs and especially many NIH and NSF fellowships are limited to US nationals or at least permanent residents. Also, you may need a letter of support from the department. However, I am more familiar with money sources on the post-doctoral level and above, so there may be slightly different rules for graduate programs. Certain fellowships as well as departmental resources are only available after enrollment/acceptance, obviously. However, it is probably best to check out available programs, pick the right field and school and then try to get the money.

Why shouldn't it be possible?

Many do not require you to make a full master, but often there is the need to complete a master's in passing as part of the doctoral degree. The most common differentiation are clinical and non-clinical programs, with quite a bit of sub-varieties. That depends on the school. Most want a GRE, some want additional aptitude tests, letter of references, statement of purpose etc. Foreign students also need to submit their TOEFL (most of the time). I do not know whether and which schools offer scholarship. The majority of available scholarships tend to be from other agencies. Additional sources are grant money from the PI (when one joins a group) and some department also finance students via TA positions. It is probably the best to create a shortlist of universities that you are interested in and start from there.

This is highly speculative. I am going to move it into the speculations forum (unless some hard data is provided at some point).

The position relative to the primers has a relatively low influence. Other factors are more important.

I would call it a physiological, anatomical or (more generally)a biological definition rather than a biochemical one, but it is, of course correct. However, even if bacteria penetrate cells, quite often they are not really inside the cell either. They are still separated from the host's cytoplasm as they are still surrounded by the host's membrane (e.g. after endocytosis).

There are studies that suggest that music preference is largely learned. Certain types of music are associated with certain emotions, for instance. There was a nice documentary (on Nova, I think) in which the brain activity of a researcher was measured, who loved Bach. When hearing that music large parts of the brains flared up. In contrast, listening to Mozart did little to overall activities. Of course the mode of association may transcend music styles, and for each person there may be different elements of preference. As with many things, the likelihood is high that much of it is based on early exposure. That being said, studies on toddlers indicate that very early on there appears to be a general preference for loud and fast music, that may get refined later. I do not recall all the lit, but some interesting stuff is here; Lamont, Ann NY Acad 2003 Huotilainen et al. Ann NY Acad Sci 2009

This is a gross misunderstanding. Generally speaking there is no species specific DNA per se. Since we all related in some distant way there are only relatively short stretches that can be considered unique for a giving organism. If we compare on genes (i.e. coding regions) the similarity between human genes and mice is, on average 85%. However, there are some that do not map to the genome of the respective others, while others are practically identical. Even taking highly conserved enzymes such as cytochrome C that basically all eukaryotes share, the similarity between human and yeast (still an eukaryote) is only around 70%. As such it is inconceivable that the 90% similarity exist on a broad scale between humans and prokaryotes. That being said, since our ancestors were prokaryotes early in time, it is expected that our genome was of prokaryotic origin. Due to the changes over time it is non-trivial to track those relics down, however. Nonetheless, simple homology searches reveal that roughly 40% of our genes show some degree of homology with prokaryotic genes. Note that the number refers to the number of genes sharing any degree of recognizable similarity and should not be confused with the percentage in the other examples above. On the sequence level they can be very diverse.

Also, what kind of culture vessels do you use?

I think the total free energy of the hydrolysis of PEP is roughly twice that of ATP. That allows the transfer of P from PEP to ADP. However, PEP has only one phosphate to offer. Where should the second come from?

It scales with ln(2N) (i.e logarithmic). ln(2E6) = 14.5, however ln(2E5) = 12.2. That would be 244 generations.

Under the assumption that it fixes, it will take about 290 generations. This model does not take parameters such as dominance into account. Note that time to fixation does not imply that it will really fix. It is just the average time that is required in case it really fixes.

I have not read the article, but you were describing the transfer of resistance genes in bacteria that live in foodstock. That means that there may have been HGT between bacteria. It appears to me that your assumption was that there was transfer between humans and other animals which does not appear to the be topic of the article. However, if you provide a link to the article in question I can check it out .

Even if it was dominant there would be chance that it becomes fixed. In fact, deleterious alleles can also be fixed, especially in small populations (remember, we are talking about probabilities). There are different models that explore the question you have, but I do not know it precisely off the top of my head. Kimura has developed models in that area, though. You may want to check his papers/books (unfortunately I do not have a copy with me).

Nice summary. I just wanted to nitpick that HGT in bacteria is technically independent on cell division. Thus theoretically (though highly unlikely) a mobile genetic element could spread within a (diverse) population without the actual need for reproduction (essentially an extreme model of selfish genes). Also HGT is not unknown in eukaryotes (including limited transfer of bacterial genes to their hosts), but as already stated the rate is much, much lower.