CharonY

Not my field, the little I have seen were PhD projects in the area of in silico ligand-recptor docking (also with pharma application in mind). The impression I got from what I have seen implies that the predictions work decent for well-resolved and understood structures (i.e. where plenty of information is available). However, structural information appears to be at least one of the limiting factors. It is more used for drug modification rather than de novo drug discovery for this and other reasons. Toxicity effects are even more complicated as it is not clear where other reaction may occur and then the complexity increases exponentially. Then problems as lack of data, lack of structural information, complexity of interaction and overall lack of integrative models become dominant. So in short, from the little I have seen it works in small, but little progress has been made in order to understand more complex interactions (which, incidentally, is closer to my area of expertise).

While I am aware that this is just meant as a simplification, however I would be careful about using the the terms positive or negative information. It is simpler and more accurate to think about the signal in terms of action potential frequency (i.e. light reduces the frequency that the subsequent neurons fire).

Also genetic engineering is a rather broad, or narrow area, depending on how you define it. In many cases it refers to a given set of molecular techniques that are used in a given context. Usually the discipline is defined via this context.

No, they have different physiological effects and cannot be used interchangeably. However, chemically they can be inter converted to each other rather easily.

At the very least it is an indication of rapidly changing attitudes. The funny bit is that while they are struggling to get policies set up and enforced for better environmental and health issues, in the US there are strong lobbies to undo the advances that were already made...

Maybe you should start with reading the basics on it (take textbook, wiki probably also has something) and come back with specific questions?

Note that important findings are more likely being published in an actual science journal rather than on a random forum, especially considering the amount of work that one has to put into writing a scientific paper.

So how does the Sanger sequencing initiate?

From which chromsome? A nucleotide within a helix occupies roughly 3.4 Å or 0.34 nm (am not 100% sure but should be easy to check). If we made a single molecule out of all chromosomes, the haploid genome (about 3 gigabases) would have roughly the length of 1m. This is assuming that it still maintains a helical structure.

I am only aware of the genome sequence of Oryza sativa L. ssp. indica and japonica right now (the major groups). From what I remember Basmati is closely related to the japonica subspecies, but may have been domesticated independently.

Read up on Sanger sequencing.

Indeed. Driving habits do not change much. What I have noticed is that only after the price hikes around 2007-08 (I think) fuel efficiency became a real topic and shortly afterwards advertisements started that highlight fuel efficiency. Although, of course I may be prey to confirmation bias and just ignored it when they did it before. However, I remember that it was not that easy to find a used compact car at that time (for non-outrageous sums) but 1-2 years later they had a lot of them. I still remember seeing a single Yaris on display at that time, costing quite a bit more than I paid for in Germany. And the same story in Germany, only after taxes increased for gas, suddenly even more efficient car series were put on the market, as the demand was rising. Companies basically react to consumers (or how they think the consumer is going to react), whereas consumers will likely to be swayed by a combination of actual conditions, PR and maybe education. Carbon emission is, for instance a new thing for which awareness is rising. A decade or so back few would be bothered by carbon footprints, for example.

This is an important point. Improvements for the sake of improvement are note marketable. They must also provide incentives for the buyers to want them. If consumers are more interested in price rather than durability for certain products, innovations will flow into that area. Also, many innovations are also made that are not visible in the end product, e.g. more efficient production. Innovations do not happen in a vacuum, ultimately, someone has to pay for them to be made (and more often than not it is a money sink).

In fact, not only the sequence is of relevance. The DNA molecule as a whole possesses a very dynamic structure (which is kind of expected due to the fact that it is a lot of activity is going on there), and that this also has very important impacts on e.g. cell regulation. So there are huge chunks of knowledge still missing all around.

Not in nature. Agrobacterium essentially forces the plant to produce nutrients that it can use. This has been exploited for biotechnological use. But as I said, the bacterium uses this trick to feed on the plant.

There is basically no advantage for the plant. It is mostly a parasitic interaction.

Under non-denaturing conditions (i.e. not SDS) the capsid will not be of the same size as a the unprocessed polyprotein (electrophoretic mobility is quite different). Under denaturing conditions you will see the subunits.

Think about the following: What compounds participate in the reaction? Could there be a limiting element? Also look up enzyme kinetics.

The fusion is done on the DNA level. I.e. you basically attach the gfp gene in-frame to your protein of interest, for example (details vary depending on what you want to get at the end).

The individual effects vary wildly, I do not get any withdrawal symptoms, for example, although I am a heavy drinker. But then I do not seem get the benefit of it, either. If I cannot find a coffee with a good taste, I do not bother drinking and have as of yet not noticed any signs of withdrawals when I did so. The effects are usually only very short in duration, as caffeine gets cleared rather quickly and (so far) has not shown to result in lasting effects (e.g. irreversible changes in receptor counts) afaik. Also to nitpick, there are tissues that are not heavily vascularized and as such do not really bleed when damaged. Also it depends largely on how much and where you cut whether you severe vessels. And finally, depending on the definition, blood itself is a tissue. But again, these are matters of definition.

The problem with these high-dimensional approaches is that false positive discoveries go up with the number of hypotheses (here: loci) being tested. I have the feeling that without more biological information most of these non-hypothesis driven approaches are shots in the dark. Throughput alone will not give the answer.

Actually, pain reception or bleeding are not terribly good indicators to distinguish living and dead tissue. But aside from that there are studies showing beneficial effects of moderate coffee intake. I do not remember whether they were specifically tied to caffeine but also (more likely) related to other components found in coffee. As everything else, a too high intake of caffeine is harmful. However, it is cleared from the body relatively quickly, so that long-term addiction are unlikely (though psychological effects are quite possible).

Just to nitpick, anatomy generally refers to higher organisation of multicellular organisms. The more often used term in this context would be cellular organization. To your questions Not all bacterial genomes are organized that way. That being said, the vast majority of known bacteria have a single chromosome, that can be coiled differently depending on activity (chromsomes can show quite a degree of organizational structures). But in most cases they are circular. Some bacteria (such as e.g. rhizobia) have several chromsomes. Some really are classified as megaplasmids, though. The distinction between really big plasmids and chromosomes can be a bit blurry and is often made according to whether they are essential. In addition, some bacteria (e.g. Agrobacterium) also have also linear chromsomes (usually in addition to circular ones, but there are exceptions like Borrelia). Many bacterial species are almost always found with plasmids. In the end, it can be species, or even strain-specific. AFAIK all rhizobia possess plasmids on which their ability to induce root nodules are coded, for instance. The copy number of a given plasmid in single cell can vary a lot. Megaplasmids are often present in one copy, whereas high copy plasmids can go over 1000 copies (though it is very rare in naturally occuring plasmids). Plasmids, are normally double-stranded. They form singl-stranded intermediates during replication, for instance. As source I would recommend any good microbial genetics or microbial cell biology text book. They usually have very good illustriations that you may be interested in.

So am i correct in the assumption that what you really discuss are your personal experiences and opinions? Regardless how often they may be repeated or with which detail they are regurgitated, they will not be elevated to scientifically relevant data.

Precisely. Same goes for all other organisms that change their local environments to accommodate their lifestyle.