CharonY

There are papers out there in which cell signaling are affected by stiffness, geometry etc. of the surrounding tissues. These are of course prerequisites for cell differentiation. I do not think that they used stem cells (and hence also looked at differentiation). I have not read the article but if the second paragraph is pulled from it, it is IMO overselling the points by quite a bit.

Sorry, you do not make much sense right now. I assume you mean the gfp gene, but in order to put it into a cell you need to clone it into a vector first. Since it is not clear whether it is already on a vector or not I cannot comment more on that. So essentially you would get or create a vector with gfp include the correct promoters and transform it into a given cell (heat transformation does only work with a limited number of cell types). The vector should be stored frozen. If you want to isolate the GFP protein, it is somewhat different, after isolation again, it has to be frozen. If anything proteins tend to die faster than DNA.

A realistic one?

GFP is the protein itself. Are you refering to transformation and what do you mean by "it"?

Wait a tick here. According to Wikipedia the proportion of immigrants in the UK is roughly 9%. In comparison France has 10.18%, Spain 11.45%, Germany 12.31%. Obviously in absolute numbers the UK is ranked behind Germany and France. Is it possible that the perception is worse than reality? Edit: I just browsed some EU statistics and also only including asylum seekers UK is not at the top spot (at least for 2009). The origins are slightly different between the countries, though. However, Germany and UK have large similarities with many applicants coming from Afghanistan (1130 Germany, 880 UK) or Iran (630 Germany, 650 UK). In addition Germany got 1945 from Iraq (either none or too few to have an own category in the UK), whereas UK got 760 from Zimbabwe. Altogether at least these figures do not support a movement to and accumulation in the UK. Edit2: Realizing that in quite a number of theses cases some extreme hardships and tragedies may be represented, listing them like some kind of sports results feels kind of odd.

GFP? As in Green fluorescent Protein? Or do you mean DNA coding for GFP? In any case, standard procedure is to aliquot it. Generally -80° is advisable or at least -20. There is probably not much empirical data out there for something like -8°.

Precisely. This is a bit easier to see in fermentation reactions in which energy generation and NAD+ regeneration is sometimes decoupled. An example is in the pathway from acetyl-CoA to ethanol, in which only NAD+ is regenerated, but no ATP is produced.

You have to look broader. More specifically check oxidative phosphorylation. While I do not want to tell you everything in detail, think about the following: what role does oxidative phosphorylation has and what happens to NADPH in that pathway. Then think about what would happen to NADPH if oxidative phosphorylation was inhibited due to lack of ADP. Only after that make the link to the TCA cycle.

Is it bad that I found Mazur's articles even funnier? The idea of a science mafia is kind of cool. "You have not provided confidence intervals" *sound of breaking bones*

The data is conflicting (and I am not knowledgeable enough to disentangle that), although the common themes appears to be that it does only partially scale (if at all), it depends on the kind of crimes and sociologists like to tear each others studies apart.

25 is surely not too old. However, consider what you want to do with a PhD. Independence is not necessarily one of the things you will get. In industry you obviously have a project to manage (or something in that line), whereas in academia you will not reach independence up until you get tenured, which usually happens when you are in your forties (and which only around 20% of all PhDs will manage to get). And even then you have to be in a competitive field that may pull in grants. Finally, interdisciplinary sounds good, but be aware that it may actually make it harder for you to get a position way later on (I am talking from experience here). The reason is that most departments are still organized along the common disciplines. An interdisciplinary research often has a worse fit than someone in the traditional area. It is easy to make a postdoc, maybe even assistant prof. But tenure can easily become a massive hurdle. Also note that some interdisciplinary areas are more established than others. The less established ones are usually even more of a problem. In other words, be wary of the hype. Finally, grades are usually only of interest (in a bad way) if they are abysmal. Lack of research can be countered if you start in the lab as an intern (it depends a bit how desperate a lab is in need for bodies and how fast you can learn your way around the lab).

I assume that many will already have read that the often cited paper linking autism to vaccines has retracted. Little to debate there. However an interesting point was made by the editor of the Lancet (the journal in which it was published) made an interesting point: What do you think? http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/did-the-media-inflame-the-vaccine-autism-link/?hp

Uh, I kind of disagree with that. It depends on what you want to know. In some cases it is particular interesting to look at non-selective areas.

There are various options, depending on how you inserted the insert to begin with (and what kind of vector it is). Do the promoters have convenient MCS or are they part of the insert?

Or pre-emptive death penalty. If you kill everyone, no crime will happen ever again.

I believe that there is no discussion here.

That is a bit arcane. If the editor does not deem it publishable or out of scope it can be fairly quick (a week or so). Unless the editor is sick/traveling/drunk/shark hunting. If it goes to peer review it depends a lot on the reviewers as well as the journal. A month would be really fast and it can take up to half a year to get a note. If referees do not agree it can be sent out again, taking more time.

Indeed. The therapeutic index is normally given as LD50:ED50. To nitpick: it does not necessarily that it would be 641 times the chance of getting killed (or getting killed half the time) as the the Dose:response relationship does not have to be linear (it rarely is, actually).

So you wan to know which other hormonal signals are glucose regulated? Generally of course everything connected carbohydrate metabolism and homeostasis. Of course, you should be aware that not in all cases glucose itself, but a derived carbohydrate can be the proximate signal leading to hormonal responses. That being said it can become pretty complicated. For instance, sugar levels in blood can cause regulatory cascades that in turn lead to further regulations and so on. Depending on which level of the regulation you look at the system glucose may not be directly, but indirectly involved. Add to it the fact that many regulatory system integrate several signals (i.e. not solely the glucose level) you can imagine that things can get extremely complex. For instance, insulin production is known to be sugar correlated, however, insulin (together with leptin) is also a signal for arcuate nucleus and are proposed to work as adiposity signals. This, in turn, activates/inhibits the release of rurther hormones. While these are not necessarily directly regulated by glucose on the molecular level, glucose is still the initiator of this cascade.

Isn't it simply more likely that if you bother to talk to your plant that you take better care of it? That reminds me, I should water my plants at some point. And may provide sunlight from somewhere, too. Eventually.

Every novel since i got hooked on Neuromancer when I was a teen and the net was still ascii. I think the only novel I didn't loved was the difference engine. But I cannot recall why.

There is an initiative for physicist to combat cancer, headed by a cosmologist. I am pretty sure frogs fit in. Just do not mention that you are a biologist.

I think the answers that you want to see are more down the road than what the paper provides. They essentially describe a regulatory circuit that are elements in controlling circadian rhythm, and provide evidence that they are indeed elements of the circadian clock. What effects mutations would have are guesswork at best at this point (without physiological data). They are just part of a larger regulatory machinery and it is hard to predict, even if all the targets are known.

Apparently they found out what the news channels knew for a while already. Narratives are more interesting to people than facts.

From a biological viewpoint O2 levels are not terribly hard to measure. Bacteria use oxidation states all the time. To my knowledge an equivalent has not been detected in humans yet (well last time I looked was around 5 years ago), but there is oxygen-dependent regulation going on. On the cellular level, that is. As a side-note, the CO2 comes from the oxidation of C-sources which of course is not limited to carbohydrates.