CharonY

... yes they do! http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2809%2901455-9 It is interesting that they appear to have much more sophisticated approach than simple try and error in trying to solve the problem. Another snipe at those who, contrary to all evidence, might believe that only humans or very closely related species are tool users.

All ASM journals are free after 6 months, too. Quite a few others, too. Some like clinical chemistry allow access after 12 months. In addition there are the open source journals. This includes the BMC series, PubmedCentral and Plos.

Pretty far, actually. While parts have been made to work in vitro, so far no complete, synthetic living cells have been generated from scratch. In all cases the basis for any "synthetic" organism thus far, is an already existing cell. The only thing that was synthetic in one case was the synthesis of the DNA (though the sequence is based on an existing organism).

Has it been sequenced? If so, who did it? Once a genome has been published, its sequence is normally deposited into a database like the genome database at NCBI. Alternative groups like the Sanger institute or JGI sometimes keep the sequence until publication/release. Also try Pubmed or Web of science (maybe also Google scholar) to seach for it. If there are none try contacting groups working with them. Many groups simply use a generic protocol with minor tweaks (if at all) and do not bother to publish that.

I think the technique you are looking for is self-discipline and possibly focus. Essentially you have to be able to motivate yourself. How that is done differs often from work to work and person to person. You may concentrate on possible rewards (tangible or non-tangibles), or you have to keep reminding what is so fascinating about what you do.

Depends on what you mean. They are still maintaining and updating the database. But again, it just reiterates findings from literature and gives averages for the closest published distances. Basically you cannot trip anything as they simply reiterate published findings closest to your query.

Well this is (IIRC) only a database of available (published) info which was put in by a host of student workers. As such interpretation is basically entirely upon the user.

And even if it were spores, the whole proposition is still pure nonsense.

This is an extremely complicated issue and the info that I assume you are looking for is not actually available. First, bacteria do not leave fossils. So we only got extant species. But even figuring the relationship between those is somewhat a problem as most species definitions simply break down if you want to want to apply them to prokaryotes (and I am not even touching the massive problem of horizontal gene transfer here). The pragmatic view is to use conserved sequence and simply group those closer together than others and at some point draw a species line. What is clear is that bacteria most likely came first. Then at some point archaea split off. The main questions are what the topology after the split looks like. IIRC there are essentially to basic topologies the archaea tree and the eocyte tree. The question there was whether archaea are monophyletic (possess single common ancestor) or paraphyletic. TBH I have not followed the discussion on this.

Actually plastic polymers are normally not black unless dyed. Also, why should it be black due to the presence of carbon?

You actually request spam?

Essentially when you talk about how to deduce function from sequence then there are quite a lot of obstacles, not all of which can be easily solved just by doggedly working at them (and far too many to squeeze into a short post). At least not the way it is currently done. I do not have the time to write a lengthy assay on it. But just let me give an example to show how problematic the issue is. E. coliis the single best genetically characterized organism on earth. It is a very single organism and tt has been under genetic investigation for decades. Analyzes, which include knocking out every single gene in the genome and then look in the cell for altered functions, metabolic activities, etc. Obviously these techniques are not applicable to humans for both technical and ethical reasons. That being said, to date still roughly 30% of all its genes (and we are not talking about non coding functions, of which the majority of the human genome consists of) are totally unknown. Even if you knock it out the cell does not seem to bother. Yet it should fulfill some function, but what? The case is much much much more complicated for humans, for instance. Maybe it is a matter of time, but in addition novel techniques are needed. As such just pouring in more time will not eventually solve the problem (otherwise E. coli would be finalized by now. Again, one does need novel ways to correctly identify genes and assign gene functions. Correctly map out their role within a cell and then within the tissue, organ, organism. Accurately reconstruct and create quantitative models of regulatory networks. And somehow use this information to predict complex phenotypes. The latter will be in the domain of systems biology, but as of there is still an ongoing identity crisis for this field. And in addition, it does not solve the problem of proteins with unknown functions (usually vast majority in most eukaryotic genomes).

That is not what he is looking for. Essentially our knowledge as this point is generally too limited to make such kind of detailed inferences as described in the OP. That being said there are certain traits that have been successfully associated with a genomic area. But again, at this point it is still a long way to go.

Also the Coriolis force and friction.

Actually there is the entire branch of molecular evolution. Also not all bacterial chemotaxis work that way. Especially in gliding motility the "tumbles" (they are somewhat different than most flagellate dependent movements) are slightly more directed. But this is rather beside the point. I am not sure what either has to do with the question at hand though. Of course by now it is pretty much a mess anyhow.

However if you talk about how water flows through a small, say micrometer channel, than the the surface material becomes important again.

Still gold standard. Oops did not notice that the discussion went much further. Or rather it did not. But there are more now.l

It is a single-payer system, isn't it?

This only applies to employees, however. Basically health insurance is always paid roughly 50-50 by employee and employer. You can pick up additional insurance from private insurancers for things not covered by the federal plans (there are actually several) though. Interestingly the health care costs in Germany are higher than in exclusively single payer systems, but still only around 50-60% of the US.

I hope you are aware that carbon nanotubes have quite different properties from proteins as e.g. tubulin? Just because they are in the same size range does not give them equal properties. Even within carbon nanotubes the conductivity is very dependent on purity and composition, resulting in conductivities ranging from metallic to semi-conductive properties. In contrast electron transfers across proteins (e.g. via cytochromes) are short range affairs, generally in the tunneling range.

Examples of how strong magnetic field affect the nervous system (e.g. TMS) have already been given. Sprouting random gibberish is annoying, btw.

Nope again. Funny actually, given the fact that the important bit about Dolly was that she was cloned from the DNA of differentiated cells. There was earlier work with embryonic DNA, though, including very early reports with Xenopus. I believe that also a sheep was cloned embryonic DNA, but it was a bit before Dolly.

Why not tell us how far you got or rather what your idea is, so that we can pinpoint the area where you got the problem?

Nope, as above mentioned in case of Dolly the transplanted DNA was from an somatic cell of an adult sheep. Of course there are also different definitions of cloning. But I assume that this one is the one most often associated with the term "cloning".

This is fascinating, Mokele I wonder whether there are large scale genomic studies around.