CharonY

That is also the point I tried to make. And I was only referring to single-cell organism which have an easier time of survival than any full-fledged animal.

I will move that to the homework section. To your questions: - yes the sequence after Origin is the DNA sequence - the amino acid sequence starts after translation OK I assume you mean translation initiation site (there is also the transcription initiation site, which you won't find in this sequence). Anyway, a gene has a start and an ending, right? Now the start codon is AUG and not ATG. Think about why this is significant. Remember that we are talking about translation initiation, which does not happen on the DNA but on what...?

Why for friggen's sake do you believe that heterosexual men do not get infected by HIV? Even though women are more likely to be infected by infectious men than vice versa the risk does not go down to zero. That kind of ignorance is dangerous. Same goes to condoms. They are at the moment the only serious means of protection from STD (beside abstinence, of course).

Any metabolism we know of requires (liquid) water which would be frozen solid in space. Any heat the organism would be able to produce would dissipate too fast. Also the pressure is an issue. The only way to overcome it would be to seal itself off (essentially as spores are doing). But then they would not be able to obtain any nutrients.

The basic point is that they change their cell surface so rapidly that they do not present the same epitopes, the areas where antibodies will bind, all the time. So in theory, if there are non-changing surface properties that could be exploited to create a vaccine (that is, it makes you create antibodies against those areas) then yes, it may be feasible. In the end it is not that straightforward, of course. First, there is the technical problem of creating a suitable vaccine, and the second one is hoping that this conserved area is really conserved due to certain constraints that the virus cannot overcome. One should probably add that for HIV quite a while a go conserved areas have been reported but for various reasons no viable vaccine has been formulated yet.

There is no simple answer to the question as there is no one single way to observe cells. It always depends on what you want to see. Even optical microscopes come in different flavours depending on use (e.g. simple transmittance, fluorescence, TIR, two-photon etc.). Most electron microscopes are somewhat damaging to the cells and prone to certain artifacts, but they can give information about cellular components (as e.g. organelles). Than there are scanning probe microscopes as STM or AFM. Especially the latter is extremely good for cell surface observations under ambient conditions, but do not get info inside the cell. A virus is generally to small for optical instruments, if you want to have to have detailed information. But they can visualized (without details) with fluorescent techniques. The prices vary a lot. Examples: a decent fluorescent microscope goes for around 50-75k, a confocal a few hundred thousand to a mill, a AFM costs around 250-500 k, a STM maybe half of it. I have not bought any electron microscopes, so I do not know the prices off the top of my head.

One of the best hands-on books is Sambrook and Maniatis: Molecular Cloning. It does not only deal with bacteria, though.

Or if we want to talk about genetic information, there are mobile genetic elements like transposons and plasmids. For most intents and purposes viruses also are more considered mobile genetic elements rather than organisms. But essentially this applies:

I used to make minor contributions but stopped when I realized that the time needed to improve articles to a decent standard (as compared to the off-hand posts on this forum), should rather be spent on writing paper/grants/lectures/labwork/ etc.

Wasn't there someone in a Manga with that name....

Yes, for instance doing research that interest you. Ow heck, but you can't do that if you don't score one of the few tenured position once you hit the mid-forties. Shoot. But generally it is like already stated. The ratio F/M is highest in biology and drops in chemistry and further in physics (when we talk about the big branches of natural sciences). In each subdiscipline there are also differences, of course. Bioinformatics tended to be male dominated, for instance.

Sorry to drag this old thread out, but I would like to share another anecdote here. Recently a colleague of mine (postdoc) found a lump in her breast. Initial mammography show that it could be something serious, so she wants to see an expert. The waiting time is over two weeks. But this is not the bad news. The bad news is that her funding changed and with she has to change the health provider. Now the bad news. Now that she is marked as having a precondition (although no final diagnosis has been provided as she is still waiting for an appointment) no one wants to taker her in. At least no one that she could afford on a postdoc salary. Bottom line is that she is going to abandon her project (which was actually very promising) and leave the US just in order to get a fast diagnosis that she actually can afford. Of course her situation might be a bit special, but I have to say that if I have to choose between a system in which you get screened out due to precondition and that is so bloody expensive that you have to chose between health insurance and paying your rent and a system where my taxes are higher, yet I can afford insurance AND rent... well my choice is pretty much clear. Sorry for the rant but I am kind of pissed of at that.

Just to validate the setup: you got four wells. Two with ladders, one with cut and one with uncut DNA, correct? Your goal was to differentiate between three different plasmids by using restriction enzymes, correct? So in one of the wells there are three bands, two corresponding to the standard and one corresponding to the uncut DNA? In other words you do not have restriction (the fact that marker got into the well is not of interest here) and essentially two well showing the same uncut plasmid? Now as you assumed correctly supercoiled DNA runs faster than linear DNA so you cannot easily deduce the original size of the plasmid. Well in theory you could, but you would have to run the uncut plasmids in a gel (with a given percentage, probably around 0.8-1%) and then compare it with the marker. But if you do not have all the plasmids on the gel, i.e. only the unknown, you are lacking a point of reference here. pUC 19 is around 2.6 kb, pDrive 3.8 and (I assume) pGEM-T easy is around 3kb. So even then it will be tricky to differentiate between pUC19 and pGEM, unless you run them together. So in other words, unless the gel looks terrific and you know precisely the run length of the supercoiled plasmids (which I assume you do not, considering the question in the first place) I believe you need at least a gel with all the plasmids or even better, retry the restriction. If, on the other hand the uncut plasmid is different from that one you want to identify, it may be possible to assign a tentative identity (ideally the reference plasmid would have been pGEM).

Corynebacterium genitalium is now considered to be C. jeikeium. It is the species, btw. and not the class.

Blood types are defined by the presence of specific antigens. Tests are generally immunoassays either to detect the antigens directly or to detect the antibodies that the body has developed against said antibodies. The blood cells do not react with each other.

I guess plexiglass could help a bit against aerosols. There are glovebags that you can buy and you can probably sterilize them beforehand. I have read about it, I am not sure whether they actually managed to do that. I only that the basic premise, for which they wanted to do it was faulty. I think yoghurt bacteria are usually either Streptococcus or Lactobacillus species. Problem is that for both there are also pathogenic strains. If you use somewhat selective media and cultivate them isolated and do not keep them around too long before killing them off it may be somewhat safe.

I think that some jobs have certain expected salary that are at least somewhat disconnected from the simple supply/demand equations. I am pretty sure for instance that payment in academia does not change noticeably in accordance with the supply. Supply has increased over years- worldwide, with hardly an increase in tenured positions. Yet the salary is largely unchanged. In fact it has risen a little bit, mostly due to lobbying inside or connected to the NIH. Also it is obvious that not only the most capable ever get tenure. It is clear that there is an almost random weeding out from postdoc to nontenured, and again from nontenured to tenured PI. Yet it is expected that at every step there is a significant salary increase. Yet dropping the salary would not reduce the salary by too much as once you are in the system many are desperate for tenure, even they would reduce the final salary.

You are aware that neo-Darwinism is a term coined by Romanes and did not contain essential elements as genes for instance. Some erroneously refer modern evolutionary theories as neo-darwinism, but that is incorrect. We are partially there, already. Some of the basic tenets of the modern synthesis (including species concept and organization of genomes) have been pretty much refuted by genome-based analyzes. It is true however, that to date there are only rather few tentative attempts to integrate it into a newer, sometimes strikingly referred to as postmodern, theory. Otherwise I agree completely agree with Mokele.

Moved to homework.

Who ever stated that NS is the engine of evolution? Normally it is regarded as a shaping force, if anything. Also neo-Darwinism is the old theory of evolution, which refuted Lamarckian inheritance. It did not, e.g. integrate genetics into the theory, as the modern synthesis does. As such it does not make much sense to discuss Darwinism or neo-Darwinism in this context. Note: not everything with "neo" in it is new in absolute terms.

Actually it is unlikely that they turn pathogenic. It is possible that you inadvertently culture bacteria that are pathogenic (in other words bacteria that are on you or your room to begin with). With the right medium you can lower the chances for that, though (that is, keep away from blood agar and suchalikes). Minimal salt media are usually quite good. But maintaining a pure culture is, as Paralith pointed out, quite tricky. And you really do not want a culture with undefined bacteria. Remember, those floating around your room have a relatively low titer. But by cultivating them you will amplify their numbers enormously, including potentially harmful ones...

I guess it would be beneficial to first take out the "habitable" element out, as the discussion is about two things, really. So basically one point would be just to define what influences eccentricity will have (as it basically has been done) and maybe add more relevant variables. If we really want to discuss habitable in this context we have to restrict it to what we know about organisms (as Mokele pointed out). Otherwise the denominator "habitable" has to be stretched to a point where it ceases to have a meaning (essentially being a tautology, inhabitable for those with the modifications required to inhabit it).

Epidemiology is also a field in clinical microbiology. But you are aware that the original question was posted a few years ago?

I am not sure where the discussion is moving to. But: Actually polypeptides consist of peptides. I am pretty sure that there is no disagreement that long peptide chains are qualified to be called polymers. Therefore This is not in question. The only ambiguous element is at which size one usually calls them a polymer. Precisely my point.

I am not sure where the problem is. Using sand is necessary to create enough friction force to effectively open the cells. And the detergent help (membranes essentially consist of a lipid double layer).