CharonY

What equipment do you have access to and do you just want to quantify them, or really identifying them? In the latter case you probably need an MS or a tandem/MS.

There are far more examples than that. A gene does not control the behaviour per se, but a limited number of proteins (including genes involved in metabolisation of neurotransmitters, receptors, channels, etc.) working in concert are necessary for any behaviour. It is easy to imagine that even minor changes in one of these (e.g. a GABA receptor) can result in distinct behavioural changes.

I think especially the corruption problem will be hard to take on. Bribery and officials have been the rule rather than the exception for the last couple of thousand years. I assume that that is hard to get out of the system.

Ah yeah. Quite understandable. I wish I had a ghostwriter.

There are failures and then they are failures. If you tend to do mistakes in your experiments, then slow down, write up every single step and before you do anything look at the protocol you wrote up (use colour if you must). Except for time critical steps that is. Transformation of ligations are always hit and miss. Later on, you talk about what you finally got. Sounds simple but that is that. You cannot worry about data you do not have yet. Concentrate on getting things done first. I have to remind you that certain kinds of experiments may also fail (unfortunately clone libraries are one of them) even if everything is done correctly. So in order to be able to troubleshoot you have got to get to the point that you follow protocols 100%. And then you can start to vary them. But rest assured, in biological (esp. basic reseach) areas it is not uncommon that experiments fail. Enzymes may die, there may be smallish but fatal fluctuations in your equipment, room temperature, intrinsic fickleness of cells/tissues/rats/dinosaurs/cauliflower... Working in a biological lab is much about frustration management. But again, first get proficient in conducting the experiments. Only after that worry about results.

Not just from any soil. No. Why should it? And per definitionem the bacterium itself is organic matter.... I am hesitant to give further information as C. botulinum is a biosafety level (BSL) 2 organism, and in situations where toxin production is expected even BSL3. Moreover, i think that it may fall under certain bioweapon laws. I will assume that this was an innocent question, but no further details should be given at this point imo.

I would just like to point out again that we are discussing semantics on an somewhat ill defined word. The best I could find was something like this: disease (n.) A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms. One of the main problems here is, of course again that words are used that are only somewhat loosely defined. Like e.g. "genetic defect" (everybody knows what is meant, but it assumes a certain "normality" of genes, which does not really exist). But if we use this one, alcoholism or any addiction might fall into it (environmental stress resulting in identifiable symptoms).

First of all, do not assume that what you are learning at college will be anything like the real thing. It simply is not. Undergrad biology courses (unfortunately) tend to be a lot of memorization, though this is about true for all most other courses (I give a lecture in Chemistry atm, though I am a biologist). In the end, however, hardly anyone will care what courses you did. The only degree that is of some relevance is your PhD, where you did serious work on your own. In terms of lab work, biology tends to be more practical than other disciplines which tend to have a better theoretic framework. But the simple truth is that there are simply less biology jobs out there than for the other disciplines. One of the reasons being the overlap with a number of more specialized ones, like e.g. pharmacology or biochemistry. An academic career is always very hard and risky, in all disciplines, and, in terms of money, usually less rewarding. Even in best of times the amount of PhDs eventually getting tenure (and I am talking about more than ten years after the PhD) tends to be around 20% at most (and I am of course not talking about top research universities). Again, courses are really (unfortunately) not a good judge of what you really will be doing. Most if not all will probably agree that the real learning starts at the master or PhD thesis level. That being said, with regards to non-academic biological jobs. As mentioned, there are often other disciplines that also occupy the same niche, so you do have to specialize the "correct" way as a biologist to be able to compete with them. Typical jobs in companies can be roughly divided in sales, technical support, application specialists, R&D and product management. If you are e.g. interested into getting a job as appication specialist in a company that produces HPLC, make sure that your PhD thesis heavily utilises one (just as an example). But do not make the mistake that if a course was easy (or hard) for you to pass that this will have any impact on that kind of job. Exams and courses just give a rough basic foundation, the real deal comes if you actually use and act upon the knowledge (and learn how to acquire information on your own quickly).

If we are talking about now, then China is still lagging way behind. Mostly out of organizational and structural reasons. However they have been pouring out a lot of money to improve infrastructure and to lure back home Chinese scientists. This is reflected in the recent increase in output from Chinese research institutes. Depending on their ability to further improve research infrastructure, improve their own educational system to train junior scientists (atm they are still very dependent on sending their top scholars to other countries, in which they quite often become succesfull and stay) and are able to attract more top scientists, they may well catch up in a few decades (judging from the improvements over the last one). Though it also depends much on the economic situation, of course. And I am counting Japan to the top science countries, together with a number of countries in the EU (most notably UK and Germany), as well as USA. There differences in the top fields in each of the countries, nonetheless they are the leading nations when it comes to science.

So, could anyone provide me with the current accepted definition of disease? For instance, the presence of remedies is clearly not necessary for conditions to be characterized as diseases. Are genetic disorders diseases? Are all forms of cancer diseases? Are allergies diseases?

These are two different phenomena. Immunity gained from the uptake from low concentration or inactivated toxins results in the ability of the immune system to recognize and neutralize toxins, but not to store them. In other words, if you accumulate toxins in significant amount, you will eventually die. You are immune by effectively inactivating and removing toxins before they do harm.

Musashi also killed an opponent with a carved paddle. Unlikely that he put an edge to it.

Some of the bigger international lab suppliers are Cole Parmer, VWR and Fisher.

pseudo, please do not simply post answers to homework questions. The reason being that the students won't benefit from doing homework if they are just copy the answers from some internet site.

Moved to homework. Please ask questions instead of posting the homework. How would you calculate it?

I think it would be level 2.

Have you checked the plasmid before transforming them into DH5alpha? While there are other RecA- strains, like e.g. TOP10, I am not sure why the outcome should be different to DH5alpha (as it already carries the relevant mutations).

Weird first post...

It cuts at the C-terminus after lysine or arginine (except when proline follows). Remember, the notion is, by convention, from the N- to the C- terminus. So cutting close to the C-terminus would leave the amino acid on the "left" side of the chain.

Naaah. Hope is overrated.

Sounds right.

Your definition of SNP is partially wrong. The percentage of occurrence is irrelevant. It only means that between two given sequences at the same locus a single nucleotide is exchanged. To find these, you only need to sequence(or hybridize) a given region. e.g. a PCR amplificate. A SNP can thus refer to, say a polymorphism between you and your parents, or between any two individuals, or even between paired chromosomes. There is no "universal" reference.

I suppose much of it is (again) due to the antipathy against Bush.

It is not the reading per se that I am worried about. Actually I wonder if one should close this thread.