CharonY

Technically just living in a different habitat does not constitute evolution, however the mitochondria have undergone significant genomic changes (basically reducing almost all of its genome, partially including eukaryotic genes). And this is of course, evolution. But of course, evolution in bacteria is even more complicated to trace than in higher eukaryotes.

It has been some time but In my memory things unfolded slightly differently. First, there has always been an opposition to GM, even quite a while before the publication. I recall a number of protests regarding the release of GFP labelled, crippled bacteria, for instance. Secondly, he was not fired because of the publication. The publication was finalized after he had to abandon his research and this is arguably also the reason of some of the methodological flaws in it. I assume the Lancet still published it to spark a discussion around it. I think he was fired because in an interview he said that his initial results indicated a possible problem with GM food (in this case it was potatoes, I think). Shortly after he was fired. Whether it was because he leaked information without clearing it with the institute (many are very restrictive in this regard) or whether it was due to the pressure of certain companies (I think that at least Monsanto might have funded research there), I do not know,

I think you mean factors instead of gene? But yes, it depends on what a kind of disease you are thinking of. There is no way that the genetic basis vanishes. But that again reminds me how tricky it is to speak of a genetic disease. Of course sometimes the phenotype are so obvious and deleterious that it is easy to think of them as a disease, but for instance genes that contribute to obesity? These might actually be beneficial under certain, nutrient limited circumstances. In the latter case obesity can of course be diminished by having a certain diet.

No, there is a link for authors and referees there. You just have to be on the journal page not the home page.

Uhm, no it is a common misconception but biosafety cabinets are mainly designed to protect YOU. The laminar and directional flow are mainly designed to prevent aerosols escape the cabinet (Biosafety one cabinet are as clean as that of level two, but they protect you less). There are clean benches with horizontal blowers that are better protecting your samples from contamination, but they do not fulfill the requirement of biosafety two benches. There are systems that integrate both, but again, biosafety 2 is meant to protect the user. Moreover biosafety 2 standards are not only restricted to a cabinet, but also requires the fulfillment of certain safety features within the lab. Again, to protect you. That is why for instance plant cell lines do not require biosafety two, even if are as sensitive to contamination. Also you dangerously underestimating the dangers of human cell lines. There are viruses that has been extracted from well established cell lines like HeLa. While actual infection in laboratories is extremely rare, an uninstructed person might easily infect himself. So even if the question was not related to safety procedures I think it is important to tell uninformed people about potential dangers.

This should be in science education... Oh yeah I can move now too... Well regarding biotech, it has a future, especially if you intend to go to industry. In the academic area they usually butt heads with biology guys. I am not sure whether there is no future in India. I have mostly had (bio)infromatics guys from there, but quite a couple intend to return to India to continue working on the biotech field.

Well, in theory bacteria do not classically age, but they die for a hosts of other reasons of course. It is in theory possible that upon a certain point a bacterium may accumulate enough mutation so that it eventually dies from it, but then they are incredibly robust and even curing certain bacteria from a large number of genes does not necessarily cause them cell failure. On the other hand they may then die from the inability to process certain nutrients, increase susceptibility to certain stresses and so on. In the end it is more likely that they die from other reasons. The same also goes for immortalized eukaryotic cells like tumours, for instance. It is hard to track individual cells during several life-cycles. though. But of course what happens on the single-cell level cannot be easily applied to a whole multicellular organism. In the latter survival is dependent on a unbelievable numbers of things not going wrong.

Well, as far as I remember the video he did, if only roughly. I did not like some of the more graphics filled slides, though. The principle of trying to be remarkable is sound, however using Robin Hood AND a Chihuahua was a bit much. It is better (but harder) to try to achieve humour within the actual scientific part of the talk. I do remember a talk from a british prof. about a ferric uptake regulator (FUR) in bacteria. Some bacteria did not have it. So he put a small image of a Fur-less dog beside them. That was fun.

Yeah, but as I said, even if you can get hold of them, they are too dangerous to use them at home.

Well, start off with the genotype of the parents. You know their phenotypes, so you just have to associate each phenotype (eyes and tail type) with the given genotype (aA or Bb).

You would need to post more information to get replies. Including available equipment maybe.

Experiments with human cell lines (or even cultivation) require a biosafety level 2 lab (mostly due to the danger of viral infection).

Well, mitochondria are a good example of bacteria that have evolved (in case someone mentioned it already and I overlooked it). Moreover, there are bacteria that have multicellular part of their life-cycle like e.g. Myxococcus xanthus. The problem with long-time bacterial evolution is that they simply do not leave us fossils to recognize changes over long time scales. In theory it should be possible to see the transition from one bacterial species, however it would require the sequencing of single cells, which, while in theory possible, is quite complicated to do.

Not to mention very toxic.

That is pretty much wrong. Many had resistances to natural occuring ABs. You have to understand that often only minute mutations (sometimes as less as a single nucleotide exchange) to confer the resistance. In other words, all kind of potentially resistant strains pop up all the time. However, this mutations often do not occur in significant numbers to be noticeable, unless you change the selective pressure so that those carrying the mutation get a selective advantage over the others. In other words, once you pour ABs over them, those with those mutations suddenly pop up. Otherwise they remain numerically insignificant. The only matter of induced evolution, if you want to call it, is the so-called error-prone repair system, which increases mutation rate. The rest of the argument is thus pretty much based on wrong assumptions.

Severian wins. Hands down. The only thing I could show are a couple of MS. And maybe the AFM (but I have seen calculators that look like more).

AFAIK the actual sensations are quite different. For instance, some may associate numbers with a certain landscape, other associate them with sound, or colours, for instance.

Well one could tell horror stories without end on every step in an academic career. Most would sound pretty similar and revolved around - lack of money -lack of time and therefore -lack of sleep (imo the worst part in the long run) -to be completely at the mercy of the advisor (can be good but if it is bad it is really bad) It mostly depends on what you want. If you just want the degree and leave academia it is somewhat easy to ride through it. However, if you really want to go through all the bad times to get a position in academia it is far more haunting as you will get frustrated even more on every mistake you make and every bit that might leave you behind the competition. And then it will get worse if you do your postdoc. But the single most important thing is simply this: find the right group. If you are lucky this might boost your career to no end. If you are unlucky it may very well end it. Make no mistake, it is almost impossible to make a career in academia just with ones own ability and resources (at least not in the practical sciences). One has to be extremely brilliant to do so (and so far I have not met a single one that may qualify for it). But in the end, for some reasons, if everything is right, it can be the best time in your life. This is the only time one can do research somewhat more carefree.

You should be sure that the agar plates you use are able to capture a significant amount of skin colonizing bacteria. Either that or use a variety of media. If you did not, you should discuss what bacteria are able to grow within the time frame and under the condition you cultivated and whether this includes a significant bias or not.

However, quite regardless of what is actually written in the paper I would probably ask something completely different: are there any reports which highlight that the massive use of triclosan or any other desinfectant has any beneficial aspects in normal households? The need of desinfectants in crititical areas as hospitals or labs are pretty obvious, but why incorporate it in anything else?

Weeeell, in a way bacteria (or other prokaryotes) are similar to cancer cells as both are in theory immortalized cells which can proliferate endlessly...

Well, in the strictest sense a strain refers to genetically uniform entities. As such in theory a single mutation would be sufficient to classify it as a different strain. Note that this is not really a taxonomic distinction but rather is used for practical distinctions.

The immune systems recognizes specific structures of the viruses (antigens, this term is not specific to viruses but to anything the immune system recognizes). If the genes for the given structures mutate, the resulting structure might be altered in a way that is not recognized by the immune system anymore.

Ahem, Craig Venter's journeys were anything but a success. At least from the viewpoint of environmental (micro-) biologists. Most thing that the produced a data dump hardly useful for anything. There are however similar approaches that were more successful (and took more care during the sampling procedure). How to do that? Fairly simple. Just go and take samples, record all relevant data of the sampling point, think about proper storage procedures, got to the lab and analyze it. This is, actually traditional research in the biological sense. The only tricky thing as always is funding. But the procedure is absolutely the same as with other research, write a grant, apply for travel money etc. If you are not as rich as Venter and want to apply for the money for an own research ship, you are outta luck, though. Few companies (as stated above) would actually finance a research expedition, unless you happen to have longer (research) bonds with them and have a very specific proposal. Just going out and taking samples doesn't give you any grants. Regardless from which sources.