CharonY

Well, I am doing another postdoc in the US, but I was postdoc in Germany (not UK) before. In any case, 55-70 h a week is actually normal for postdocs, at least in the biology section. However, this is the case anywhere in the US, as well as in Europe (from what I gathered from French, British and Russian colleagues). On the other hand, hours were not really regulated, it was just expected that you spent that time there (and chances are, if you don't you won't keep up with the work). You have to keep in mind that your schedule can be much tighter as a postdoc than as a grad student. I do not know how many holidays there are in the UK but in the US there are only a dozen or so. And you get around 10-15 days per year additionally. Regarding pay, it really depends where you end up but according NIH guidelines it was between 33-35 k for a first year postdoc. It can be higher or lower, however. On the plus side taxes are lower and if you do not stay longer than two years and your country has a tax exemption treaty you may be tax exempted. And the cost of living is lower, of course. Regarding work ethics: I do not want to be appear biased or anything, but I can say that after 9 pm the common lab language tends to become Chinese (and sometimes Indian)...

lol! I think we really should get over English as science language and go back to Latin!

Not all publishers do have such a program but most offer at the very least a discount.

Well, there are different approaches to use textbooks in teaching, and I think the money side is often neglected. Most just grab a book that is somehow readable and then construct a lecture around it. Even better if it provides material and graphics for lecturers to use. But then those textbooks are still cheaper than advanced books. 200$ for 400 pages is nice, if you have to pay over two dollars per page for books with specialized topics.

Well, yeah (though any other thermo stable polymerase would also do). And while we are at it, buffer, Mg2+ or Ca2+ (depending on polymerase), primer, template, small cups, ultrapure water... hmm did I forget anything (well, disregarding stuff like betaine etc.). But I mentioned that because there appeared to be some confusion regarding the volumes.

For most intents and purposes diluting the nucleotides in ultrapure water (sterile and DNA/DNAse free, of course) is preferable, unless you are only going to use one specific condition for your PCR (the absence of additional buffer makes certain applications easier, but often it is of no concern). Besides aliquoting them, it also helps to thaw them on ice. Ow, and you are aware that you need pipettors to handle microlitre volumes?

Well, I do not really do field work, so I cannot really comment on this. However, with respect to payment you should be aware that in an academic career payment is pretty lousy up until you become at the very least an assistant professor (even then payment is generally not great, but at least you can support a family easily). The basic requirement for an academic career is a PhD, after which you are expected to do roughly four or more years of postdoc. During that time you can expect (in the US) something between 30 and 40k (the latter usually only for experienced postdocs). Also, pure research positions are extremely rare, once you are out of the postdoc (but very likely already before) you will have to do a fair share of teaching, so you won't be scuba diving all day .

Actually reading the article and citing the reference cited in there is not sufficient. I would require them to go ahead and read the cited article. A summary of an article does not equal the article.

Given the amount of articles I am somewhat inclined to say yes. However, in less than mainstream topics it is often touch and go. I was mostly forced to check biology related articles (mostly to check whether students copy pasted something) and I found a number of inaccuracies in the more basic articles, and really outright wrong assumptions in the more specialized ones. I think wikipedia is better for topics that can be easily fact-checked, like in mathematics, physics or chemistry (probably even in that order). Never ever. Not even in a student's report, much less in anything as in a bachelor's thesis or upwards.

Weird that his sexual orientation is actually a point of discussion...

:D:D:D:D:D I always wanted to write goo or jelly-like into one of my papers but somehow I was always too cowardly. I think only the British get away with such kind of writing. But to make a point, the de facto science language is simply English. It is not my mother tongue either, but for all intent and purposes every author has to assume that the readers are fully fluent in English. I do have still colleagues, though that get panic attacks if they have to present a talk in international conferences due to the English speaking part...

Sorry, to me that sounds a bit like random words stringed together. I have to structure it a bit in order to understand it. Well, archaea and bacteria which are still here probably could not be counted as primordial, but yes, archaea and bacteria clearly arose before the first eukaryote. I cannot even begin to understand this. Are you asking how autotrophism evolved? I just read the next sentence and I think I will give up for now... head... hurting... too much. I think you should read up on the definition of some (most of the words you used). Thank you.

Also if you do not read the whole article it just means that you just need punctual information out of it and moreover the article is not precisely written for your field. But as mentioned already, the articles tend to be written for a specific audience, which usually can scan through papers in their field very quickly. I read for instance both physical as well as biological papers (and unfortunately, some engineering as well, ugh). While I can easily scan through more than 100 biologicals per week (of course not reading word for word) I am stuck at a far lower rate for physical papers. Yet I do not expect them to dumb down their notations so that I can easily read them without trying very hard to remember calculus from past times the same way I would not want the biological papers to be able to explain things to a physicist. That is what textbooks are for.

Yup. Sounds like a significant amount of it has oxidized. The pH should be low enough that for the most part it should be ferric chloride (at higher pH some other iron (hydr-)oxides may form.

Sounds about right. Normal textbook answer is that primases (which synthesize the RNA primer) do not require a primer themselves.

Hmm gah. I am not sure whether anyone produces them anymore. (Commercially that is).

Actually, to me this does not make much sense. What is meant a partner protein? Are you talking about two proteins interacting with each other? The quartiary structure of a protein? What sticks out? A hydrophilic part of a membrane anchored protein, for instance? The whole protein with an anchor on the outside or inside? Tissue fluid? Sure that you are talking about a tissue? Or the extracellular matrix? Or doesn't it matter at all because you just mean that it is outside the cell? And again are you talking about two proteins that cross the membrane (or are actually anchored to the surface of the cell) or only one of them? In any case this phrase does not equal the above one. It contains more information though, namely that only a part of the protein (moiety) protrudes outside the cell, implying at least a part of it being located in the cell membrane (in contrast from being completely located outside the cell). By adding the information about what type of protein we are talking about (e.g. ABC transporter, S-layer, what ever) it would be pretty clear. It is all about being concise and to avoid ambiguity. But then think Glider has basically said everything that is to say about it and I am just being redundant.

Also take a look at BMC articles. http://www.biomedcentral.com/

What do you mean by "relying on geologic activity"?

I would also recommend the Campbell.

What is meant is her ability to produce viable offspring that, in turn are able to produce offspring. If they chose a mate whose phenotype will in turn increase the chance of offspring survival and reproduction then the chances that her alleles will propagate increases. Mind you, this does not necessarily mean that the male has to be healthy or strong per se. Only that his traits, if inherited to the offspring will increase their ability to propagate. A male peacock with less elaborate feather will probably be more likely to survive, but due to sexual selection (females prefer those with more elaborate feathers) it will reduces its chance to propagate. In other words survival and fitness do not necessary mean the same thing and in fact they may be contrary to each other sometimes.

Lucaspa, I have not yet found the time to read your whole post. Just the top: Most spontaneous resistant strains arise from single point mutations within their ribosomal genes. They get classified as a new strain, accordingly. Cultivars is a commonly used denominator. I am kinda surprised that you have not heard from it. It is also to my knowledge exclusively used for plant classification. A simple search should yield around 3k hits. But if you read the M&M section of papers including agricultural relevant plants you will very often find something like e.g. Medicago sativa cultivar something, which does not get displayed in the search. Sometimes it is omitted, though technically it is incorrect. I am gonna read your post sometime when I get back from the lab. ___________________________________________ I have posted a lengthy reply in this second part here, but the browser crashed. So here a quick version. First, early microbiologist made taxonomy based on phenotype (as you correctly point out) which, however does not merely include morphology. In any case, modern bacterial taxonomy is now almost exclusively based on genome-genome hybridization and 16srRNA analyses. In other words, purely genetics. This makes your point: rather moot. If the new bacterium in apple juice has the same 16srRNA then it is still E. coli, even if it gained a few genes. One should add that an astonishingly high number (at least from what I heard, again, I am not really a traditional microbiologist) of older classifications were verified by the new methods. And again, to distinguish modified cells you give them different strain names, once you establish the differences. There might be a difference in how strains are presented in seminars and how they are designated in real life (though they should not), however this only underlines my point, namely that such distinction are made for practical reason, not for taxonomical ones. Mind you, pure cell lines might at some point undergo mutations that you are not aware of, but until they surface somehow you treat them as if they were the original strain. If you conduct genetic studies one has to be able to pinpoint precisely with what kind of cells you did your work with. As in microbial genetics you almost exclusively work with clonal cells, each deviation warrants a different strain name. During my graduate time I created roughly 40-50 site specific mutants in two different bacterial species (and created a new transfected plant cell line, though the grad student supposed to get a clonal line out of it apparently let it die....). Each mutant received a different strain name in the form of e.g. Genus spec Tu-121. As eukaryotic cell lines are often not pure the designation of a cell line is not equivalent (but in some cases can be) as strains for bacteria. Then again, int theory different cell lines can be derived from the same individual, resulting in two different cell lines with essentially the same genetic makeup (in terms of sequence, at least). Mice or rat strains (inbred or hybrids) on the other hand do have yet other rules of naming (including a designation of lab and in case of hybrids from which strains they were derived from) and so on. In other words for each distinct organism the rules for naming something below the species level are different and usually set up by rather different nomenclature committees. In the end they are only there to be able to pinpoint unequivocally with what you are working with. In cases where it is easily possible (e.g. in bacteria) the designation can be ultraprecise (genetically) in other (e.g. mice strains) the variations can be rather large.

Thanks. For some reason this paper did not pop up in an author search. Gonna read it after a few hours of sleep (been awake since over 20 hours).

Could you specify which publication, precisely you are referring to? In any case it would not have an impact on Darwinism as in Darwinism neither DNA/RNA nor proteins were involved ;=)

Yes, clonal is the wrong term for animals, I slipped into cell bio lingo. I did mean inbred lines. In micro as well as cell biology strains cannot easily be compared to species in animals as something as small as a single point mutation could be classified as a new strain (usually in conjunction with phenotypic change, as e.g. resistance). Regarding cultivars it is a term mostly in agricultural contexts there are too many to name, but here is just the first one from a simple pubmed search: J Integr Plant Biol. 2008 Jan;50(1):102-10. Simple sequence repeat analysis of genetic diversity in primary core collection of peach (Prunus persica). Li TH, Li YX, Li ZC, Zhang HL, Qi YW, Wang T. I would argue against that Just to elaborate, historically classification into strains was often done by categorizing according to certain properties, or often simply according to different isolates. In that regard strains are a subcollection within a species. Regardless whether an organism propagates sexually or asexually, the basic unit of species cannot be changed by this matter (unless we define them anew in the light of a revised evolutionary framework, which has not been done yet). However, in microbiology since quite a while strains are established as pure if all the members are clonal (genetically identical). So if you take a bacterial or fungal cell (or an immortalized higher eukaryotic cell for that matter) and mutate it, you create a new strain (or cell line). In higher eukaryotes, however, strains are not always clonal (established cell lines often are, though). But as one can see, my point simply is that classifications on this level are mostly driven by pragmatism. Cells or organisms are given denominators just to distinguish them from other based on certain (arbitrary) properties, isolation methods, and/or genetic alterations.