CharonY

I am not familiar with that particular region, however chances are that carbonate minerals play an important role. Carbonate buffers are often found in aquatic sediments.

Re: China, as long as you keep your head down and do not mettle with politics it ain't that bad. Especially if you got a specialist function as a foreigner (e.g. being scientist) you will be granted certain privileges. So probably having more than one child would not be a problem, if you are a Prof. for instance.

What YT2095 said You'd have to be extremely unlucky to get something serious out of that, especially if you got a tetanus shot. I grew up with about a dozen dogs, many of them ex-strays with slightly aggressive tendencies in presence of food. I only feel like chasing mailmen every now and then.

For metabolome analyses we disrupt ~10-30 mg cells in 80 % methanol using bead beating. -incubation 15 min at 70° C -centrifugation -supernatant was evaporated for GC/MS: -Methoximation of carbonyl moieties: 50 μl of a 20 mg/ml solution of methoxylamine hydrochloride in pyridine, incubation 37°C for 90 min (stirring) -Protection of acidic protons: 50 μl N-methyl-N-[trimethylsilyl]trifluoroacetamide, incubation at 37°C for 30 min

I stand corrected. I only had memorized that it contained two chains and I assumed that it was the results of two gene products. However, if I recall correctly the first hetereologous expressions of insulin was done by expressing both chains seperately and then combining them chemically (hence my errror).

In principle yes. However the complete insulin consists of two gene products. The A and B chain have to make disulfide bonds in order to get to the correct quartiary structure. On a different point, I think nowadays yeast cells are used as hosts as they can easily be made to secrete active insulin...

Granted. You have to shift the sand in 6 minutes. I wish I had first authorship on a Nature paper.

Without enrichments? And to what purpose (that is, how much yield/purity do you need)? if you just want to make some PCRs on it, it might be sufficient to concentrate the water (e.g. using filters) then take the concentrate and make a general lysis (e.g. cooking, bead beating....). Otherwise you might need a cleanup with phenol. Alternatively there are some kits, but you need quite a lot of bacteria to get enough DNA (otherwise they just get lost in the columns).

Or how about prokaryotes? On the one hand they got asexual reproduction, on the other hand heavy horizontal gene transfer. Here we got, well, gene pools that flow into each other so to say...

Wait a tick. How was that determined (from a paper, possibly?)? And more importantly, how many of these were neutral and how many beneficial? I would assume that the vast majority should be neutral and only a fraction beneficial. As such lumping both data sets together would not allow a direct comparison with detrimental mutations.

We studied together at the same university, however I never had much interested in her (and vice versa). I was (am) somewhat nerdy with workoholic tendencies and As such I never really assumed that a woman would ever play a signifcant role in my life (except being born and raised by one that is). However during nightly workshifts in the lab I found out that she was a workoholic, too. And also a nerdette (she knew all episodes from STNG from her memory, I could only counter with Monty Python), although she really did not look like one. We got interested in each other after some night sessions and have been together for over six years now. We do not have kids and are unlikely to ever have some. We do share a number of papers, though. And rabbits. Edit: forgot that it is 2006 already. Seven years together now...

When I was still studying we had a course toying around with those glasses. I did not try them on, but those that did described it as Glider said. It took around 5 -25 minutes (depending on the person), if I remember correctly to readapt. If you are interested and have a library near you here are some (old) papers dealing with it (JFYI). Stratton, G. (1896). Some preliminary experiments on vision without inversion of the retinal image. Psychological Review, 3, 611-617; Stratton, G. (1897). Upright vision and the retinal image. Psychological Review, 4, 182-187. Dolezal, H. (1982). Living in a world transformed. Chicago: Academic Press; Kohler, I. (1964). the formation and transformation of the perceptual world. New York: International University Press.

I have no problems with that link. Alternatively try this one http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Einstein. I go for the destruction part, though.

Well most doors are basically insulators, but some may have functions integrated into it. Probably best to ask the respective manufacturers. There might be some problems, though. Are you planning to turn off the freezer during daytime? Unless very heavily insulated heat of course will disperse across your tubings and the freezer would have to work harder (and thus emit more heat) just to keep up. In the worst case the motor might overwork. An alternative may be peltier element based coolant systems and circulate water through them. They tend to be quite expensive, though. Or what about a small air conditioner? Many of them allow an easy extension with tubings and they are meant to run constantly (as the cheap ones often do not struggle to keep a constant temp but rather a constant output).

Uhm actually I do. The pocket of the labcoats here are rather large and it takes ages of rummaging through them if I do not clip my pen onto it Actually quite the reverse here. I think they stink too much. Bad: mobiles. They are pure evil. Especially if they can do everything you never wanted. Good: usb sticks. I have got tons of them. Wouldn't know how to move my data otherwise.

That's actually a good example of a typical non-hypothesis driven approach that are en vogue again lately. Kind of similar to many high-throughput (but low output ) "systems biology" approaches that are running wild nowadays. What irks me a little is the money that goes into these approaches. Not that I really may complain, a part of my PhD work was funded by it (although I used it differently than I was supposed to, ah well). Anyhow as can be seen, I share Mokele's sentiments regarding the NASA experiments. They are porbably also more used as a side-aspect with which they want to spread interest into other fields. The technical necessities for full-fledged meaningful microgravity experiments done in space are probably too high to actually perform them.

That pretty sums up my position, too. Especially if there is no expert board looking into the subjects, especially if one wants to create more detailed entries than available already in wikipedia. I am sorry to say this, but the majority of essays or reports written by undergrads (which supposedly are the majority here) that I get are inaccurate at best.

Well, how do X and Z know that what they see is half as large as Y? Let's assume that there is an object with the length of 1 m. If asked how long it is all three will respond 1m, right?

10 times smaller than what? As stated above, without a point of reference relative measurements are meaningless.

There are, in fact several elements. The main factor in Dolly was, if I remember correctly the telomere length. Human DNA is essentially linear meaning that during repication the ends might shorten (as the replication does not precisely start at the outermost base). To circuvent this problem the chromosomes possess highly repetitive regions, the mentioned telomeres which serve as a buffer for information loss. However over time the telomeres also shorten and thus might contribute to aging. Another mechanism is modification of DNA. The DNA is methylated age-dependently. This modification is usually involved in certain regulatory processes which also affect cell development.

Sorry, no. Technically it is a new strain, but same species (DNA : DNA hybridization is clearly above the threshhold). This may seem like nitpicking but this time no technology exist to curate the genome up to a point that allows creation of a new species. Well, technically there is a way (for bacteria) but it would simply involve taking a genome with large accessory genetic elements and cure them all. But my point is that atm we can only manipulate existing cells (to quite some extent, though), but we lack the ability of creating something completly de novo (as I assumed this thread was about), nor will this be possible by purely concentrating on DNA.

Actually it doesn't look like she is not aging. She is only arrested in her development. One should not confuse aging on the cellular level with maturation. In another report I read that they did not find any obvious chromosomal defects/differences btw.

Ugh you made me trying to remember stuff from my student days. In general ecological simplification means a reduction of function, complexity and structure of a system. - Reduction of function is the case if certain ecological processes/flows are disrupted. Examples might be carbon or nitrogen cycles. The nitrogen cycle for instance can be disrupted if for instance there is a significant loss of ammonifier/denitrifiers or for instance nitrogen fixers. Or plants using immobilised nitrogen and so forth. This is often coupled with -reduction of the complexity of the system, meaning the loss of elements (usually species) in an eco system. Every species plays a specific role in a given ecosystem and as such a loff of them reduces both, complexity and function of a system. Finally there is -reduction of the structure of a system. A higher structural complexity is characterized by higher diversity and variations of habitats in a given system.