Around The Blogs

This week’s around the blogs has stacks of yeast plates, tear-free onions and garage bio labs. Dare you miss it?

A whole lotta platin’ goin’ on. Alex at The Daily Transcript gives us a great visual of a whole heap of plates carrying individual knockouts representing of two thirds of the yeast genome. There’s a few late nights of work in there.

23andYou? Michael at Techcrunch shows what you get back if you take 23andMe’s $1000 DNA test.

The nuts and bolts approach to biotech. At Biocurious, Andre flags up an interview with Drew Endy, an MIT bioengineer who has a very interesting perspective on how we should approach biotech in the future.

Molecular Biophysics. Bhaswar at Science Blog raises some valid points on how molecular biology could do with an injection of physics. Also, in the comments section of Bhaswar’s article, a reader enthusiastically points us to a company called Bio-balance who, amongst other things are trying to work out biophysical models for the activation of G-protein coupled receptors.

Not a wet eye in the house. Real the Prophet comments on an interesting project to create a GMO tear-free onion by shutting down the lachrymatory factor synthase gene using RNAi.

Linus Pauling. At Sandwalk, Laurence brings us a great piece of history - a transcript of the speech made in honour of Linus Pauling’s 1954 Nobel Prize.

Homework experiments. Rosie Redfield describes an experiment she is conducting into the benefits of two different types of homework while teaching her freshman biology course.

Who invented DNA sequencing? Keith at Omics! Omics! sets the record straight.

Mendel’s Garden Number 24. Bayblab hosts this edition of Mendel’s Garden, the genetics blog carnival.

…and finally…

Working from home. At Pimm, Attila draws our attention to the apparently growing craze for DIY biotech projects. Just make sure the health and safety police don’t find out!