It seems that everyone is throwing their hands up about gas/petrol prices these days. In the US, gas prices have now reached $4/gallon, while in the UK, they are hovering around a whopping $10/gallon.

But what’s all the fuss about? A lot of effort goes into producing gas - you have to find, extract, refine, transport, and of course, tax it (especially in the UK) none of which is cheap. So maybe gas consumers are getting value for money.

Well, compared to lab workers they certainly seem to be. For some of the liquids available for molecular/cell biology, some of which are much easier to produce than petrol, $4 or even $10/gallon is peanuts. Here are some examples to help keep things in perspective next time you are at the pump. Read more »

If you’ve been interested in the Folding at Home project, but wanted to play a much more active role then your wait is over. Join Fold It!

Protein structure prediction: As described above, knowing the structure of a protein is key to understanding how it works and to targeting it with drugs. A small proteins can consist of 100 amino acids, while some human proteins can be huge (1000 amino acids). The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans’ puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.

I came across this interesting project from the HHMI Research News article.The game is a project developed by the Baker Lab.You can find more details about the game here. Have fun folding!

You know what it’s like. You’re committed to your career, you work long hours so you don’t get to socialise as much as you needed to meet that special someone.

And those people you do meet wouldn’t know their a-factor from their elbow.

So what options are there for the lonely scientist who wants to find someone with whom they can share their copy of Molecular Biology of The Cell? Read more »

Well, I don’t have time to write a proper article today, so for your reading pleasure I’d like to point you to a great article posted yesterday on the New Scientist website by Michael Le Page. It covers some misconceptions commonly held by the general public about evolution, and dispells some of the myths that creationists like to use as arguments against it.

For bio scientists this makes an entertaining light read, and is perfect for brushing up your arguments for those after-dinner (or in the pub) debates with your creationist friends. Click here for the article.

After yesterday’s bit of whimsical late-night creativity, I thought that today might be a good time to share the results of the 2008 Wellcome Image Awards. These images have been captured using both traditional and cutting-edge imaging techniques, from the simple light microscope to the latest in computer-aided imaging. Their artistry is astounding, and brings to mind what a biophysicist colleague of mine told me last year - that whereas physics had little more than pretty equations and graphs to offer, biology was replete with fascinating images that capture the mind.

Credit Lorna McInroy, Wellcome Images: Cultured colon cancer cells showing the nuclei stained with DAPI in blue, the actin cytoskeleton in red and plectin (isoform 1k) in green. Plectin interacts with cytoskeletal actin, affecting its behaviour. This subtype of plectin promotes the migration of cells and may affect metastasis. Read more »

And now for something completely different…

It’s always good to introduce a little levity to the lab, before we as researchers begin to take ourselves too seriously. With that in mind, below the fold, I have a handful of YouTube videos shared by molecular biology grad students who apparently needed to introduce a little creativity to their late nights in the lab.
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A picture tells a thousand words. So I suppose a movie tells 24,000+ words per second.

Whether you use them for educating, self-study or just for your viewing pleasure, photos and movies of biological concepts and processes are a valuable resource. Here are ten of the best bio flick and pic galleries from around the web. Read more »

Yawn….

The awards season is upon us once again. Overpaid, under-worked and over-ego’d celebrities get together to slap each other’s backs and tell each other how great they are.

But little do they know where the real party in town is. The 2008 Thermostable Polymerase Awards (the THEPA’s) are underway and you have a front row seat.

Here are the winners: Read more »

The late Francis Crick once said that “Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by listening to the sound it made while being dropped down a flight of stairs.”

But, if you thought that protein structure determination was the closest that biologists got to making music, you’d be wrong. It turns out that behind the veneer of the laboratory, biopop - a thriving underground biology music scene - is just waiting to burst onto your iPod (or other music player).

For your listening pleasure, I have scoured the internet to bring you 10 of the very best songs that biopop has to offer. From Unca John’s bluesy “Growth Hormone Hero” to Amy Hartnell’s karaoke classic “Form a phosphate-ester link (to carbon three)” to BioRad’s slick but shamelessly corporate “Scientists for Better PCR”, every taste is catered for.

Whether you love, hate or even make biopop, be sure to make your views or your favorite songs known here.

Here’s the biopop top 10. Enjoy:

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It’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day of producing experimental results but as a scientist it is your job to do the exact opposite - a good scientist has to think about their work on all levels. Here is a light-hearted reminder of the importance of large scale, small scale, “out-of-the-box”, lateral and vocational thinking in science. Enjoy. Read more »