Extra protein with your greens. A.J. Cann at Microbiology Bytes describes some recent research that shows how enteric bteria can effectively colonise foods we normally eat raw (lettuce, tomatoes etc), explaining why raw foods have been linked to food posioning outbreaks.

How to be ethical. Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science pulls some straight-to-the-point tips on how to be ethical, pulled from a recent Business Week article.

From ‘omes to phenotype. Merry at Small Things Considered posts an insightful muse into the distinction between Metabolomics and Metabonomics.

Swine flu explained. Revere at Effect Measure summarises an expedited Science review that summarises the genetics of the swine-flu virus.

Considering causes of cancer. Keith Robison at Omics! Omics! ponders the mysteries of tumor supressor genes.

…and finally…

Did they really get funding for that? Medical Writing, Editing and Grantsmanship neatly pulls together some funny examples of apparently obvious research papers published in AMA and Nature Journals. Can getting published really be so easy?

Then there are three blog posts from around the interwebs, dealing more with Big Picture things.

Defining the Journalism vs. Blogging Debate, with a Science Reporting angle
A Blog Around the Clock
“You know I have been following the ‘death of newspapers’ debate, as well as ‘bloggers vs. journalists’ debate, and ‘do we need science reporters’ debate for a long time now. What I have found, [...] is that different people use different definitions for the same set of words and phrases.” From this, Bora writes an outstanding essay talking about what is actually going on in all of these discussions.

Bioethical Transparency
Science Progress – Subtitled “Public Participation and Responsible Uses of Human Biotechnologies,” here’s an essay that says the American public still needs a seat at the table, in deciding what is ethical and what is not, now that Embryonic Stem Cell Research is fundable again.

Speaking in Nature
Speaking of Research – Comments on an essay in Nature on how scientists need to get more involved in advocating animal research, in a time when animal rights extremists appear to be dominating the discussion in certain parts of the US (and the UK).

And also check out the 44th episode of the genetics and medicine blog carnival, The Gene Genie.

Science webinar series : Protein Tagging Technologies in Cell Imaging and Analysis
Hoxful Monsters – This post is more of an FYI that should be passed on… “If you have any questions related to protein tagging then register for the upcoming webinar conducted by Science magazine. It goes live on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 12 noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. GMT.

From that, my attention has been towards bioethics of late.

Hey Mr. Bioethicist, Scientists are Not Amoral
The Huffington Post – Michael Eisen criticizes bioethicist and former Executive Director of the President’s Council on Bioethics Yuval Levin by saying, “Lost in this superficially unobjectionable assertion of the complexity of ethical issues involving science is Levin’s (and many other bioethicists) credo: that the moral complexity of scientific issues means that scientists should not make decisions about them.”

Animal Care Staff: �Why animal welfare matters’
Speaking of Research – Countering the propaganda of animal rights activists’ accusations of animal research, SoR posted this as first of a series of posts that try and show the activities and motivations of a handful of the dedicated animal care technicians from across the country’s animal laboratories who work tirelessly to ensure animal welfare remains the highest priority.

New Stem Cell Policy Founded on Ethics and Expertise
Science Progress – With the subtitle “Opponents Ignore Specifics of President’s Position”, this is one of the more informative reports on Pres. Obama’s recent and well-covered reversal of his predecessor’s federal policy on embryonic stem cell research.

And two carnivals:
Giant’s Shoulder’s #9
Encephalon #66

NIH Plans For Stimulus Funds
Drug Monkey: A letter regarding the actual objectives of the plan.

The Stimulus & the NIH – what not to do
The Daily Transcript: Discussion on lessons learned from past NIH funding strategies.

Beaker-Ready Projects? Colleges Have Quite a Few
NY Times Science Section: The funding is all about generating immediate jobs.

On other topics:

Biotechs Actively Impeding Transgenic Crop Research
The Scientific Activist: While the biotechs may not be trying to hide anything, their lengthy efforts to protect the bottom line threatens confidence in environmental safety of their products.

Cancer Carnival #19
Bayblab: One-stop shopping for the cancer researchers out there.

My Favorite PHD Comics
Genomicron: An observation on how PHD Comics has taken the place of what The Far Side represented a generation ago.

Letting Scientists of the Leash
Guest NY Times columnist and bioengineer Stephen Quake calls for a rethinking of how science is funded.

Link between the Nuclear Export of mRNA and Decay
Here’s one for the true molecular biology fanatic.

The link between protein synthesis and mitochondrial degradation: Towards a unified mechanism of aging
And one for the biomedically-inclined molecular biologist.

NCI science writing internships available for recent graduate degree recipients
Just in case you happen to be a grad student and like writing about science.

Emerging Model Organisms for February
Two new model organisms that you might find neato: moss and choanoflagellates.

Now, only a themed group of some links around the blogs. I don’t follow personal genomics closely, but four posts caught my attention discussing the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative study and Navigenics.

Coriell Goes Live!!!
at Gene Sherpas,
Free Personal Genomics… Sort Of
at Genetic Future,
Will Coriell PMC Kill Navigenics?
at Think Gene, and
Navigenics Interview: Annual Insight
at ScienceRoll.

Coriell is offering a free service – a full genome scan, plus a genetic health report and genetic counselling – that would cost you at least $500 from Navigenics. The pay-off to them is a massive database to mine for new gene-disease associations and information about patient responses to genetic testing; the pay-off for you is free genetic disease risk predictions. The deal may attract customers to Coriell over Navigenics, changing who is leading the field of personal genomics for consumers. Or not.

The Stimulus – How much is marked for science funding?

Let’s not mess things up this time! The last major increase to the NIH caused major problems years later. Money was simply pumped into new and existing grants, PIs hired many new grad students and postdocs, and the pyramid scheme got a major influx bloating the bottom of the academic edifice. As the bottom rose, many chunks fell of and as one Nobel Lauriate stated, we sacrificed a generation of scientists.

And two useful new tools for the molecular and cellular biologist:

Move over GFP, it’s FlAsH and ReAsH
A brief news item (news to me anyway) on the smallest fluorescent tag available. We all know that GFP is a rather bulky protein tag, but using biarsenical labelling of tetracysteine motifs, you can get a fluorescent tag that’s only 6aa long.

Hot off the Press: Fluorescent timers
By directed evolution of a protein that normally fluoresces in the red, it was possible to generate variants of the protein that had differing maturation rates for the chromophore, as well as a temporal shift in the fluorescence spectrum from blue to red. Different mutants resulted in fast-, medium-, and slow-fluorescent timer molecules.

It’s All About Money [GMO and Profits]
A quote from the article: “But add the profit motive and the ability to patent lifeforms and you get attempts by individual corporations to corner the worldwide market in one species after another, which is bad for farmers and consumers, and you also get thuggish attempts to subvert independent research, which is bad for science.”

How the Texas Board of Ed. misrepresented a Nobel Prize winner
The title says it all really and isn’t that surprising perhaps — but for those following the evolution-creation wars for American classrooms, it’s the latest hot news.

And to round out this brief survey of the blogosphere…
Peering into the Genetic Future: trends in human genomics in 2009

Okay, that’s it. There just weren’t any recent posts with strong analysis outside of Scienceblogs that I could find lately. Come on you independents. Get to it! (Bitesize Bio however has been great this past week — check out some of our posts!)

Genetic differences between human populations: more drift than selection?
Dan MacArthur points to a paper claiming that large allele frequency differences between populations are due to demographic effects, rather than selection. That is, most of the differences between different races are due to drift rather than selection.

p-ter also contributes with:
Selection or demography in differences between human populations?

As does John Hawks with:
Surfing and recent selection

And the study was also blogged on a couple months ago by Dienekes:
Allele-surfing versus positive selection

Lastly, and related but on a slightly different topic:
A genetic test to tell you what “population” you are?

The Problem with Publication-Driven Science
Mike laments the consequences of publication-driven research, and how it can inspire problems associated with secrecy and withholding data.

The Genetic Architecture of Metabolic Traits: A Data Explosion
Daniel discusses six papers on one topic appearing in Nature Genetics, with an extra helping of data – “These papers use genome-wide association data from very large numbers of individuals to analyse the genetic architecture of disease-associated traits like blood lipid and glucose levels.”