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 »

I shudder to think of the way I was taught about metabolic pathways as an undergrad. Lists of mysterious names connected by arrows - all to be memorized, with little reference to how the processes actually worked on a chemical basis.

Even worse - and perhaps embarrassingly for me - I was almost at the end of my first year as a biochemistry undergrad before I understood how functional proteins arose from DNA. Having already studied biology for 5 years I knew about the functions of some proteins, and I knew about transcription and translation as isolated processes, but the fact that proteins folded spontaneously and that they way they folded, and their consequent function, was dependent on their amino acid sequence had never been pointed out to me. Read more »

Science is an endlessly fascinating, challenging, and intellectually-satisfying endeavor. So it saddens me any time that I see someone mistakingly make claims about taking science on faith. This isn’t the forum for taking on religion - if you want that, more of my thoughts on that can be found at Migrations.

I have one request though, for us here at Bitesize Bio, and in particular, on our discussions of interesting and ground-breaking scientific studies:
Don’t take us on faith. Instead, ask questions. Scrutinize. Check out the data for yourself. Be skeptical. Be analytical. And reach your own conclusions. Catch me making a mistake, and demonstrate how a mistake was made. Read more »

Regular readers may have noticed that the number of articles published on Bitesize Bio has been quite low. Despite this apparent lack of activity, this has been a period of big changes with next Monday seeing something of a re-launch of the site

I’ve been searching, nay hunting, for an accomplished writer to join me for about a month now, looking for someone who could offer a different perspective and style to my own to bring our readers an even greater variety of articles and insight. Enter Dan Rhoads, author of the popular Migrations blog (well worth checking out). Dan is a real mine of information, an avid reader of all things science and a really slick writer.

Between us we have been re-defining the site somewhat. From next week you can expect coverage of both molecular and cell biology topics and techniques as Dan’s more cell biology-orientated background comes to the fore. We will also have more journal club and news articles to keep you abreast of the latest developments as well as more frequent postings of the types you may have become accustomed to on Bitesize Bio.

We hope you’ll enjoy our upcoming articles, stay tuned to Bitesize Bio… and tell your friends about us. See you on Monday.