Grant is a regular commenter here & occasionally I’ve twisted his arm & persuaded him to write a guest post for me. The following item is one of these – it was too good (& too long!) for the comment thread. Grant begins: Alison recently put up an article about epigenetics. Since I was in […]
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more epigenetics – imprinting
A little while back I wrote about epigenetics – & I’ve got a nice piece from Grant to put up for you too. But in the meantime – PZ has written about genetic imprinting, another example of how modification of the chromatin can affect gene expression. And he’s included some nice diagrams of how it […]
Continue readingan entertaining look at our family tree
Horrakapotchkin! It seems that hsi is no longer available – something t do with a ‘terms of use violation’. I do hope the problem – whatever it is – is cleared up as this really was rather cool. ______________________________________________________________________________ and a useful introduction to some of the terminology used in phylogenetics. (Courtesy, as usual, of […]
Continue readinganother request – this time it’s stem cells
This time, the daughter tells me, she’s doing a project on a ‘current issue’ – & she’s selected stem cells. Current, controversial, contentious – & extremely interesting. But again, I’m not an expert (although my colleague Bjorn Oback, at AgResearch, is doing some very interesting work in that area & in fact received a Kudos award […]
Continue readinga paper on epigenetics
The daughter came home from school on Thursday & annouced that she wanted to find ‘stuff’ on epigenetics. Things like, what is ‘epigenetics’ & why is it important? It’s not a subject I know a lot about, but I did remember that I had a reference or two squirelled away. One is a great blog post […]
Continue readinglactose (in)tolerance & domestication of cattle
Humans first domesticated cattle about 8.000 years ago. Possibly this was first for the meat, but at some point someone (or rather, several someones in several different regions) started also making use of the milk given by lactating cows. Which raises some interesting questions, as many people can’t digest the milk sugar, lactose, found in […]
Continue readingthe hox genes rap
Who’d have thought it – a rap about the function & significance of Hox genes? But this is seriously good! (Thanks toOrac for spotting it.)
Continue readingRNA interference explained
But not by me. I’ve just come across another rather good website, ‘The naked scientists’: covers all the sciences, with podcasts, articles, science stories, experiments you can do at home (I want to try the chip packet fireworks some time) & question & discussion pages. I thought you might be interested in this one: RNA […]
Continue readingfish evolution under our own noses
My colleague Brendan Hicks heads a research team that, among other things, has been looking at the evolution of some of New Zealand’s freshwater fishes. A number of these fish species belong to the bully family – & it seems that they arrived here relatively recently (in terms of the geological timescale, that is!). Using […]
Continue readingapplying evolutionary theory in the lab
From time to time, someone will make the comment that evolution is totally irrelevant to everyday life in general, & to medicine in particular. Today ERV’s got a post detailing just how evolutionary theory has been & is being applied by medical researchers working on development of an HIV vaccine. Great stuff!
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