Your Microbe Aura Could Be as Distinctive as Your Fingerprint http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/inside-the-germ-cloud/406591 Pot. #privacy risk, but will we see microbiome perfume
ANNALS OF SCIENCE
JUNE 20, 2016 ISSUE
THE UNSEEN
By Raffi Khatchadourian
Millions of microbes are yet to be discovered. Will one hold the ultimate cure?
The Unseen http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/20/miracle-microbes Argues for symbiosis over competition in #microbial communities. Are #antibiotics really for warfare?
The #Brain That Couldn’t Remember
http://www.NYTimes.com/2016/08/07/magazine/the-brain-that-couldnt-remember.html Fight over the ownership of HM’s highlights issues in consent HT @FearLoathingBTX
Big Fight Over Fossils
http://www.NewYorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/lee-berger-digs-for-bones-and-glory #Paleoanthropology issues: open v closed data, scholarship v showmanship. Genomics parallels
Annals of Science MAY 2, 2016 ISSUE
Same but Different
How epigenetics can blur the line between nature and nurture.
BY SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE
Same but Different by @DrSidMukherjee
http://www.NewYorker.com/magazine/2016/05/02/breakthroughs-in-epigenetics Nice #epigenetics overview, from Waddington to histone marks & ant castes
Some overlap w/ the book
Matter, energy… knowledge: How to harness #physics’ demonic power
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030730-200-demon-no-more-physics-most-elusive-entity-gives-up-its-secret/ Keeping memories costs energy, erasure does work
Emptying memory represents energy that can perform work
Why Basketball Runs in the Family
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nba-basketball-runs-in-the-family-1464130236 49% of NBA players related to an elite athlete, probably b/c of height selection
Bacteria on the #Brain
http://www.NewYorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/bacteria-on-the-brainNice #bioethics discussion of greater allowance for risk in innovative treatment vs research
QT:{{”
…Schrot sent an e-mail to Robert Nelson, a pediatric ethicist and oncologist at the F.D.A., describing the procedure and asking for advice. Nelson replied quickly. “If the product”—Enterobacter—“you plan to use is available to you,” he wrote, in part, “I would suggest you proceed under the strategy of innovative treatment rather than research.”
“}}
AstraZeneca…proj. to seq. 2M
http://www.nature.com/news/astrazeneca-launches-project-to-sequence-2-million-genomes-1.19797 Ironic @JCVenter Qt: Think carefully before you just dump your genome on the Internet
For complete irony, compare this qt w/ commentary on @JCVenter’s original personal
sequencehttp://www.WashingtonPost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090602362.htmlhttps://twitter.com/markgerstein/status/726064243695583232
QT:{{”
“Human Longevity’s databases are kept locked behind layers of security. “If I were advising a younger Craig Venter, I’d say, ‘Think carefully before you just dump your genome on the Internet’,” Venter says. “The levels of prediction are getting much more interesting.” “}}
An…Attempt to Save the Reefs & Forests
http://NewYorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/a-radical-attempt-to-save-the-reefs-and-forests Engineering the #chestnut tree to express OxO, a defense against its blight
QT:{{”
“Powell attended graduate school in the nineteen-eighties, around the same time as Gates, and, like her, he was fascinated by molecular biology. When he got a job at the forestry school, in 1990, he started thinking about how new molecular techniques could be used to help the chestnut. Powell had studied how the fungus attacked the tree, and he knew that its key weapon was oxalic acid. (Many foods contain oxalic acid—it’s what gives spinach its bitter taste—but in high doses it’s also fatal to humans.) One day, he was leafing through abstracts of recent scientific papers when a finding popped out at him. Someone had inserted into a tomato plant a gene that produces oxalate oxidase, or OxO, an enzyme that breaks down oxalic acid.
“I thought, Wow, that would disarm the fungus,” he recalled.
Years of experimentation ensued. The gene can be found in many grain crops; Powell and his research team chose a version from wheat. First they inserted the wheat gene into poplar trees, because poplars are easy to work with. Then they had to figure out how to work with chestnut tissue, because no one had really done that before. Meanwhile, the gene couldn’t just be inserted on its own; it needed a “promoter,” which is a sort of genetic on-off switch. The first promoter Powell tried didn’t work. The trees—really tiny
seedlings—didn’t produce enough OxO to fight off the fungus. “They just died more slowly,” Powell told me. The second promoter was also a dud. Finally, after two and a half decades, Powell succeeded in getting all the pieces in place. The result is a chestnut that is blight-resistant and—except for the presence of one wheat gene and one so-called “marker gene”—identical to the original Castanea dentata.”
“}}