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Human Embryos Created by Cloning in Oregon
Once induced pluripotent stem cells hit the scene, human cloning slowly faded away. Why clone embryos with human eggs (exploiting women in the process) to get "patient-specific" embryonic stem cells when you can just take an adult cell and reprogram it back to an embryonic-like state? No eggs, no cloning, no creating and destroying embryos.But I knew cloning was just hiding in the shadows waiting to resurface. Scientists are still trying to achieve this "holy grail" of human biology: the creation of human clones. Ones that will generate embryonic stem cells.A team of scientists, including a fertility sp...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 15, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Cloning Source Type: blogs

GSK's Published Kinase Inhibitor Set
Speaking about open-source drug discovery (such as it is) and sharing of data sets (such as they are), I really should mention a significant example in this area: the GSK Published Kinase Inhibitor Set. (It was mentioned in the comments to this post). The company has made 367 compounds available to any academic investigator working in the kinase field, as long as they make their results publicly available (at ChEMBL, for example). The people at GSK doing this are David Drewry and William Zuercher, for the record - here's a recent paper from them and their co-workers on the compound set and its behavior in reporter-gene ass...
Source: In the Pipeline - May 15, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Academia (vs. Industry) Source Type: blogs

The Stolen Post, Without Permission, from 1 Boring Old Man
There's a psychiatrist who writes a blog that's older than Shrink Rap called 1boringoldman. It's a great blog, and Mickey, the blog owner, should have more appropriately named himself 1reallysmartoldman. I go to it sometimes, but it's more political than I like, it's often filled with graphs and numbers (more of a Roy thing), and .....I hesitate to admit this here because obviously that boring old man has better vision than I do....but the font is painfully small and the layout is hard to follow. It's archived by month/year, not subject, and sometimes I'm not sure I've expanded what I wanted to read. ...
Source: Shrink Rap - May 15, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Dinah Source Type: blogs

What RDoC Research Might Look Like
The month of May is a violent thingIn the city their hearts start to singWell, some people sing, it sounds like they're screamingI used to doubt it, but now I believe itMonth Of May ------The Arcade FireToday is Mental Health Month Blog Day, sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA). It's designed to:...educate the public about mental health, decrease stigma about mental illness, and discuss strategies for making lasting lifestyle and behavior changes that promote overall health and wellness.If the public has been following the recent hullabaloo about how to diagnose mental illnesses, they ...
Source: The Neurocritic - May 15, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

How Drug Companies Keep Medicine Out of Reach - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/how-drug-companies-keep-medicine-out-of-reach/275853/?ReutersFor almost a decade, the United States has been standing in the way of an idea that could lead to cures for some of the world's most devastating illnesses. The class of maladies is known as neglected diseases, and they almost exclusively affect those in the developing world. The same idea, if realized, might also be used in more affluent nations to goad the pharmaceutical industry into producing critical innovations that the free market has yet to produce - things like new antibiotics, which are likely to be used ...
Source: PharmaGossip - May 15, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Is it possible to enter Medical School without Pre-Med?
by Victoria55 (Posted Tue May 14, 2013 2:36 am)Hi everyone. I want to enter Medical School and have been studying for this by myself for many years, but few days ago I learned from Internet that before Medical School I should attend Pre-Med courses for 4 years and I was so distressed. In few years I am turning 35 and by the end of my studying I will be probably 45 or 50. English is my second language. 10 years ago I was graduated from the university (my speciality was English language and literature). All my life I wanted to become a doctor. All these 10 years I was working and learning by myself physics, maths, biology, ...
Source: Med Student Guide - May 14, 2013 Category: Medical Students Source Type: blogs

Is it possible to enter Medical School without Pre-Med?
by Victoria55 (Posted Tue May 14, 2013 2:27 am)Hi everyone. I want to enter Medical School and have been studying for this by myself for many years, but few days ago I learned from Internet that before Medical School I should attend Pre-Med courses for 4 years and I was so distressed. In few years I am turning 35 and by the end of my studying I will be probably 45 or 50. English is my second language. 10 years ago I was graduated from the university (my speciality was English language and literature). All my life I wanted to become a doctor. All this 10 years I was working and learning by myself physics, maths, biology, a...
Source: Med Student Guide - May 14, 2013 Category: Medical Students Source Type: blogs

Telomere Length: Cause of Aging or Marker of Aging?
Telomeres are repeating sequences of nucleic acids that cap the ends of chromosomes in the cell nucleus and stop actual gene-coding DNA from being chopped off when a cell divides. The mechanisms of DNA replication require extra leg room at the ends of the strand, a trailing sequence that is not copied over to the new strand under assembly - and the primary role of telomeres is to be the part that is dropped on the floor. A little of their length is thus lost with every cell division. This shortening acts as a clock to count cell divisions, and cells with very short telomeres stop replicating - they either enter cellular se...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 14, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

ICG Europe starts w/ "Omics & the future of man" & sticks to men the rest of the time
Fun. Another day. Another YAMMGM (yet another mostly male genomics meeting). This one is the International Conference on Genomics Europe 2013. I have copied the program as it is now here and then highlighted the men and women as far as I can tell. And, well, it is not very balanced. It starts off, ironically, with "Omics and the future of man" and then stays on both omics and alas, men, for most of the meeting. The first woman does not talk until 5 pm on the first day. Nothing against BGI per se. But they seem to be repeat offenders in having meetings with mostly male s...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 14, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

No need to oversell the human microbiome with studies like these ...
I know I complain all the time about news stories and people "overselling the microbiome". Mind you, I believe microbial communities are likely to be found to have very very important roles in the biology of the plants and animals and other organisms on which they live, but I worry about overhyping the possibilities. But thankfully, there are some good researchers at work out there documenting just what the microbiome can and does do. And the results continue to be promising. Here is the one that caught my eye most recently: BBC News - 'Weight loss gut bacterium' found about this PNAS pape...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 14, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

The Fog of Science
As you may recall, in our last episode, Abraham Flexner has persuaded the world -- or at least the space between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific -- to put medicine on a scientific basis. But, it turns out that is very easy to say and very hard to do.Back in 1910, people knew more about human biology than they did in 1850 or 500 BC, to be sure. But the usefulness of that knowledge for making or keeping people healthy -- whatever that means, and remember we still haven't figured that out -- was very limited. To take stock briefly of our relevant knowledge at the time, we knew something about pathogenic microbes and ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 13, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs

EBI-Sanger postdoctoral fellowship on Plasmodium kinase regulatory networks
I am happy to announce a call for applications for a EBI-Sanger postdoctoral fellowship to study the kinase regulatory networks in Plasmodium. This is one of four currently open calls in the the EBI–Sanger Postdoctoral (ESPOD) Programme and the call closes on the 26th of July. This interdisciplinary programme is meant to foster collaborations between the EBI and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, both at the Genome Campus near Cambridge UK. Our project is a collaboration between myself (EBI), Jyoti Choudhary (mass-spectrometry group leader at Sanger) and Oliver Billker (group leader a...
Source: Public Rambling - May 13, 2013 Category: Bioinformaticians Tags: positions Source Type: blogs

Another Big Genome Disparity (With Bonus ENCODE Bashing)
I notice that the recent sequencing of the bladderwort plant is being played in the press in an interesting way: as the definitive refutation of the idea that "junk DNA" is functional. That's quite an about-face from the coverage of the ENCODE consortium's take on human DNA, the famous "80% Functional, Death of Junk DNA Idea" headlines. A casual observer, if there are casual observers of this sort of thing, might come away just a bit confused. Both types of headlines are overblown, but I think that one set is more overblown than the other. The minimalist bladderwort genome (8.2 x 107 base pairs) is only about half the siz...
Source: In the Pipeline - May 13, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Biological News Source Type: blogs

Twisted tree of life award #15: NBC News on "Junk DNA mystery"
This article has some complete and utter crap: Some parts that I have issues with: The headline: "'Junk' DNA mystery solved: It's not needed." The headline is silly but alas it is consistent with what is in the article. "So-called junk DNA, the vast majority of the genome that doesn't code for proteins". So - they have redefined junk DNA as all non coding DNA? "For decades, scientists have known that the vast majority of the genome is made up of DNA that doesn't seem to contain genes or turn genes on or off." Apparently there is an entity out there known as "The Genome". And then we get into th...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 13, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Can Psychiatry Ever Really Get Rid of Stigma?
We all think stigma with mental illness is a bad thing. Because mental disorders are stigmatized, people hide their psychic distress and don't get help, or they live in denial about their problems when the fact that they are mentally ill is obvious to others. People live in pain, or they simply don't live up to their potential. Stigma is only part of the problem, of course. There is also the issue of access to care, access to good care, cost of care, dislike of the care that exists (mean psychiatrists, side effects from medications, lousy food or uncomfortable beds on inpatient units), and the fact ...
Source: Shrink Rap - May 13, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Dinah Source Type: blogs

Rebooting pyschiatry: time for a new set of disorders
I can't remember when I first decided that the psychiatric classifications I'd learned in medical school had outlived their usefulness. It was probably a gradual process, but by 2005 I wrote to a colleague "DSM IV was great in its day, but new knowledge is breaking down the simplistic classifications of the 1960s and 1970s. Schizophrenia, autism, etc -- bah, humbug. Those labels are better than nothing, but humans tend to confuse labels with reality …".A few months later I took my rants public and went on for about 30 posts or so. Soon I learned I wasn't alone, and by 2010 victory was in sight. I was a solitary cra...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - May 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: brain and mind neurodiversity diagnostic definition research schizophrenia autism Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 13th 2013
In this study we used the hMTH1-Tg mouse model to investigate how oxidative damage to nucleic acids affects aging. hMTH1-Tg mice express high levels of the hMTH1 hydrolase that degrades 8-oxodGTP and 8-oxoGTP and excludes 8-oxoguanine from both DNA and RNA. Compared to wild-type animals, hMTH1-overexpressing mice have significantly lower steady-state levels of 8-oxoguanine in both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of several organs, including the brain. hMTH1 overexpression prevents the age-dependent accumulation of DNA 8-oxoguanine that occurs in wild-type mice. These lower levels of oxidized guanines are associated with in...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Crosspost: Woohoo – two more genome announcement papers from our undergraduate project on built environment reference genomes
Crossposting this from the microBEnet blog. Two new papers out from the microBEnet Undergraduate Research: Built Environment Reference Genomes project: Coil DA, Doctor JI, Lang JM, Darling AE, Eisen JA. 2013. Draft Genome Sequence of Kocuria sp. Strain UCD-OTCP (Phylum Actinobacteria). Genome Announc. 1(3):e00172-13. doi:10.1128/genomeA.00172-13. Diep AL, Lang JM, Darling AE, Eisen JA, Coil DA. 2013. Draft genome sequence of Dietzia sp. strain UCD-THP (phylum Actinobacteria). Genome Announc. 1(3):e00197-13. doi:10.1128/genomeA.00197-13. These go with two previously published ones: L...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 10, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

YAMMGM: Yet another mostly male genomics meeting #2: Beyond the Genome 2013
Well, the "winner" of this months YAMMGM award is Beyond the Genome 2013 | Mission Bay | San Francisco Alas, YAMMGM stands for "Yet another mostly male genomics meeting" so it is not an award to covet. This meetings listed speakers are below with women highlighted in green. Nicholas Navin -The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Sunney Xie – Harvard Xu Xun – BGI James Hicks -CSHL Fuchou Tang – Peking Itai Yanai – Israel Thierry Voet - Sanger Jacob Kitzman – Plasma cell free DNA sequencing Stephen Quake – Stanford and Fluidigm Mario Caccamo – Genome Analysis Centre Rob Martienssen – C...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 10, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Comments on Rapamycin and Metformin
Three of the better known efforts to create a drug that modestly slows the rate of aging are centered on the following items: Resveratrol analogs that target sirtuins Rapamycin analogs that target mTOR Metformin Of these, ways to manipulate the activity of sirtuins have received the greatest attention over the past decade, but there is little to show for all that money and time beyond a modest gain in the understanding of metabolism. There are no replicated, solid results of life extension in mice via sirtuin-influencing drugs, and I'd go so far as to say that the field is under something of a cloud at present. Metformin...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 10, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Your Brain Shifts Gears
Want to be weirded out? Study the central nervous system. I started off my med-chem career in CNS drug discovery, and it's still my standard for impenetrability. There's a new paper in Science, though, that just makes you roll your eyes and look up at the ceiling. The variety of neurotransmitters is well appreciated - you have all these different and overlapping signaling systems using acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, and a host of lesser-known molecules, including such oddities as hydrogen sulfide and even carbon monoxide. And on the receiving end, the various subtypes of receptors are well studied, and those give a t...
Source: In the Pipeline - May 9, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: The Central Nervous System Source Type: blogs

NKX2-1/TTF-1 drives pulmonary-specific differentiation in lung adenocarcinoma
Snyder et al. recently published an intriguing report in Molecular Cell (21 March 2013) (featured free article) in which they convincingly demonstrate how tumors in which Nkx2-1 was deleted show striking different morphology from those in which Nkx2-1 is expressed.... (Source: The Daily Sign-Out)
Source: The Daily Sign-Out - May 8, 2013 Category: Pathologists Authors: Mark D. Pool, M.D. Tags: Lung adenocarcinoma Lung Biology Lung Cancer Source Type: blogs

Gray hair cure? Go Away Gray is no fountain of youth
If you've been blamed for giving Mom gray hair, here's what not to give her this Mother's Day: a bottle of Go Away Gray, a supplement that claims to "prevent and reverse gray hair" via a daily dose of catalase, an enzyme produced by hair cells that naturally declines with age. The graying process works in part like this. Catalase breaks down hydrogen peroxide, which is also produced by our hair cells and which causes hair to lighten. As we get older, the production of catalase slows, leaving nothing to keep hydrogen peroxide from building up. Ultimately that results in your hair going gray—though when and how much ...
Source: Consumer Reports Health Blog - May 8, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: jkopf Tags: Go Away Gray Gray hair pill Gray hair remedy Mother ' s Day Reverse gray hair Beauty & Personal Care Health Natural Health Vitamins Supplements Source Type: blogs

Real-Time PCR book available very soon
The new book on Real-Time PCR edited by Nick A. Saunders and Martin A. Lee will be available for dispatch within the next 2 or 3 weeks read more ...Real-Time PCR: Advanced Technologies and ApplicationsEdited by: Nick A. Saunders and Martin A. LeeISBN: 978-1-908230-22-5Publisher: Caister Academic PressPublication Date: July 2013 Cover: hardback read more ... (Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists.)
Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists. - May 8, 2013 Category: Microbiology Tags: Molecular Biology publications Microbiology publications PCR Applications PCR publications PCR Technology PCR Troubleshooting Real-Time PCR Source Type: blogs

A good thing: More and more biology papers showing up in arXiv
Good to see some more papers in microbiology & genomics and related topics going to the preprint server arXiv. If you are interested in population and evolutionary genetics a good place to keep up with papers on this topic in arXiv is Haldane's Sieve. The good folks there in essence make a separate post about each paper of interest and then people can comment there on the papers, since the commenting functions at arXiv are, well, challenged. In areas related to this blog, here are some recent papers in arXiv: Adaptive reference-free compression of sequence quality scores Abundance-weighted phylogenetic diver...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 8, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Harvard Researchers Develop Novel Imaging Technique to Look at Embryo Formation, Find New Surprises
A team of researchers led by Sean Megason, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of systems biology, has shown through a novel imaging technique that our classic understanding of cell differentiation may be flawed. In a paper published in the April 25th issue of Cell, Megason and colleagues developed a data analysis technique that allows direct observation of the cells in an embryo as they move and change over time. They used it to see what happens in the embryo between the early and late snapshots. Based on the results of the technique, the researchers theorize that cell differentiation is in fact predetermined b...
Source: Medgadget - May 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Ravi Parikh Tags: in the news... Source Type: blogs

BLOGSCAN - An Ex-Pharmaceutical Company CEO to Run the American College of Cardiology?
Marilyn Mann's blog discussed the appointment of a former pharmaceutical company executive, most recently at Actelion, and previously at Hoffman La Roche, Abbott Canada, Nordic Labs and Marion Merrill Dow (now known as Aventis), as president of the American College of Cardiology. Although Mr Jacobovitz, who boasts a bachelor's degree in biology but no obvious experience in direct health care or biomedical science, was touted by the ACC as having "developed a strong patient- and customer-centered corporate strategy," Ms Mann provided documentation that his trajectory at Actelion seemed more money- than patient-centere...
Source: Health Care Renewal - May 7, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: generic managers American College of Cardiology medical societies Actelion Source Type: blogs

Did the NIMH Withdraw Support for the DSM-5? No
In the past week, I’ve seen some incredibly sensationalistic articles published about the upcoming DSM-5 and a letter recently released by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). In the letter by Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the NIMH, wrote in part, “That is why NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.” Some writers read a lot more into that statement than was actually there. Science 2.0 — a website that claims it houses “The world’s best scientists, the Internet’s smartest readers” — had this headline, “NIMH Delivers A Kill Shot T...
Source: World of Psychology - May 7, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: John M. Grohol, Psy.D. Tags: General Mental Health and Wellness Minding the Media Policy and Advocacy Professional Psychiatry Psychology Biology Genetics Brain Circuits Categorization System Classification System cognitive science Criteria Project Diagnostic Source Type: blogs

Disruptor Profile: Jayne Mackta
I can’t remember how or when I met Jayne Mackta, but I’ve always been grateful I did and I hope you’ll agree when I introduce her to you today. Jayne is an entrepreneur, pursuing the kinds of niche needs that – at their core – are the underpinnings of the discoveries in biomedicine that we depend upon to heal us when we’re ill. She’s one of many, I’m sure, but is one of the best (I’m sure of that, too). She not only works in the ‘trenches,’ but often goes there first and digs them herself to support the many others who will come later. Her most recent effort, Curious Young Writers, is the latest of h...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - May 7, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized biomedical research Genetic Alliance Source Type: blogs

New books received this week
Atlas of cone beam imaging for dental applications / Dale A. Miles. 2nd ed., Hanover Park, IL: Quintessence Pub., 2013. New to this edition are chapters presenting endodontic applications of CBCT, selected cases from radiology practice, and issues of risk and liability associated with capturing CBCT data. In addition, the anatomy chapter has been updated with many new illustrations and a new section on small-volume anatomy. Comprehensive case presentations demonstrate the diagnostic and treatment-planning capabilities of CBCT in its full range of applications while at the same time highlighting situations in which tradi...
Source: DentistryLibrary@Sydney - May 6, 2013 Category: Dentists Tags: New books Source Type: blogs

Eating for Health: Power Up Your Body and Save Your Life!
Did you know that your diet, if you’re like most Americans, is likely starving your cells of what they need to serve you best? Did you know that modern day diseases like diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, auto-immune diseases, cancer, depression, and more can be alleviated, avoided or cured altogether with diet? It’s true! If you want to feel your best, improve the quality of your life, and even shed some pounds, then read on and also check out the powerful video that could change your life (if you let it). Your Cells Are Starving! We are all made up of cells. About 100 Trillion, give or take, to be exact. And...
Source: Life Learning Today - May 6, 2013 Category: Life Coaches Authors: AgentSully Tags: Green Living Happy Healthy Living How To Recipes Solving Problems Success diet Dr Terry Wahls food healthy diet heath Paleo Paleo Diet power save your life Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 6th 2013
Discussion Latest Headlines from Fight Aging! T-Regulatory Cells More Numerous in the Aged Immune System HMGA1 as a Potential Common Mechanism in Cancer A Skeptical View of Mitochondrial DNA Damage and Aging Protecting Cryonics Patients A Review of Adenylyl Cyclase Type 5 and Longevity in Mice On Extending Mouse Longevity Growth Hormone and IGF-1 in Aging IGF1R Levels in the Brain Correlate With Species Life Span Calorie Restriction and Calorie Restriction Mimetics The Burrill and Buck Aging Meeting, May 20th 2013 SENS RESEARCH FOUNDATION ANNUAL REPORT FOR 2012 http://www.fightaging.org/archi...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 5, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

health and medicine, continued
(In case you haven't picked up on it yet, I have embarked upon a long-form essay. It will continue.)So what is “medical” attention? It is well known but seldom seen as remarkable that most societies known to history and anthropology, even small scale ones with limited hierarchy and division of labor, have cultural roles for specialists in healing people. In societies large enough to support full-time specialists, as far as I know there is always a full-time healing profession. In some times and places these people have also been more generalist priests, with additional assigned powers, and priests can always try to get...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 3, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs

Mapping the Brain – Medicine’s Next Human Genome Project: Interview with George Church, PhD
Earlier this month, President Obama announced the ”BRAIN Initiative,” an effort to bring together scientists from private and public institutions to investigate how the brain’s 100 billion cells interact with each other. BRAIN – “Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies” – is expected to be the next major research effort in American biology, along the same scope and scale of the Human Genome Project. It could lead to many of the revolutions in medical technologies that the Human Genome Project did and we’re looking forward to covering those.George Church...
Source: Medgadget - May 3, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Ravi Parikh Tags: in the news... Medgadget Exclusive Neurology Source Type: blogs

Dental Education in Video
The Library just purchased Alexander Street Press’ latest online video collection called Dental Education in Video. It consists of hundreds of high-definition videos featuring world-renowned dental clinicians and educators. Subjects covered include esthetic dentistry, implant dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, patient assessment, operative dentistry, hygiene and maintenance, oral biology and medicine, orthodontics, laser dentistry, oral surgery, endodontics, infection control, periodontics, general dentistry, dental technology, digital dentistry, occlusion, TMD, digital photography, and much more. To access Dental Educa...
Source: DentistryLibrary@Sydney - May 3, 2013 Category: Dentists Tags: Online tutorials in Dentistry Oral health videos Source Type: blogs

Chances of getting in MD & DO
by Enot (Posted Thu May 02, 2013 11:02 pm)WIth the instate advantage, you may have a shot, but all together, the odds are against you. Applying with your GPA and no MCAT is not a good idea. Applying in August or September really puts you behind the curve. What about applying next year? If you concentrated solely on the MCAT this summer, and got a really great score (aim for 35+), and then took the next year to beef up your GPA, you would be a pretty solid applicant. I may be misunderstanding your position, but if you can take the extra time. Taking an extra year to prepare is not the end of the world. There are some classe...
Source: Med Student Guide - May 2, 2013 Category: Medical Students Source Type: blogs

E. O. Wilson's "Letters to a Young Scientist"
I've been reading E. O. Wilson's new book, Letters to a Young Scientist. It's the latest addition to the list of "advice from older famous scientists" books, which also includes Peter Medawar's similarly titled Advice To A Young Scientist and what is probably the grandfather of the entire genre, Ramón y Cajal's Advice for a Young Investigator. A definite personal point of view comes across in this one, since its author is famously unafraid to express his strongly held opinions. There's some 100-proof Wilson in this book as well: . . .Science is the wellspring of modern civilization. It is not just "another way of knowing...
Source: In the Pipeline - May 2, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Book Recommendations Source Type: blogs

Pennsylvania Department of Health Says It Does Not Support Smokers Quitting, Will Not Acknowledge that Smoking is More Harmful than Non-Tobacco E-Cigarettes
According to an article in the Johnstown (PA) Tribune-Democrat, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, with all of its scientific expertise, is not sure that smoking cigarettes - which kills more than 400,000 Americans each year - is any more hazardous than using non-tobacco e-cigarettes, which have not been reported to ever have killed a single person.According to the article, the Department of Health was quoted as stating: "Consumers may believe this is a safer way to smoke when, in fact, there is a lack of long-term studies that have been done on the product, therefore leaving the long-term effects unknown."Not only did...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - May 2, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs

Molecular Genetics and Genomic Approaches to Explore Fusarium Infection on Wheat Floral Tissue
from Martin Urban and Kim E. Hammond-Kosack writing in Fusarium: Genomics, Molecular and Cellular Biology:The most destructive phase of the wheat-Fusarium interaction commences at anthesis and results in lower grain yields, reduced grain quality and the contamination of grain with harmful mycotoxins. Current control strategies are often inadequate. Globally, F. graminearum is the most problematic species. A recent microscopic study has revealed a hitherto unsuspected latent phase where hyphae symptomlessly advance the infection through living wheat floral tissues prior to host cell death. Various forward and reverse geneti...
Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists. - May 2, 2013 Category: Microbiology Source Type: blogs

The Testosterone Trap
Should the Modern Man Be Taking Testosterone? Is It Low T? .com By now you've likely seen the commercials. Fit-looking middle-age men telling you how they put on weight, had less energy, and were no longer the sexual tigers they were in their twenties -- until, that is, they started rubbing testosterone gel on their shoulder, upper arm, or abdomen. Now they feel more like the men they used to be. The commercials don't mention a 2009 study in the New England Journal of Medicine wherein a group of men on testosterone replacement therapy had more than four times the number of cardiovascular problems -- so many that the s...
Source: PharmaGossip - May 2, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Recent Research Results from the Study of Naked Mole Rats
Naked mole rats are well studied by the aging research community: there are large colonies of naked mole rats in US laboratories, and a steady output of new papers on naked mole rat biology from numerous research groups. Their genome was sequenced in 2011, in advance of many other species that you might consider more pressing candidates. Naked mole rats are interesting to scientists for a number of reasons, the most important of which are that (a) they live nine times longer than similarly sized rodent species and (b) are immune to cancer. Researchers hope that there is something to be learned here about the relative impor...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 2, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Best Sites for a Medicinal Chemist?
I'm going to be traveling today, mostly through airports without good Wi-Fi (for which read "Wi-Fi that they don't want me to pay $10 for during my 90-minute layover"). But I wanted to put out a question sent in by a reader that I think would be worthwhile: What are the best web sites for a medicinal chemist to have bookmarked? Resources for medicine and biology, organic chemistry, analytical chemist, and pharma development would be appropriate. There are shorter lists available here and there, but I don't think that there's One Big List that easily findable, and I think that there needs to be one. Suggestions in the comm...
Source: In the Pipeline - May 1, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Blog Housekeeping Source Type: blogs

When the Doctor Is Overweight - NYTimes.com
This is a fascinating article. I am very interested in hearing from you regarding your thoughts on this topic. Please leave a comment to this blog -- it should make for a very interesting discussion. I know that as a physician, I spend all day speaking to patients about their weight, their level of physical activity, their diet, their smoking and their medical compliance. There are definitely days that I feel hypocritical if I know that recently I have not been exercising or eating well or taking my medicines as prescribed. When I feel this, it helps me relate to my patients and understand just how hard the thing...
Source: Dr Portnay - May 1, 2013 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr Portnay Source Type: blogs

Diabetes News Items Posted During April
This article might interest you: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3580884/ It interests me because my husband has autonomic system failure from other causes (multiple system atrophy)10:22 AM, April 19, 2013 Jennysaid... Pem,Thanks! That article is very interesting indeed. It is Diabetic cardiac autonomic neuropathy, inflammation and cardiovascular disease. Aaron I Vinik, et al., J Diabetes Investig. 2013 January; 4(1): 4–18.Dr. Bernstein has been writing about the impact of autonomic neuropathy on people with diabetes since the 1990s. Good to see that someone else has picked up on it.Most important takeawa...
Source: Diabetes Update - May 1, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: Jenny Source Type: blogs

Adjusting Mouse Longevity via the Hypothalamus
In conclusion, the hypothalamus has a programmatic role in ageing development via immune-neuroendocrine integration, and immune inhibition or GnRH restoration in the hypothalamus/brain represent two potential strategies for optimizing lifespan and combating ageing-related health problems. (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - May 1, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

The need for a phylogeny driven genomic encyclopedia of eukaryotes
Monday I gave a talk for the SMBE Eukaryotic Omics satellite meeting that has been going on at UC Davis. When Holly Bik, a post doc in my lab asked me to talk at the meeting, I said, basically "Well, OK, but I don't really do much work on eukaryotes." And then I came up with an idea - I could make my talk about how it might be good to have a better phylogenetic sampling of eukaryotic genome sequences. I have been a bit obsessed for many many years about phylogenetic sampling of genomes and, well, though I have avoided eukaryotes mostly in most of my genome sequencing work, I figured, I should still get on...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 1, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

I love this ... "Dr. Eleanor's Book of Common Ants" based in part on citizen science data
This is really cool: Dr. Eleanor's Book of Common Ants. Free to download. With incredible pics from Alex Wild. And based in part on data from the School of Ants citizen science project. You can download the PDF or the iBook from iTunes. From the folks at "Your Wild Life" including Holly Menninger and Rob Dunn and others. Definitely worth checking out. -------- This is from the "Tree of Life Blog" of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter. -------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - May 1, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

An Upside to Depression? A Darwinian Perspective
Perhaps some of you have figured out this riddle: If depression is heritable, what are its selective advantages? How could such a disadvantageous condition be passed on from generation to generation? As I see it, there are two possible answers to this question, and both have to do with a branch of evolutionary biology called evolutionary psychology. The first answer is that depression is actually a positive adaptive trait, or at least one... (Source: John McManamy's SharePosts)
Source: John McManamy's SharePosts - April 30, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: John McManamy Source Type: blogs

Where Are All the New Anti-Craving Drugs?
The dilemma of dwindling drug development. Drugs for the treatment of addiction are now a fact of life. For alcoholism alone, the medications legally available by prescription include disulfiram (Antabuse), naltrexone (Revia and Vivitrol)—and acamprosate (Campral), the most recent FDA-approved entry. A fourth entry, topiramate (Topamax), is currently only approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for other uses. But none of these are miracle medications, and more to the point, no bright new stars have come through the FDA pipeline for a long time. New approvals for drugs in this category, like psychiatric d...
Source: Addiction Inbox - April 30, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs

Plant Responses to Fusarium Metabolites
from Takumi Nishiuchi writing in Fusarium: Genomics, Molecular and Cellular Biology:Plant pathogenic species of Fusarium produce numerous secondary metabolites during infection of host plants. These metabolites often perturb host defense responses and suppress plant growth. Plant responses to Fusarium metabolites can be classified as follows: (1) inhibition of root or shoot growth; (2) inhibition of seed germination; (3) changes in leaf color such as chlorosis; (4) cell death; and (5) suppression or activation of defense responses. These phytotoxic effects of Fusarium metabolites have been reported in various plant species...
Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists. - April 29, 2013 Category: Microbiology Source Type: blogs