Creatures of the Deep Deep
The BBC has a great interactive graphic (including videos) featuring research to discover life at the high pressure environments of the deep sea trenches.
23.1.10
21.1.10
Brands and Junks
This video is amazing, but I'm very unimpressed with gay Mr. Clean working at the zoo. What's the point?? Every character get's either bad-ass or completely expected and predictable and no ethnic, religious, political, or otherwise group is made fun of. What gives?? Aside from this major annoyance it's still pretty amazing. It comes ironically from a fancy french fashion/style website. What's that all about?
La vie des marques from Materialiste Paris on Vimeo.
Another great video is for some kind of "energy food". I'm not even interested in finding out about it, but the advert is itself worth it.
Big News for the Little Guys?
I'm not quite sure I understand how GlaxoSmithKline came to this decision. It does seem commendable, but I'm not quite sure about that, either.
GSK has in their R&D vaults some 13,500 compounds which have some kind of effect on the parasite the causes malaria. Basically what that means is they've used high-throughput biochemistry and developed an assay to test hundreds of thousands of compounds for their ability to cause some kind of change in the parasite. The rub is, in those circumstances, it's not even clear what each compound is. That's what all the R&D that comes afterward is for. There are many open questions that need to be addressed before a drug can be put out. What exactly is the compound? what does it do physiologically? What will it do to humans? etc. etc.
Well now GSK is releasing the list of those 13,500 compounds publicly, which sounds like a payload for academic (and public) scientists and is basically unheard of for profit-driven private companies, giant pharma included. It is amazing to have access to that information, but I wonder what is the real value of it. It's the first step in a long process to develop drugs. Academia is certainly not know for drug development, that fits squarely into GSKs hands, no? so what should academia do with all that information? And why would GSK give it out? In related news, they also announced guarantees to make drugs against malaria and HIV more affordable the world over.
GSK has in their R&D vaults some 13,500 compounds which have some kind of effect on the parasite the causes malaria. Basically what that means is they've used high-throughput biochemistry and developed an assay to test hundreds of thousands of compounds for their ability to cause some kind of change in the parasite. The rub is, in those circumstances, it's not even clear what each compound is. That's what all the R&D that comes afterward is for. There are many open questions that need to be addressed before a drug can be put out. What exactly is the compound? what does it do physiologically? What will it do to humans? etc. etc.
Well now GSK is releasing the list of those 13,500 compounds publicly, which sounds like a payload for academic (and public) scientists and is basically unheard of for profit-driven private companies, giant pharma included. It is amazing to have access to that information, but I wonder what is the real value of it. It's the first step in a long process to develop drugs. Academia is certainly not know for drug development, that fits squarely into GSKs hands, no? so what should academia do with all that information? And why would GSK give it out? In related news, they also announced guarantees to make drugs against malaria and HIV more affordable the world over.
Marshall Nirenberg, dead at 82
There is an excellent obituary in the New York Times on Marshall Nirenberg, one of the scientists who cracked the genetic code.
In short the genetic code is that DNA is transcribed into mRNA (m=messenger) and is read in codons, which are little chunks of three nucleotides long by complimentary anti-codons on tRNA (t=transfer) which are attached to amino acids. There are 64 codons which always correspond to the same amino acid, the building blocks of proteins. The obituary has a nice little summary of the experiment (or check out the wiki link above).
I remember being just awed and completely inspired by the experimental beauty of this when I was an undergrad. I still don't understand how people could not find that stuff fascinating.
In short the genetic code is that DNA is transcribed into mRNA (m=messenger) and is read in codons, which are little chunks of three nucleotides long by complimentary anti-codons on tRNA (t=transfer) which are attached to amino acids. There are 64 codons which always correspond to the same amino acid, the building blocks of proteins. The obituary has a nice little summary of the experiment (or check out the wiki link above).
I remember being just awed and completely inspired by the experimental beauty of this when I was an undergrad. I still don't understand how people could not find that stuff fascinating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
