NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 30th June 2005 08:13 PM GMT] In tomorrow's (July 1) issue of Genes & Development, Siu Sylvia Lee, of the department of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and Gary Ruvkun, of the department of genetics at Harvard Medical School, report ?the first genome-wide functional genomic screen for... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 27th June 2005 11:22 AM GMT] At the conclusion of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory phage symposium this weekend, James Watson, bedecked in tennis whites, concluded Sunday?s sessions in his inimitable fashion, touching on a range of topics and cutting straight to the point.
On the subject of the advanced bacterial genetics course offered annually at CSHL, he believes it should be around for another ten years but wonders if it will be around for a 75th anniversary, since we can?t predict where science will lead us... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 27th June 2005 09:44 AM GMT] University of Washington genome scientist, Maynard Olson, spoke this weekend at a symposium at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in honor of the 60th anniversary of the phage course, where he discussed molecular evolution in chronic bacterial infections. Analysis of whole genome sequences of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a pathogen responsible for chronic lung colonization in patients with cystic fibrosis, reveals an evolutionary ?weakening? of the bacterium over time, resulting in a much less virulent... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 26th June 2005 08:20 AM GMT] University of California Davis scientist, John Roth, speaking this morning at the Cold Spring Harbor 60th anniversary phage course symposium, discussed the tendency towards bacteria and phage laboratories becoming increasingly marginalized at many universities. It?s ironic, really, given their still powerful role for elucidating molecular mechanisms. One reason, he suggests, may be as simple as poor PR and a failure to communicate science appropriately. With so much research couched in abstract... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 26th June 2005 06:40 AM GMT] This weekend, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Phage Course with a two day symposium led by some of today?s most notable molecular biologists. First organized by Max Delbruck in 1945, the course has been instrumental in shaping the field of molecular biology. Delbruck assembled a small but diverse group of scientists to tackle fundamental biological questions using phage as a simple model system. By the mid-1970s, cloning and transposons sparked a genetic... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 24th June 2005 03:22 PM GMT] At the BIO 2005 conference earlier this week I participated in a panel discussion entitled "Guerrilla Media Tactics: Getting MORE Media Attention Without News." Part of the Public Relations/Investor Relations track, this session probably flew below the radar of most scientists attending the conference. But there were plenty of corporate communication- and PR-types in the audience.
The panel, consisting of yours truly plus writers and editors from Fortune magazine, the Wall Street Journal... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 21st June 2005 11:09 PM GMT] Heat, humidity, and a protester/police scuffle in the streets of Philadelphia may have proved a lethal combination for Paris Williams, 52, today (June 21). The 17-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department collapsed shortly before 1 p.m. during a confrontation that snaked up Arch Street through the crowd of protesters outside of BIO 2005 (for video, see: http://www.nbc10.com/news/4632819/detail.html).
From our office window at 400 Market Street, which peers up Market up to the... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 21st June 2005 02:32 PM GMT] The relationship between business -- in this case pharma and biotech -- and the media is a tangled one. Companies hope to get the attention of major media outlets, but only if it?s the right kind. Reporters, on the other hand, are digging to get the real story behind the press release, and their ultimate loyalty is to their readers.
And a disgruntled lot of readers they are, at least in terms of the pharmaceutical industry, according to a panel of experts who spoke Monday at the... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 20th June 2005 05:46 PM GMT] Whitehead biologist Rudolf Jaenisch spoke at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia this Friday sharing with an audience of about 300 his thoughts on nuclear reprogramming ( http://www.the-scientist.com/2005/4/25/13/1), and the promise of therapeutic cloning. Consistent with his former arguments and testimony before congress in 2001, he argued that human reproductive cloning is dangerous to the extent that it could be considered... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 13th June 2005 06:40 PM GMT] What is the unit of evolution, the level of life upon which natural selection acts? A geneticist would say the gene; Charles Darwin saw it in the unique populations on the Galapagos. On Friday, Leticia Aviles, associate professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, singled out the individual as dividing the cellular from the group level. ?But what an individual is depends on one's frame of reference,? she said, and the level at which natural selection acts remains an unresolved... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 12th June 2005 06:58 PM GMT] Today we saw Darwin?s classroom, finally exploring San Cristobal island after days of teasing from the sea lions we pass on the way to the conference center. Early in the morning we packed into open air trucks that took us to a tortoise preserve, along the way seeing some of the 300 or so plant species that have invaded the island over the past two centuries. Each island has its own species of tortoise, and it is rumored that one robust specimen, named Harriet, is still alive somewhere in... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 11th June 2005 10:43 AM GMT] It's odd to be on this island that evokes images of Darwin and to hear talks in which 21st century genomics intersects 19th century ideas about naturalselection and evolution. For this reason, Mary Jane West-Eberhard of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, chair of the unnamed afternoon session, dubbed it ?Interesting New Fields That Charles Darwin Might Have Liked? - rather than the buzzwordy evo-devo.
One talk that Darwin would have liked, from Ken Wolfe of Trinity... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 11th June 2005 10:41 AM GMT] I just had dinner with a Drosophila geneticist, an historian of science specializing in taxonomy, a paleontologist whose expertise is trilobites, and a developmental biologist who is using sea anemone genome data to map mutants, the opposite of the way things were done when I was in graduate school. By now, we all pretty much know one another, and when I looked over at the other tables, I noted the eclectic mixes. Everyone here is talking about it, how this meeting is like no other.
AAAS... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 11th June 2005 10:39 AM GMT] This morning came the talk that everyone had been waiting for - Princeton professors Peter and Rosemary Grant presented their 33-year project on the adaptive radiation of Darwin's finches on the Galapagos. When they took the stage, the local media surged forward as attendees packed the room.
Peter Grant began at the beginning: ?Two to 3 million years ago, an ancestral group of finches flew from the mainland to the islands at a time of great volcanic activity. They encountered an environment... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 10th June 2005 07:43 AM GMT] The first full day of the World Summit on Evolution: Galapagos 2005, on the island of San Cristobal, opened to a refreshed group of 150 biologists, representing 19 nations, just emerged from a travel-induced stupor. The talks went from the origin of life to human evolution, with various speakers calculating their rate of coverage at about 100 million years per minute.
Only a year in planning, the meeting is the brainchild of a handful of people, spearheaded by Carlos Montufar, president of... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 9th June 2005 03:39 PM GMT] I am sitting on the floor at Miami International Airport, laptop plugged into a post, scoping out the people waiting at the gate. Who are the other biologists in the crowd? Not the best or worst dressed, but probably the casual few with laptops perched atop well-worn jeans. We are headed to the Galapagos Islands for a four-day ?World Summit on Evolution?, hosted by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador. There will be 150 of us, all that San Cristobal can handle ? with accommodations... Click to continue
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