Assistant professor, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health. Age: 37

Invertebrates with vertebrate-like vision challenge the idea that the two groups of organisms have distinctly different visual receptors

Cracking the Secrets of Posttranslational Modifications

By Amy Maxmen Proteins Adorned Cracking the secrets of posttranslational modifications © Shunyu Fan / Istockphoto.com (inside protein molecule) Cells do what proteins tell them to do. But sequencing DNA or running microarrays won’t reveal a protein’s mandate. During and after translation, enzymes, lipids, proteins, and sugars decorate the amino acids of the newly synthesized protein. As a result of these alterations, proteins encoded by the same

By Amy Maxmen Playing Up the Single Life Single-cell applications to help you explore the tiniest great unknown As researchers probe deeper into cell physiology, they are increasingly bumping into cells’ individual personalities. Identical genetic material and location, it seems, doesn’t prevent two cells from behaving differently, and in some cases this intercellular variation changes cell function and fate. Fluctuations within individual cells may

They pose with famous musicians to excite the public about science, but not everyone thinks it's working

By Amy Maxmen A model relationship Scaptomyza flava mating on Arabidopsis thaliana Courtesy of Noah K. Whiteman University of Arizona biologist Noah Whiteman wasn’t looking for treasure in the dog park where he regularly exercised his hyper Hungarian sporting dog, Tilla, during his postdoc days at Harvard between August 2006 and January 2010. But that’s what he found when he spotted mustard-yellow flowers with bumpy leaves while following Tilla d

By Amy Maxmen Harnessing the cloud Free platforms for powering your genomics and proteomics data analysis using processing power rented in the sky No longer must biologists covet the computer clusters of their colleagues. Cloud-computing—computing power accessed over the Internet—lets biologists without their own computer cluster store and analyze floods of data. The main space for rent is on Amazon Web Services (AWS), where, for less than $1 per hour

While connecting SNPs to playful traits such as curly hair and optimism, 23andMe reveals loopholes in the regulation of genomics research