Way back in 2008 I wrote a brief blog article about the sequencing of the genome of a rather poorly unusual organism, Trichoplax adhaerens (What the heck is a Placozoan, anyway?). The interest there was that the genome had a… Continue reading →
Image via CrunchBase I’ve been trying to overhaul my reprint collection* and bibliography, using the Mendeley Research Networks system. Access to many journals comes via Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, which has been down for most of yesterday “for scheduled maintenance”. At the… Continue reading →
The latest issue of Genetics to flop onto my desk has a rather nice article by Sydney Brenner entitled “In the Beginning Was the Worm…“. This brief article (in the regularly excellent Perspectives section) presents an account of the origins… Continue reading →
Our paper describing a new allele of the Drosophila WRN-like exonuclease DmWRNexo and on it’s biochemical characterisation is finally out in print (its been available online for some time): Boubriak, I., Mason, P. A., Clancy, D. J., Dockray, J., Saunders,… Continue reading →
A bit of a rumpus about UK science funding policy erupted this week, following publication of a letter to the Times Higher about the move to increase the emphasis towards funding science with a more immediate benefit to the UK… Continue reading →
A paper in the current issue of Nature [Love et al (2009) Nature 457; 718-722] suggests that multicellular life existed about 100 million years before the explosion of bilaterian animals in the Cambrian. The evidence comes from analysis of rocks… Continue reading →
Quite a few of the bloggers at ScienceBlogs have been writing about an exciting new fossil find: a newly discovered fossil ancestor of whales. The exciting thing here is that the fossil contains the remains of foetal whales. Here’s the… Continue reading →
Just as I finish reading (or rather, re-reading) chapters concerning the fate of Easter Island (Rapanui) and of Henderson and Pitcairn Islands in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond, the 23rd January issue of Science… Continue reading →
Many tropical diseases are transmitted by insect vectors – malaria (which is caused by Plasmodium parasites) and yellow fever (caused by a virus) being examples of diseases transmitted by Anopheles and Aedes mosquitoes respectively. Dengue fever is another viral disease… Continue reading →
Yet another palaeontology blog post! This story roared round the internet just before Christmas (for example the BBC News story), but I found it interesting as a non-specialist in arachnid evolution or palaeontology, partly because of the methods used for… Continue reading →
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