CharonY

The best way would actually be to sterilize males, instead of females. Really, why only focus on women?

Ion exchange with post-column derivatization is pretty much standard, so it should work fine. It would be more or less a standard LC setup, though. Quantitative thinlayer chromatography is an alternative, but much less accurate.

Vitamin C generally does not cause complications, it is mostly eliminated via urine. Vitamin A has actually a higher risk of accumulating in adipose tissue.

Since the OP was from nine years ago, chances are that he/she likely already got a PhD or maybe even a real job .

Yet, this sub-forum is about politics. A thread in which one would congratulate someone (who is never going to read it) would be more of a a lounge discussion, no? One should also note that in contrast to many European countries the US system is not set up to be a oppositional system, but rather requires consensus to do anything. Abandoning bipartisanship would severely cripple the nation. It should be noted that the actual policy-making of the Republicans tends not to be that crazy as the stories you hear may make you believe. Partially also due to the consensus-building system.

Depends a lot on what you aim to extract. An individual protein, a selection of proteins or whole proteome? Also are they supposed to retain activity?

What is being stated is that under current conditions, it is unlikely to happen (or at least not at any significant scale). For this, we do have quite a bit of evidence. First, we can assume, as already mentioned, that existing organisms would readily cannibalize simple organic molecules that may be created via abiogenesis. Second, we do not have evidence of metabolic activities (or any other evidence for that matter) that hints at novel organism that may have arisen due to abiogenesis. I.e. all detected organisms and their activities show a common lineage. Calculations are not all based on first principles. We can use existing data and model it (which is common for complex questions). If there was large scale abiogenesis of novel organisms, evidence of them must exist somewhere. As of yet, there is no real need to add novel chemistry to understand nutrient cycles, for example. Based on that we can assume that if it happens, it must be highly limited and highly isolated (the latter due to our knowledge on how effective organisms are at sequestering biomolecules). In other words, if we speculate about abiogenesis under conditions other than current Earth conditions, you are right, we do not know. But for what we can observe now, the evidence indicate low probabilities. Regarding methane, while it is not my field, I assume that methane was used as an indicator for life because the assumption was that without a biological source it would dissipate rapidly from the atmosphere. The path to methanogenesis could potentially be diverse, depending on the chemical environment. And obviously life could arise without the development of methanogenesis at all.

From what the website says it is pretty standard, except that it has no internal sensor to adjust for larger volumes (what chearson referred to). For volumes up to 1l it may not make much of a difference as this is the liquid used within the system, anyway. In some cases a little bit of optimizing the time could be necessary, but then it looks too small for any large volumes, anyway.

Technically, cells are also "just" bags with chemicals in them. It is again important to realize that definitions such as life are arbitrary and lines are drawn pretty much in dependence on viewpoint and context. From a biochemical perspective oftentimes one would add viruses. From a genetic and molecular biological perspective it depends on how much you emphasize metabolism and physiology. My specialty is closer to the latter and due to the limited physiological potential of viruses as opposed to even the simplest cells, I generally do not count them to the same group. Also, I have strongly genomic-driven view, which would categorize viruses in my mind more strongly to mobile genetic elements (though a similar approach but with a more evolution-centric perspective might see it different). But in the end it boils down to semantics as the tag "alive" does not really add any crucial information in most cases.

The simplest photosensors essentially consist of proteins that are able to absorb photons and elicit regulatory changes within the cell. As such the most basic transition could be from a precursor (membrane) protein towards something with enhanced photosensitivity, for example.

No, genome refers to all the genetic information, not only to genes. It also includes intergenic regions (with or without regulatory functions) as well as potential open reading frames or genes with unknown functions, etc. What you refer to are differences on the sub-gene level, i.e. allele differences. Alleles are varieties of the same gene, not different ones.

Sorry for the lab lingo, pABA is short for p-aminobenzamidine. It is more commonly linked to sepharose and my brain must have filled it in. Whether columns or tubes, it is still affinity purification. But it will depend on the precise protocol and material being used.

The genome is defined as the complete set of all the genetic information withing a given cell. This includes the chromosome as well as extrachromsomal structures such as e.g. plasmids. Extending the use to the species level (i.e. human genome) is generally only used to contrast it with a different species. Usually higher-level features are discussed rather than differences on the base-pair level. Note that the woman from Norway will have the same genes as an Australian Aborigiene. There are going to be allele variants, however. The same could be said, when sequencing and comparing two Norwegians. Again, the genome can be used on several levels, down to the exact base composition (e.g. when reporting the genome of a particular cell strain) but also in a more abstract sense. Context is important to figure out whether the genetic composition of individuals or groups are being discussed.

From what I see it does not appear that the White House actually issued a lie. From the Reuters link It rather seems that there was a bit of uncertainty and someone may have (for whatever reason) made a connection with the video (possibly because of the twitter message before as well as during the attack).

This should not happen, unless your protein in question has an affinity to pABA. Did you use commercial columns? And if so, followed the manufacturer's instructions?

There is not enough information. Cell lysis generally occurs due to destabilization of the membrane and different compounds may have different modes of action. Pure water can, for example, result in lysis of red blood cells. The effect is quite different from e.g. using detergent. Most certainly the MW only plays a minor role (unless you are discussing a specific class of lysis agents).

A simple test (provided the ligation mix is concentrated enough) is to run the ligation on a gel, to ensure that it worked. Alternatively a few controls, such as re-ligated vector, test for competence of cells (it appears that you have done this one already) etc. could be run, just to be sure that all the components are working. If everything works out fine, there is a good chance that Kneeanderthal is correct, the insert maybe harmful to the cell. Depending on what you want alternatives to temperature are using low-copy plasmids are a different host.

As usual, do not take medical advice on fora seriously. Well, microscopic observations are somewhat dependent on experience. Gram generally stains Gram+ bacteria and fungi but from size alone they should be easily distinguishable. Anything more detailed than that can be tricky. That being said, if the sample was well prepared, PCR is way more sensitive, and should at least taken into consideration for the analysis (but sampling procedure is important). It is probably a good idea to get some second opinions.

Ah yes, the giant viruse thingy. Excitement has died down a little bit. But to me the whole thing was more like PR thingy to garner more excitement. Personally I still consider them to be not alive but being mobile genetic elements, as they are basically replicators and have no metabolic activities to speak of. The fact that other virus can affect it, does not give much reason to reconsider this. Using a similiar logic you could call plasmids to be alive, as their structure can be altered by a number of other mobile elements, such as transposons and integrons. What I do agree with, is that the boundary is artificial to begin with. However, this distinction can be quite useful in discussing certain things. Keeping things alive is a good example, as it generally implies that one has to cater for certain residual metabolic activities (especially during resuscitation) whereas in the other case we would be thinking more in terms of structural integrity. But obviously their are always borderline examples that defy it.

There are several issues and depends on what kind of results you need (i.e. the actual analytical application) as well as the nature of the sample. As you already mentioned, contamination (not only proteins, but everything else that absorbs at near UV) will confound results. The less purified your sample, the larger the error. Especially if separation is not ideal beforehand, this is a big issue. The next is sensitivity. Depending on the aromatic components of your protein, it will absorb more or less. In some cases, where you only got minute amounts, it will be below detection limit. As a general rule of thumb, protein quantification via UV/Vis is quite ok, if you are within the dynamic range of the assay, and have a very pure sample (including buffer/solvents). For other things, colorimetric assays often have better sensitivity and/or robustness, or even MS (which requires a bit more work).

Just as a sidenote, none of the responses on this (or any other public forum for that matter) are "official" in any way. Some responses are extrapolations of existing knowledge, some may come from experience. That being said, major degradation effects are, as already mentioned, due to light, temperature, humidity and oxidation, depending on the composition. One good way to store is using a desiccator (essentially a jar that has a sorbent material such as silica, and flush it with an inert gas, such as nitrogen. PET such as mylar are decent gas and water permeability barriers, but you should be aware that a bit is still leaking through. They are for instance not suitable where you truly need anoxic conditions. Over years stuff is bound to happen.

Technically, horizontal gene transfer is uncoupled from reproduction and is therefore not a replacement. Before the rise of sexual reproduction, the mechanisms for the transfer of genetic information between different individuals and reproduction were quite independent of each other.

Hmmm. In both cases you get issued underwear?

Just by looking at colonies (without use of selective and/or indicator agar) it is generally not possible to reliably identify bacteria. TA is pretty much non-selective (though not super-rich, either). Random guesses would probably include Pseudomonas and corynebacteria, as you can find them pretty much everywhere.

There is no fixed form to which you have to adhere. I would put research higher up and without details I do know how related experience would differ from related skills. Another thing to remember is to keep it short and concise. Few like to read through a lot of fluff.