CharonY

Or what they want us to believe they are thinking. I do not trust those sneaky bastards.

While it is pretty cool, I kind of dislike that science journalist really have to add things like "a situation unique to biology", as similar relationships have been described earlier. While I am not sure whether non-parasitic interactions of bacteria in bacteria are known, there have been plenty metabolic symbioses between say, protists and bacteria within arthropods are well known. But I guess this is more of a pet peeve of mine and should detract from the interesting points of the paper.

Actually I think that those engaged in the debate were as non-biased as possible. We had another thread discussing this topic a while ago and the basic reason is obviously that what the researchers found could fairly easily happen in nature. Understanding the underlying mechanisms would enable the development of improved vaccines. Without it, there would be no defenses. Honestly, I am more worried about novel naturally occurring viruses rather than man-made pandemics. While the latter certainly sounds much more dramatic, the prior has occurred already fairly often.

Depends on a lot factors, including complexity of the device and the underlying principles. Fundamentals are often established by analytical chemists and specialized areas of physics. They often do proof of principle work and papers. Engineers generally tend to pop up only in rather specialized areas (e.g. microelectromechanical systems) and often expand on those principles. Often not in the same depth (though obviously it really depends on the research focus of the respective groups) as analytical people, however. Engineers tend to play a much bigger role in the commercialization of these products, i.e. turning proof of principle or very base prototypes into a product that other people actually may want to use. This is generally done with application specialists that include, depending on the system, analytic chemists and/or bioanalytic experts. Software, unfortunately, tends to be slapped on the systems. Often it is an engineer tasked with building a workable driver with something like Labview and a slapped-on GUI with 60s aesthetics.

No, I agree, with current knowledge we cannot rule out that panspermia occured on Earth. Of course that means that someplace else abiogenesis must happened. That however, is relatively unrelated to the question of extremophiles as those are masters in living (and metabolizing) under extremely harsh conditions. But space would be too much for that. And conversely, known bacteria that produce spores are mostly mesophiles.

Actually myxospores normally only refer to spores of myxobacteria. The rest would commonly just be known as spores. Spores can likely survive exiting the atmosphere, but obviously there would be virtually no metabolism considering the lack of water and the low temperature, for starters.

I am not sure whether I understand the question. If you are asking about gens that are shared by everyone, then this would apply for most of our genome. if you mean allele variants, it would apply genes that are fixed (i.e. the existence of only one allele). I remember vaguely that I read in an old textbook that heterozygosity on the protein level was estimated to be around 10% (i.e. around 90% would be fixed or near-fixed). On the DNA level this would expected to be higher due (as not every DNA mutation would also change an amino acid). But this data is likely to be outdated as the book must have been printed sometime in the 90s, well before the large sequencing projects started to take off. But even assuming for a large margin of error, you would expect quite a lot of them being found around the globe.

I may be wrong, but from what I have seen (mostly in Trypanosoma) trailing flagellum really refers to the flagellum that is directed towards the posterior but not necessarily located there. So using Trypanosoma as example, there are two flagella located at the anterior, but one is directed forwards and another backwards, known as trailing flagellum. A posterior flagellum would always refer to on located at the posterior. In other words, one term refers to the direction, the second to the location.

swansont explanation is right on the spot. In biology we often assume steady state conditions for metabolic fluxes, which is obviously almost never true, but it allows to come to do calculations (of, say, flux into a certain metabolite) that we then can measure. The results will never be 100% identical, but it will help us to understand whether our current model is seriously lacking (if the deviation is huge) or reasonably accurate. Unfortunately that way of thinking is common in the science world, but sometimes teachers (and students) overlook that part because pre-college education tends to be too focused on simple right and wrong answers.

This is news to me. to you have a reference? Hong Kong and some other territories have picked it up, but mainland China would be a big surprise to me. The single largest country with English as official language is, to my knowledge, India.

In this context it is interesting to note that newspeak is a very reduced language aimed at the limitation of expression and forcing specific thought patterns. A constantly and freely evolving language would be almost the opposite to that.

Richet discovered anaphylaxis but his work never explained (and to date we do not know) why it occurs in certain individuals. Again, if the mechanism would work as you described, everyone would be allergic to all foods as the micro lesions in our gums would expose us to food proteins almost all the time. The real question is what leads to sensitization (and again, the exposure is only the trigger that has to work in conjunction with something else). If that is not shown, highlighting Richet's work is nothing more than an appeal to authority. Vaccine safety is important of course, but generally it is better to figure out where real problems and concentrate on strong links rather than speculations. Especially since no strong study exist to show that such a mechanistic link exists in the first place. One thing some are investigating is whether adjuvants can mediate immune responses in a negative way, but again, the links are so weak that it is unclear if any changes would really have any benefits whatsoever. The only strong data point we have are those that iNow highlighted. I.e. that vaccines do protect against diseases. For the others more studies are needed, though existing ones generally fail to find a link.

I find it disingenuous that you edited a cop/paste of a wikipedia article to make it appear as if food proteins automatically sensitize the immune system. The article highlights the process what happens IF sensitization, by whatever source occurs. The important point that is neglected by OP is that not everyone has allergies and the actual causes are far from known. What is clear is that simple exposure is insufficient (otherwise we would basically react to everything), but rather genetic links appear to be relevant as well environmental factor (as explored by the hygiene hypothesis, for example). Can vaccines trigger allergies? Certainly. Can they sensitize a person with a disposition? Yes just like any exposure can. Do they cause it? Certainly not directly via a simple molecular link as OP implies. One potential way is that certain vaccines may increase responsiveness to histamines, but these results are not well reproduced (and thus hint at a genetic basis for whatever may have happened). Another is again the hygiene hypothesis, i..e. vaccinated children have a lower infection burden and that may lead to higher rates of sensitization. Again, the studies are not terribly conclusive (and thus indicating that more complex factors are involved). Some studies did manage to correlate vaccinations with allergies, but many do not, the usual issue with epidemiological data. One issue is of course that allergies are still a relative rare event in the cohorts, i.e. most children are vaccinated, but only a very small sub-set actually develops allergies, whereas control groups of non-vaccinated children tend to be outliers of sorts (e.g. in isolated rural areas). One study found a weak correlation, but only in a sub-group children that rarely visit physicians. Those with more regular care showed no differences (McKeever et al. Am J Public Health. 2004).

I have seen those before. Absolutely fantastic and many beat the average instagram.

No. But that is because I secured a position that requires a PhD (in academia). The answer is will depend a lot on what the goals of the respective person is and in what position he/she ends up in. E.g. if you do not manage to get a tenured position in academia (over 80% of PhDs) you may still get a job in the market that requires one. I would think you would mostly regret it only if a) you hate the job you end up with or b) end up in a job that has no PhD requirement to begin with Relative to what? The PhD time itself was certainly not monetarily rewarding. The subsequent post-doc time was tough (a lot of moving that ate into money). Also up to the point where you are tenured you do not have a lot of stability (most postdoc positions are terms of 1-2 years). It is going to be tough if you have a family or intend to do have one. Potentially. I got decent citations on a number of my publications, including from my PhD time. But from that time there was nothing truly groundbreaking (nor did I expect it to be). Actually I was probably less specialized than my peers, I branched out fairly wide during my PhD and continued what could be considered multidisciplinary work throughout my postdoc time. And for what it is worth, it was fun. Being less specialized made it very easy for me to find postdoc positions, but made it hard to find a faculty position. Whether it was worth it depends highly on what you want to get out of it. If the question is something that intrigues you, it may be worth it on a personal level. If the area is something that scores you a job and that is your goal, it may be too. If it is an obscure topic that you do not like and does not open doors, probably not. For me personally I would have said a few years ago that I should have specialized. But now I got one of the rare jobs where it was finally an advantage. So my personal answer would have changed over time. Unless the job is something that has similar intellectual challenges to what I am doing today, probably not. Also, I am not good with using free time. This is actually not necessarily true. It may depend on university but most people I know/knew were on yearly contracts Moreover, depending on funding situation many faculty do not have the money for 4 years per student banked. Rather, they may have funding for two years for a student and then have to get funding for more after that. In the German and I believe also the Dutch system professors often have negotiated permanent positions in their group that they can allocate to students. But most have more students and rely on soft money, too. Whether you will have independence will depend a lot on your supervisor. Though I would agree that in a company you will have more restrictions.

Citation needed. Also, how did we survive until now and what types of antibiotics do all the other mammals use?

A couple of the questions are unclear to me. What does shopping mean, for instance? I would assume that pretty much everyone has to go grocery shopping, unless you are able to grow food yourself. With regards to dating, does going out with one's significant other count? Do you mean movies with or about scientists ?

It is still a rather obvious hint I will give you one answer, your assumption is wrong. It is not mouse. RNA polymerase does not initiate transcription (other enzymes are involved initiation), but it does the actual transcription. According to the opening question, if you look at the enzymes listed, do you see something missing?

DNA-dependent RNA polymerase

Well, quick answers generally do not help in understanding the subject as evidenced here (you are still missing crucial elements that you need to know to derive the answer), but you are certainly welcome.

Think more carefully, especially in terms of what what is present in the test tube. What do you need from to go from DNA to mRNA? And again, check what is already there...

Well from your answer I gather that you are not quite familiar with the whole process of protein biosynthesis. You have to thing your way through from DNA to protein and see where the bits and pieces come together. Hint: read up transcription. Thinking in rough terms such as instructions obscure the mechanisms behind it and won't allow you to understand the process.

Well, sounds like homework, so let me ask you this: if you have a polypeptide, how would you know of which origin it is? Based on that, what is the proximate element that determines it? How far is DNA away from that point and what is needed for your answer to be true?

While it is understandable that they may not like that US-agencies are using their data, the European intelligence services also do similar things. At the very least foreign calls made in Germany are (officially since 1994) routinely screened and were sometimes freely shared with the police. Though after a court ruling they were only allowed to do so if there was suspicion of criminal intent. While the scope is limited to calls into foreign countries, i would not be surprised if they also got more. in addition, many intelligence agencies in Europe still have strong ties to the US agencies (cold war and everything..), so I am kind of inclined to believe that most parties already know about it and that this is more a political move.

Several of the pockets appear to be damaged (have to be careful when pulling the comb out and do not poke the gel when you load it), Considering the quality of the gels I would also renew the buffer and make doubly sure that the agarose was completely dissolved before pouring.