Spent the weekend working on my poster / presentation for Mexico so I didn't have time to fix minor issues on the website (thanks to waffleck for the typo catch!). Maybe later tonight! And I still have to go the lab - hate it when the bus trip will take more time than the actual work I have to do.

Friday we had the weekly discussion on the "publish or perish" problem in Life Sciences (you have to publish papers regularly in order to get grants, and in ‘good’ journals, too – if you don’t, you lose your grants, can’t do research, can’t publish papers, and lose your job as a researcher) and while we all agree that it's a dumb system that brings lots of consequences, we all feel we can’t change a thing, or even propose a better system. It really stifles collaboration and discourages long-term projects and 'risky' ideas / hypotheses.

- DNA study of 'greatest racehorse'
- Donated brains 'in short supply'
- Lack of Sleep Affects Doctors Like Alcohol Does
- Group: Hippos face extinction in Congo
- US death rates fall, but not for all

A Mayo Clinic research team has devised a new virus-based gene therapy delivery system to help fight cancer. Researchers say their findings will help overcome hurdles that have hindered gene therapy cancer treatments.

Nano-sized carbon tubes coated with strands of DNA can create tiny sensors with abilities to detect odors and tastes, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Monell Chemical Sciences Center. Their findings are published in the current issue of the journal Nano Letters, a publication of the American Chemical Society.

A team led by University of California, San Diego biochemists has discovered the mechanism by which a simple organism can produce 10 trillion varieties of a single protein, a finding that provides a new tool to develop novel drugs.

Rosetta@home lets public participate in structure prediction.

Computers can predict the detailed structure of small proteins nearly as well as experimental methods, at least some of the time, according to new studies by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers.

When Dr. Susan Rosenberg, professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, first published her finding that the mutation rate increased in bacteria stressed by starvation, sometimes resulting in a rare change that benefited the bacteria, it was controversial.

University of California, San Diego biochemists have developed a computer program that helps explain a long-standing mystery: how the same proteins can play different roles in a wide range of cellular processes, including those leading to immune responses and cancer.