Apologies for the long delay - I'm writing papers for publication. In the meantime, check out this comparison of CSI science vs real science at Forensic Science.

Science article for artificial life

Looks like the Science article for the artificial bacterial cell is publically available, so here's a link to the full text:

Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome - Gibson et al., 2010

For those who prefer PDF, look to the left of the article and you'll find a link.

Those of you who don't feel like going through it - no worries! My next post will be a breakdown of this article.

A genetics primer

When I write posts, I try to keep the jargon down to a minimum and explain the terms that I use. I don't want to turn this into a primer about genetics blog, as there are plenty of resources that exist. Of course, the problem is finding a good one when you aren't sure about your knowledge to begin with....

That being said, I recently stumbled across the Learn. Genetics^TM site, maintained by the University of Utah. Instead of the usual wall of text, they have little flash animations which make the info easier to absorb. There are also interactive modules and virtual labs so you can try out techniques that are used in laboratories during molecular studies. I have to admit to a certain amount of geeky glee as I cloned a virtual mouse.

I like this site well enough to put a link to it on the side. If you feel like playing around in a virtual lab and picking up some basic genetics, go check it out!

Is Race Genetic addendum

In my Is Race Genetic? series, I didn't really touch on the implications of using race as a way of telling if someone is more likely to be susceptible to certain diseases, or if they are going to respond adversely/favourably to a particular medical treatment. In case you're curious, here's a link to a paper called "Genetic variation, classification and 'race'" by Jorde and Wooding published in 2004*.

To quote the abstract:

New genetic data has enabled scientists to re-examine the relationship between human genetic variation and 'race'. We review the results of genetic analyses that show that human genetic variation is geographically structured, in accord with historical patterns of gene flow and genetic drift. Analysis of many loci now yields reasonably accurate estimates of genetic similarity among individuals, rather than populations. Clustering of individuals is correlated with geographic origin or ancestry. These clusters are also correlated with some traditional concepts of race, but the correlations are imperfect because genetic variation tends to be distributed in a continuous, overlapping fashion among populations. Therefore, ancestry, or even race, may in some cases prove useful in the biomedical setting, but direct assessment of disease-related genetic variation will ultimately yield more accurate and beneficial information.

When they get into examples, the jargon gets a little heavy but the main points they're trying to make are pretty good. If you've read my series, you'll probably want to scroll down to the section called "Genetic variation, race and medicine."

*Those of you who pay attention to detail will notice that this was published before Witherspoon et al.'s paper, which I talked about in the series. That's okay - I think their points still stand.