ENCODE: the rough guide to the human genome Back in 2001, the Human Genome Project gave us a nigh-complete readout of our DNA. Somehow, those As, Gs, Cs, and Ts contained the full instructions for making one of us, but they were hardly a simple blueprint or recipe book. The genome was there, but we had little idea about how it was used, controlled or organised, much less how it led to a living, breathing human. That gap has just got a little smaller. For years, we’ve known that only 1.5 percent of the genome actually contains instructions for making proteins, the molecular workhorses of our cells. It contains docking sites where proteins can stick and switch genes on or off. According to ENCODE’s analysis, 80 percent of the genome has a “biochemical function”. And what’s in the remaining 20 percent? That the genome is complex will come as no surprise to scientists, but ENCODE does two fresh things: it catalogues the DNA elements for scientists to pore over; and it reveals just how many there are. Where will it lead us?
How the Federal Reserve and Bank of England Are Fueling Massive Global Inequality “Following World War II, the U.S. dollar was adopted as the world's reserve currency against the wishes of the pre-eminent economist John Maynard Keynes," Joel Benjamin tells me, "cementing the economic and political power of the U.S. Federal Reserve." Benjamin works as the local authority manager for the U.K. campaign Move Your Money and is investigating how much public money authorities lost in the financial crisis. Founded in early 2012, Move Your Money — which has parallel groups like this oneoperating in the U.S. — has helped over 2 million people in the U.K. transfer their finances from unethical too-big-to-fail banks to smaller, safer institutions. The Federal Reserve holds a significant responsibility for the 2008 global crash, Benjamin explains. “The Fed is staffed by insiders from within the banking industry, and this determines its direction. A core aspect of the Positive Money campaign is to analyze and explain how money is created.
Cell biology Understanding cells in terms of their molecular components. Knowing the components of cells and how cells work is fundamental to all biological sciences. Appreciating the similarities and differences between cell types is particularly important to the fields of cell and molecular biology as well as to biomedical fields such as cancer research and developmental biology. These fundamental similarities and differences provide a unifying theme, sometimes allowing the principles learned from studying one cell type to be extrapolated and generalized to other cell types. Therefore, research in cell biology is closely related to genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, immunology, and developmental biology. Processes[edit] Movement of proteins[edit] Endothelial cells under the microscope. Each type of protein is usually sent to a particular part of the cell. Other cellular processes[edit] Internal cellular structures[edit] Techniques used to study cells[edit] Notable cell biologists[edit]
An integrated encyclopedia of DNA elements in the human genome : Nature Since 2007, ENCODE has developed methods and performed a large number of sequence-based studies to map functional elements across the human genome3. The elements mapped (and approaches used) include RNA transcribed regions (RNA-seq, CAGE, RNA-PET and manual annotation), protein-coding regions (mass spectrometry), transcription-factor-binding sites (ChIP-seq and DNase-seq), chromatin structure (DNase-seq, FAIRE-seq, histone ChIP-seq and MNase-seq), and DNA methylation sites (RRBS assay) (Box 1 lists methods and abbreviations; Supplementary Table 1, section P, details production statistics)3. To compare and integrate results across the different laboratories, data production efforts focused on two selected sets of cell lines, designated ‘tier 1’ and ‘tier 2’ (Box 1). Box 1: ENCODE abbreviations Integration methodology Transcribed and protein-coding regions In addition, we annotated 8,801 automatically derived small RNAs and 9,640 manually curated long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) loci17.
Major biological discovery…inside the Chernobyl reactor?? | Doug's Darkworld The abandoned town of Pripyat, the Chernobyl reactor in the background. There has been an exciting new biological discovery inside the tomb of the Chernobyl reactor. Like out of some B-grade sci fi movie, a robot sent into the reactor discovered a thick coat of black slime growing on the walls. Since it is highly radioactive in there, scientists didn’t expect to find anything living, let alone thriving. The robot was instructed to obtain samples of the slime, which it did, and upon examination…the slime was even more amazing than was thought at first glance. This slime, a collection of several fungi actually, was more than just surviving in a radioactive environment, it was actually using gamma radiation as a food source. Aside from its novelty value, this discovery leads to some interesting speculation and potential research. Possibly this could also be used to create plants or mushrooms that could grow in space, serving as a food source for space travellers. Like this: Like Loading...
The Cell and its Organelles Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates The Cell and its Organelles Play the Incredible Megacell Game About the game An ultracentrifuge is used for separating the organelles in the cell according to their size, shape and density. The Nobel Prize The 1974 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine developed methods that made it possible to see and identify organelles, the specialised compartments inside all our cells.Read More » Share this: Share on facebook Share on google_plusone_share Share on twitter More Sharing Services Share on email To cite this pageMLA style: "The Cell and its Organelles". Recommended: The Legacy of Alfred Nobel On 27 November 1895 Alfred Nobel signed his last will in Paris. Play the Blood Typing Game Try to save some patients and learn about human blood types! Unlocking the Secrets of Our Cells Discover the 2012 awarded research on stem cells and cell signalling. Contact E-mail us Press Sitemap A-Z Index Frequently Asked Questions Terms Follow Contact | Press | Sitemap | FAQ | Terms
Fighting about ENCODE and junk A red junk at Tsim Sha Tsui Alfonso Jimenez and Flickr On Wednesday, a handful of journals, including this one, released more than 30 papers describing results from the second phase of ENCODE: a consortium-driven project tasked with building the ‘ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements’, a manual of sorts that defines and describes all the functional bits of the genome. Many reactions to the slew of papers, their web and iPad app presentations and the news coverage that accompanied the release were favourable. But several critics have challenged some of the most prominently reported claims in the papers, the way their publication was handled and the indelicate use of the word ‘junk’ on some material promoting the research. First up was a scientific critique that the authors had engaged in hyperbole. It’s a big number, to be sure. The paper does drill down somewhat into what the authors mean by functional elements. It is an old argument, but it’s not clear that it is a dead argument.
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael S. Schneider As a youngster schooled in the US during the 1950’s Sputnik era I was exposed to the sciences, including NASA rocket launches, facts about the moon and planets, kitchen chemistry, supermarket encyclopedias and Mr. Wizard on television, and became very interested in all kinds of scientific wonders, with a passion for electricity and magnetism, chemistry sets, Erector sets, model rocketry, the microscope and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not books. However, I wasn’t an exceptional math student. Mathematics was mostly presented as the memorization of rules and boring paper drill, but I kept up. Yet in my mid-teens I became earnestly interested in the geometry of nature and began lifelong research into the subject, not suspecting everywhere it would lead. Absorbed in my research concerning the shapes of nature I decided to major in mathematics at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn to learn this language so that I wouldn’t be intimidated by any mathematics I encountered.
Ewan's Blog; bioinformatician at large: ENCODE: My own thoughts 5 September 2012 - Today sees the embargo lift on the second phase of the ENCODE project and the simultaneous publication of 30 coordinated, open-access papers in Nature, Genome Research and Genome Biology as well as publications in Science, Cell, JBC and others. The Nature publication has a number of firsts: cross-publication topic threads, a dedicated iPad/eBook App and web site and a virtual machine. This ENCODE event represents five years of dedicated work from over 400 scientists, one of whom is myself, Ewan Birney. I was the lead analysis coordinator for ENCODE for the past five years (and before that had effectively the same role in the pilot project) and for the past 11 months have spent a lot of time working up to this moment. There were countless details to see to for the scientific publications and, later, to explain it all in editorials, commentary, general press features and other exotic things. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A.
Drone Survival Guide Most of what you read was wrong: how press releases rewrote scientific history This week, the ENCODE project released the results of its latest attempt to catalog all the activities associated with the human genome. Although we've had the sequence of bases that comprise the genome for over a decade, there were still many questions about what a lot of those bases do when inside a cell. ENCODE is a large consortium of labs dedicated to helping sort that out by identifying everything they can about the genome: what proteins stick to it and where, which pieces interact, what bases pick up chemical modifications, and so on. Yet the third sentence of the lead ENCODE paper contains an eye-catching figure that ended up being reported widely: "These data enabled us to assign biochemical functions for 80 percent of the genome." This was more than a matter of semantics. To understand why, we'll need a bit of biology and a bit of history before we can turn back to the latest results and the public response to them. What we know about DNA, and when we knew it
166 Documentaries To Expand Your Consciousness Here is a list of over 100 documentaries you can watch for free online. They are about Science, Consciousness, ETs, you name it. It’s a smorgasbord of fascinating subjects to learn about. If you find a dead link please let us know and we will find another to replace it. 1. This list will never be complete! Featured image credits: Justin Totemical Art