Category: Uncategorized

GREAT UNKNOWN. “Nearly half the genes of higher eukaryotes are proteins of unknown function or non-coding genes that await functional characterization.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

FUNCTIONAL CHARACTERIZATION. “High throughput screening methods for protein-coding genes, or computational predictive approaches in the case of non-coding transcripts might help to speed up functional characterization but are still at their infancy and far from being generally applicable.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

MICROBIOME STUDIES. “While we are accumulating large metagenomic datasets and cataloguing bacterial genomes that make up the different parts of the human microbiome in normal and diseased individuals, it is still very difficult to connect the presence or change in frequency of specific bacterial species with the associated phenotypes.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

DRUGS AND GENES. “The new field of pharmacogenomics seeks to understand the interactions between drugs and individuals' genotype. For example about 14% of the population carry the *2 allele of the cytochrome P450 CYP2C19 that prevents the proper processing of the anti-clotting drug clopidogrel (Plavix) and thus renders the drug ineffective.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

IMMORTALITY is a convenient way to skip the thorn of death. What is the biological function of death? Is it really widespread in nature or are there exceptions? View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekend Fragments, looking at nature through the lens of time. These samples serve to illustrate the issue. Next weekend is a deeper dive into the implications of biological time. View in LinkedIn

CHRISTIANS have a quaint and pervasive obsession with the subject of immortality. It can be described as the triumph of hope over experience, or an untestable hypothesis. View in LinkedIn

DIFFERENT TIME REALITIES. A virus is seemingly happy to wait for millennia for a good time to awaken; plants famously live at slower paces than man; and a bacteria divides every 12 hours. View in LinkedIn

"WORLD, world, O world!" "But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee," "Life would not yield to age." " "(Edgar, Act 4, Scene 1), King Lear, by William Shakespeare. https://lnkd.in/eVsTRgw View in LinkedIn

TIME WARP. As the foregoing videos illustrate, an anthropomorphic time perspective can really miss another reality that occupies a slower time scale; and faster time scales such as the big bang can only be cartoonized for us. Our time window is a type of mental blinder that limits a bigger reality. View in LinkedIn