Classic #biology #humor #paper, “Can a biologist fix a radio?—Or, what I learned while studying apoptosis”, by Lazebnik, 02002. “Eventually, I thought of the old broken transistor radio that my wife brought from Russia (Figure 1). Conceptually, a radio functions similarly to a signal transduction pathway in that both convert a signal from one form into another (a radio converts electromagnetic waves into sound waves). My radio has about a hundred various components, such as resistors, capacitors, and transistors, which is comparable to the number of molecules in a reasonably complex signal transduction pathway. I started to contemplate how biologists would determine why my radio does not work and how they would attempt to repair it. Because a majority of biologists pay little attention to physics, I had to assume that all we would know about the radio is that it is a box that is supposed to play music.”
on 02026-04-29ATP synthase efficiency is higher at a constant rate. #biology #toread
on 02025-10-11Avocado seeds and horseapples may be relics from megafauna dispersal. #biology #ecology
on 02016-10-11Deep subsurface microbes are probably the majority of the #biosphere’s biomass, as deep as 2.8 km. “Subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems” or “SLiMEs”. Some of these are as dense as 100 million cells per gram; cell division may occur once per decade or once per century. Distinguishing live cells from dead ones is often impossible. #biology #ecology
on 02016-10-11#Visualization of the properties of different fluorescent proteins useful in molecular #biology, cc-by.
on 02016-09-04discussion of #syn3.0 #genetics #biology
on 02016-06-22The J. Craig Venter Institute has created “JCV-syn3.0”, a reduced Mycoplasma mycoides with only 473 genes in 531 kilobases, of which they know the functions of two thirds; this is simpler than the simplest known autonomous natural life, Mycoplasma genitalium, which has 525 (?) genes. Its doubling time is about 180 minutes. #genetics #syn3.0 #biology
on 02016-06-22A brilliant #animation about #biology.
on 02015-10-29