Search Results for: cell biology

Insightful interview with Arnold Caplan: Part 1: MSC history, nomenclature, & properties

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A few days ago I had a long, very enjoyable phone conversation with the father of the mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) field, Dr. Arnold Caplan. Dr. Caplan is Professor of Biology, Director Skeletal Research Center at Case Western. He coined the phrase “mesenchymal stem cell” in the late 1980s. I’m going to break the interview […]

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Great big picture talk on cancer by Edison Liu at UC Davis Cancer Center Symposium: cool ‘long tail’ concept

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Yesterday I managed to get to see a fabulous talk by Dr. Edison Liu, President and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory in Maine. I was able to squeeze it in, in between working on my R01 proposal and preparing for teaching histo to the med students here at UC Davis Med School. Dr. Liu was

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Handy BioMed Science Tools

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Chromatin/Genomics/Transcription Tools ChIP grade antibodies MOTIF enrichment tools for DNA analysis GREAT (Stanford) CEAS HOMER MEME ENCODE Promoter Array On-line Analysis Online Tiling Array Analysis ChIP-Seq data on-line Analysis Plant Tools Transfac UC Davis Genome Center Methylation tools Yeast tools Fly ChIP-chip database   General Science Tools Blast Search Genomic Blast Search ENSEMBL Blat Search

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Interview with NIGMS Director, Jeremy Berg, part 1: grant advice, meritocracy

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Berg-Heat-Shot

Obtaining research grant funding is a critical part of science, but the process seems to be getting more challenging each year. Funding rates are decreasing. Applicant frustration is increasing and many grant applicants tell me they feel confused about the differences between funded and unfunded proposals. The largest funder of biomedical research in the U.S.

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The case for required Bio 101 courses for politicians: Rep. Todd Akin

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UPDATED I think all politicians, before taking office, and every 5 years after taking office, should be required to take a basic biology class. Why? A clear understanding of biological processes is becoming more and more important in politics these days. At the same time we are seeing an increasing number of politicians making critical

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NASA’s wickedly up & down week: broader lessons about science & medicine

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All science, whether biology or physics, whether microscopic or at the solar system level, is about experiments. Sometimes we as a society forget that. In fact, experiments are at the heart of investigations as diverse as studying cells to exploring space to medical treatments. For NASA, the last week has been a tale of two

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Why aren’t there vertebrate super pygmies?

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Why aren’t there are super pygmy vertebrates? For most vertebrate animals, their early embryonic development unfolds in extremely congruent fashions. Embryo growth is stem cell-dependent and in large part, despite different gestational periods, the molecular and cellular machinery that controls vertebrate development is almost perfectly conserved. Yet at maturity vertebrates end up with a range

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