And no that doesn’t mean corn pornography*. Corn smut, or Ustilago maydis, is a fungus that infects corn plants. It’s an old acquantance from my days working in the field. We always used to tell the new hires that corn smut was a rare delicacy in some countries (as we’d been told ourselves), but this [...]
Posts from ‘February, 2010’
The Sacrifices People Make For Science
My heart bleeds for those poor scientists forced to spend the week at Marco Island for the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference. Not only do they have to put up with temperatures in the 60s (~20 C) and views like the one attached, but consider the grueling workload they labor under even after [...]
One MORE reason pineapples are awesome
Pineapples use CAM photosynthesis. Normally plants have to open tiny holes in their leaves (called stomata) during the day to let in carbon dioxide that they use during photosynthesis. The problem they face is that when they’re letting carbon-dioxide in, plants also let water out. CAM plants get around this water loss by collecting all [...]
Ion Torrent Sequencing
I know absolutely nothing about their technology (they’ve been playing things much closer to their chests than Pacific Biosystems), but they just announced they’d start delivering their machines by the end of this year and that they’ll reveal the principles of their new technology in a talk on Saturday. Marco Island, Florida (where the Advances [...]
The Map Is Hopefully Fixed Now
WordPress keeps stripping the GoogleMaps embedding code out of the post, but if you go back to the previous entry the map should be visible.
Map of the Places That Get the First PacBio Sequencers
Map of the first ten places that will get pacific biosystems sequencing machines. The first “3rd generation” sequencing technology to arrive on the market (and one biologists like me have been drooling over for more than a year)
Science Confessions
Tweets by scientists about the funny/sad experience that is life in a research lab.
I’m done grading midterms
FREEDOM!!!! Of course this is Berkeley, so mid-terms come twice a semester. This is the other reason I’ve had so little time to post lately.
The Dragon Genome
Sequence the dragon genome! (Enjoy your Friday everyone)