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	<title>James and the Giant Corn</title>
	<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com</link>
	<description>Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:20:08 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>Food Nostalgia</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Nostalgia for the food of the past isn't something new. Of course the past is a moving target. Links to James McWilliams at the nytimes, and Michael Roberts at Greed, Green, and Grains]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/03/10/food-nostalgia/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Wow!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Who could have predicted maize geneticists would be so interested in maize genes? The entry I posted last night on Purple plant1 and Colored aleurone1 easily received more traffic in its first day on the site (it&#8217;s still got a long way to go before it catches long term readership attractors like water chestnuts and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/03/09/wow/</link>
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		<title>Scientific Posters</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m involved in the designing of two posters my lab will be taking to the maize meeting in a weeks time. What are scientific posters?
A cross between a very short paper and a very short, on demand, research seminar, a poster is a dozen square feet of scientific data. We grad students cobble together some [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/03/08/scientific-posters/</link>
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		<title>Two classical maize genes, synteny, and the mystery of the missing gene</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Colored aleurone1 and Purple plant1 are both genes with long histories in maize research and are involved in the regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis. The mutant version of purple plant1 does exactly what it sounds like. (In the proper genetic background) it has plants producing anthocyanin (a purple plant pigment) everywhere, resulting in purple plants. The mutant form of colored aleurone1 was identified from a mutant that changed the color of individual corn kernels. The two genes are also duplicates (homeologs) resulting from the maize whole genome duplication. More details, pictures of the mutant plants, a quick and interesting syntenic analysis and the mystery of the missing gene, in the full post.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/03/08/two-classical-maize-genes-synteny-and-the-mystery-of-the-missing-gene/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Hair Shirt Fallacy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just because something is unpleasant, doesn't make it good for you. Just because something is comfortable, doesn't make it bad for you. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/03/07/the-hair-shirt-fallacy/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Oliva Judson&#8217;s Salute to Grasses</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Talking up Olivia Judson (an English evolutionary biologist who has the trick of getting the general public excited about biology), her post on why grasses are so important in particular, and, for some reason bird's teeth (they wanted to slip in somewhere).]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/03/03/1501/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Most Studied Genes of Maize (and why we love kernel phenotypes)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Of the fifteen most studied genes in maize (cool graphical table included), thirteen can have kernel phenotypes when mutated. Why? Because of what a geneticist can tell from looking at a single ear of corn that shows such a mutant phenotype (details inside).]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/03/02/the-most-studied-genes-of-maize-and-why-we-love-kernel-phenotypes/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Corn Smut</title>
		<description><![CDATA[And no that doesn&#8217;t mean corn pornography*. Corn smut, or Ustilago maydis, is a fungus that infects corn plants. It&#8217;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&#8217;d been told ourselves), but this [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/02/27/corn-smut/</link>
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		<title>The Sacrifices People Make For Science</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/02/26/the-sacrifices-people-make-for-science/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>One MORE reason pineapples are awesome</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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&#8217;re letting carbon-dioxide in, plants also let water out.
CAM plants get around this water loss by collecting all their [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.jamesandthegiantcorn.com/2010/02/26/one-more-pineapple-is-awesome/</link>
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