Molecular motors generated from Nanorex, Inc. NanoEngineer-1.
(via realfakescientist)
We Petition The Obama Administration To:
Repeal The Sequester’s Cuts On NASA’s Spending In Public Outreach And Its STEM Programs
The Sequester’s recent cuts on NASA’s spending in public outreach and its STEM programs must not be allowed. These cuts would end the many programs NASA has for educating the children of our society, as well as many other forms of public outreach held by NASA.In an internal memo issued on the evening of Friday, March 22, the Administration notes that “effective immediately, all education and public outreach activities should be suspended, pending further review. In terms of scope, this includes all public engagement and outreach events, programs, activities, and products developed and implemented by Headquarters, Mission Directorates, and Centers across the Agency, including all education and public outreach efforts conducted by programs and projects.”
Created: Mar 22, 2013
Signatures needed by April 21, 2013 to reach goal of 100,000
(via scientificthought)
Tuberculosis has declined globally over the past decade, but drug-resistant forms of the bacteria have emerged around the world.
This type of TB is super tough to treat. It often requires two years of strong antibiotics, which have horrible side-effects, like hearing loss. Even then, there’s no guarantee of a cure.
Nature’s Leigh Phillips explains how the formidable bug rose up in Russia and Eastern Europe:
Experts agree that the biggest driver for the growth in drug-resistant TB has been the deterioration in some countries’ health-care infrastructures, including TB programmes, since the 1990s — particularly in the former Soviet bloc…In a stroke of bad luck, the virulent and often drug-resistant ‘Beijing’ strain of TB, identified in 1995 in China, swept through Russia and eastern Europe just as the region’s public-health provision was being dismantled.
Read more in Phillip’s feature article on drug-resistant TB.
Map by Nature.
(via realfakescientist)
T-bacteriophages on E.coli.
Coloured Transmission Electron Micrograph (TEM) of T-bacteriophage viruses attacking a bacterial cell of Escherichia coli. Seven virus particles are seen (blue), each with a head and a tail. Four of these are “sitting” on the brown bacterial cell and small blue “tails” of genetic material (DNA) are seen being injected into the bacterium. T-bacterio- phages are parasites of bacterial cells. The virus attaches itself to the cell’s wall and, using it’s tail as a syringe, injects it’s own DNA into the bacterium. The virus DNA then takes over the bacterial cell, forcing it to produce more viruses. Magnification: x63,000 at 5x7cm size.
(Source: lespritmodestee, via vetstudent-microbiologymaniac)
I pray that I’m back, and so I get to scream like george costanza, “I’m back baby!”
this, my lemon drops, is a great example of robust protein priming…the top bands are at least. what you see is the beta particles emitted from the alpha P32 labeled dATP, my radioactive label. it gets incorporated into the newly synthesized cDNA via the reverse transcriptase. the protein covalently attached to the full length cDNA product is about 120 kDa in size; that’s the top band. the bottom smear if you will, is snapped-back RNA primed cDNA products, with labeled dA incorporated. the RNA template folds onto itself, forming a secondary structure and it acts as it’s own primer.
you see, the polymerase that I study is one of a kind. it selectivity for DNA synthesis initiation is extremely flexible, yet has it’s limits. it’s the only polymerase with the ability to use RNA, DNA or protein to prime DNA synthesis. just in this gel, you see two example of DNA synthesis initiation, and the final products (protein and RNA used as primers).
I do this before I use my partially purified RT in other significant experiments, to gauge activity and equalize how much to use per reaction for further experiments; hence, this is a check of activity, with and without RNA template (the negative control are the lanes with no template, designating that no product was synthesis, as there shouldn’t be any to begin with).
