Category Archives: journal club

Christmas Science

Posted on December 24, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I bet you didn’t know that “the concept of Santa Claus’ features is an historical remnant from before the phylogenetic divergence between prokaryotes and eukaryotes“. The authors state that they “are further studying the Hoho2 transgenic Homo sapiens quadruplicates generated … Continue reading →

Posted in blog roll, journal club, original research, science, silliness | Comments Off on Christmas Science

Noooo! No more reading!

Posted on November 11, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

The new job is going really well so far. I feel as if I’ve been genuinely useful in my first week, which included an important postdoctoral fellowship application deadline. It’s been very intense though, which caused the inevitable dreams to … Continue reading →

Posted in career, journal club, personal, science, silliness | 3 Comments

Hooray for Mutation

Posted on October 28, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I’ve always tried to cover the most up-to-date research in my journal club series, but today’s paper is an exception. “Strong Selective Sweep Associated with a Transposon Insertion in Drosophila simulans“ was published in 2004, and I actually covered it … Continue reading →

Posted in creationism, evolution, journal club, original research, publishing, science | 4 Comments

Viral Sneakiness

Posted on October 17, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Viruses are fascinating little buggers. They sneak into cells and take over their entire machinery and pathways for their own use, sometimes with as few as three genes. The amazing thing is that every virus has evolved a different way … Continue reading →

Posted in journal club, original research, science, virology | 2 Comments

Watch a movie, use Google, get published

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

or “Stop that, it’s silly”.There’s been too much silliness around here. I mean, some daftness is necessary in life, but I realised today that the entire first page of this blog is curently made up of posts with the silliness … Continue reading →

Posted in journal club, original research, publishing, science | 2 Comments

Scientists Scrutinise Chimp Changes

Posted on August 16, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Today’s paper revisits a topic that seems to have become a recurring theme for this blog – the evolution of gene regulation. (It also involves primates, which is always a bonus). Ryuichi Sakate, from the Japanese Biological Informatics Consortium, and … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, journal club, original research, science | 2 Comments

Evolutionary Solutions to the Hairy Back Problem

Posted on August 7, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Some creationists like to complain about macroevolution. They claim that this microevolution stuff is all well and good, but when has it ever produced any kind of meaningful change at the whole organism level?This week’s paper is an excellent rebuttal. … Continue reading →

Posted in evolution, journal club, original research, science | 6 Comments

How to cushion a back-handed slap

Posted on July 31, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I’m currently sacrificing some of my usual posting time in order to accommodate an insanely busy schedule, so today’s paper is just a short medical case-study. It’s no less interesting for that though – in fact I’ve been meaning to … Continue reading →

Posted in case-study, freakishness, journal club, medicine | 2 Comments

HERVs and Multiple Sclerosis, part 2

Posted on July 27, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Well, after a short period of distraction, I have just finished reading the new paper from Christopher Power’s lab at the University of Alberta. This study follows on from an earlier paper that suggested a causal link between the expression … Continue reading →

Posted in journal club, medicine, original research, science, virology | 8 Comments

HERVs and Multiple Sclerosis, part 1

Posted on July 19, 2007 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I have a new paper sitting on my desk that I plan to summarise in the near future. The study investigates the relationship between syncytin, a human endogenous retroviral protein, and MS. I actually wrote a review of an earlier … Continue reading →

Posted in journal club, medicine, original research, science, virology | 3 Comments