In this video, we asked Dr. Carroll to share his thoughts on the current state of zinc finger nucleases, and where the technology is headed. He explains how ZFN’s are being used in a broad range of organisms, from Zebrafish to mosquitos. Then he comments on current clinical trials and the potential for ZFNs in plants.
Dr. Nicholson's work made it possible for so many to visualized complex bioprocesses
Donald Nicholson’s bio is the starting place for many of us…
The first time I saw the metabolic pathway maps, I was enchanted. They contained a road map for the secret inner workings of cells and biological systems.
The origin of a metabolic pathway map is quite fascinating, and a lot of work! I was lucky enough to get to speak with Donald Nicholson in person about how he came to create the first pathway maps. Watch the video of my conversation with Donald Nicholson!
Here is a brief overview of how to illustrate metabolic pathways in the 1960′s:
1- Type or print all the names and structures.
2- Construct the pathway by cutting out each individual pathway and sticking it on a piece of paper
3- Repeat annually.
This process required Dr. Nicholson to spend 9 months out of each year creating the Metabolic pathways charts.
Dr. Nicholson is also keeping up with the times. At the age of 80, he bought his first computer and has been working to create animated versions of his maps.
We salute this biolegend.
We have two more videos of Dr. Nicholson available covering how he first became interested in biology and his use of the Inborn errors of metabolism maps to capture the interest of his medical students, who up until that point, didn’t really like Biochemistry .
Dr. Dana Carroll is a household name, as he is one of the first scientists to use Zinc Finger Nucleases in genome editing.
This is the first in a series of blog articles profiling Dr. Carroll and his lab members. Each entry will contain a bit of information about Dr. Carroll, his views on science, and the work that is conducted by his lab.
In the video below, Dr. Carroll talks about the scientists he admires. Stay tuned to SigmaBioBlogs.com for more videos about Dana Carroll’s views on the future of ZFNs, Sigma’s role as a provider of nucleases, and much more.
Also, we recently profiled Dr. Carroll for our print newsletter, Biowire .
“Maybe today I’ll have the answer…” says Robert Townley, rebel grad student. Townley points to what drives scientists…a single perplexing question or problem. He and 2 other grad students in Shapiro’s lab are working to crystallize the elusive AMPK structure. As my Physiology teachers used to say “Structure points to function.” As soon as they know the structure its regulation can start to be determined.
To honor the stars of this documentary, we spotlight AMPK in Your Favorite Gene.
AMPK, AMP-activated protein kinase, regulates the activities of a number of key metabolic enzymes through phosphorylation. In Your Favorite Gene we have a map of 51 literature citations documenting AMPK’s interactions, 79 citations which I can filter by Enzyme Activation to narrow my search to 17 citations for AMPK and Enzyme Activation (which is why AMPK’s function intrigues Shapiro’s lab).
John Rinn is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, but not like the professors I remember. Those guys were 40 years older than me, and their knowledge was gained from 20-30 years in the lab. John Rinn knows cool skater and snowboarder lingo (moguls, lines, turns, trix), is the same age as me, and his bioknowledge comes from playing with new technologies to demonstrate the unthinkable.
His Nature publication on LincRNAs (large intervening non-coding RNAs) has RNA experts divided over whether or not non-coding RNA’s are functional. By developing technology to look closely at non-coding RNA’s, his lab has identified over 5000 LincRNAs (large intervening non-coding RNAs). They are functioning RNA’s that play a part in cell cycle regulation, and maintaining embryonic stem cell pluripotency. Dr. Rinn is also investigating epigenetic aspects, which he describes as Genomic Origami.
The beginning of bio for Rinn was not a direct path. He chose a university based on its proximity to mountains for snowboarding…and his life long hero is middle to long distance runner Steve Prefontaine…whose motto is “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift”
Thanks to his passion for new types of runs in snowboarding, Rinn injured himself and was bound to a hospital bed, and that’s where science really started to open up for him.
John Rinn gets some air
WBB: Where does Bio Begin for you?
JR: With coffee! I spend 9-10am typically as an hour of reflection.
WBB: Interesting. I’ve heard it said by more than one scientist that downtime is when great breakthroughs and ideas happen. Is that true for you?
JR: Yes. I actually get the best ideas when I go snowboarding. It’s then that I have the time for my mind to drift, and dream up new experiments.
WBB: So you feel that snowboarding and science go well together?
JR: Yes…In snowboarding, if you do the same thing over and over again…it just gets old. So you try different combinations of tricks…from a cliff to a mogul through trees to another mogul then jump off a cliff…that makes a beautiful run. It’s the same with experimentation, except this time instead of looking for lines down the mountain you are trying to uncover beauty and truth by combining different experiments. One experiment is not the key, it’s the “line of experiments”. You need a combination that is synergistic.
WBB: So snowboarding and science do have a lot in common!
JR: Yes! And pain is always a part of the learning. In snowboarding it’s injuries. In science it’s in negative experiments.
WBB: Be careful out there!
This post brought to you by the following Sigma Life Science Bioareas
It’s with great pride that we tell you Sigma Life Science is Where bio Begins.
To quote our VP of Marketing, Dr. Helge Bastian…“We want to help life science researchers address their research challenges and are committed, more than ever to support them on their way to new and revolutionary discoveries.”
Over the past decade, Sigma Life Science has built a repertoire of products and technologies to support the biological researcher. Part of our commitment to biology is to share our knowledge and resources with you.
If you’ve been following us over the last 30+ days, you have noticed that we are using social media as a means to get to know the biological community at a whole new level. We’ll continue this trend here. As we go forward look to sigmabioblogs.com for the skinny on new techniques, improving old techniques, exciting applications, war stories from technical services, and information about scientists from all over the bio community.
Here is a video of our President, Dave Smoller, to tell you the details.
Watch the video and then check out our great tools and techniques listed below.
We imagine Bio began for some Neanderthals when their forkhead domain of FOXP2 first mutated. This change impacted the transcription factor it coded, and the rest is history.
Of course it is sensational to say FOXP2 is the “speech gene”, or that one or two mutations lead to the development of speech, so we’ve made this sensational video to honor the idea.
Hopefully scientists will soon understand more about the cascade of changes that came from this mutation, the difference they made in neural connectivity, and all the physical changes that came before and after.
In the meantime, enjoy our homage to those mullets, I mean mutants, who could first speak.
In collecting stories, we came across Tejas and loved how his enthusiasm for Biology was ignited by the first teaching many of us had in Genetics. He remembers being fascinated in high school by ”Mendel and his Punnett squares, and his pea pods.”
It sparked our interest because when someone says “Genetics” now, the Where Bio Begins team immediately switches to the techniques of Next Gen Sequencing, the push for a “$1000 Genome“, and even Personalized Medicine.
If you search “#DNA” or “#genetics” on Twitter, you see that lay-tweeple (non-science twitter people) use the terms to reference traits, family quirks, and celebrity paternity cases. Mendel’s work is so relevant and well accepted 130 years later, it’s just an accepted part of who we are…even for people who’ve never counted Maize kernels.
Which causes us to speculate…what Bio-terms will be adopted by mainstream culture a century from now? Interactome? RNA interference? Gene silencing? Gene knockout?
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