November 2010
15 posts
For example, the team created a circuit containing the gene for an enzyme that renders cells sensitive to the antiviral drug ganciclovir. They inserted a stop signal into the gene sequence, which prevents the cell from using the resulting messenger RNA to produce a working protein. But next to the stop signal they encoded a short stretch of RNA - an aptamer - that recognizes a signalling protein called beta-catenin, which is overproduced by some tumours. When the aptamer binds its target, it causes the cell to splice the messenger RNA in a way that removes the stop signal, allowing enzyme production.
Still getting amazed by recent developments in synthetic biology.
GeoGebra is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that joins geometry, algebra, tables, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package.
It’s a brilliant tool for researchers, teachers, students and basically everyone. You can run it online as well (or download it for free). The wiki section is also nice.
A report by Nature on the generation of global biological databases.
… Despite innovations, bio-wikis might not truly take off until scientists can get career-advancing credit for contributing to them … It’s not clear to scientists why they should spend time editing a wiki article if it just gets them kudos from a few geeks on Wikipedia.
Finalists for iGEM2010:
Slovenia, Peking, Cambridge, TU Delft, BCCS Bristol, Imperial College London
Congrats! Check out all the wiki pages. Many cool projects.
(presentations of finalists are running right now)
Lots of topics on iTunes U. I suggest Calibre to organize them.
Oxford University, The Open University, and Rice University are three of the first schools to release eBooks on Apple’s iTunes U, the part of the iTunes Store dedicated to offering free educational content.
