Why is it that those who borrow 99% of their ideas from Plato, Augustine and Aquinas are "sheep"…

while those who borrow 99% of their ideas from Nietzsche, Marx and Freud are "free thinkers"?

Let's get back to biology. The latest from Mike Gene's blog:

[Caveman ask that somebody do that magic thing with links]

Setting up a culture of cells is a relatively simple task. All you need is some media, which would be a solution that contains all the ingredients needed for cell growth, and some cells, obtained from another previous culture. Put simply, you fill a container with media and add a small amount of cells. These cells then do what cells do – they divide and form a large population of cells over time. In other words, the machinery within the cells converts the simple biomolecules in the media into new cells.

But now I have a puzzle for you. Read the rest of this entry »

For people who want to discuss the question of what Jesus claimed about himself. I changed the title from "Open Thread" to the above, to avoid confusion with Joy's "Open Thread."

Discussion on the lengthy Remarkable Nucleotides thread has become unwieldy, as well as not much about remarkable nucleotides anymore. This thread serves for continuing sidelines off-topic there - OoL and ET scenarios primarily, as well as physical diversions.

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Yep. That's the headline. Whole thing reads…

Biology Enters 'The Matrix' Through New Computer Language

Bradford posted about a Protein Folding Game, where scientists are hoping humans turn out to be more efficient than computer modeling programs have been at functional folding. This article is about a new computer language that can mimic the 'mind' of a cell.

Yep. You read that right. Enter "Little b," working off an AI programming language called LISP…

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"The success of Darwin's theory…stems from the manner in which Darwin's theory has been successfully used to guide research and generate insights into biology. Such research and insights have, in turn, generated much circumstancial evidence that supports the Darwinian thesis." (Mike Gene in his book, The Design Matrix; a Consilience of Clues, p.26). Read the rest of this entry »

Is a birthday coming up? Anniversary? Do you like computer games? Biology? If you answered yes to the last two consider Foldit. Consider this- How does my game playing contribute to curing diseases? From the site:

We’re collecting data to find out if humans' pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more efficient than existing computer programs at pattern-folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, we can then teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins faster than ever!

This may be a more entertaining approach to protein folding than the prior blog on Stylus.

In their PLOS One paper titled Stylus: A System for Evolutionary Experimentation Based on a Protein/Proteome Model with Non-Arbitrary Functional Constraints, Douglas D. Axe, Brendan W. Dixon and Philip Lu of the Biologic Institute, introduced new software known as Stylus. Stylus is intended to more realistically model proteins and evolutionary constraints with more accurate linkage of protein structure to function. The nature of some current models, compromises accurate assessments of protein transition possibilities and the mapping of sequences to changes in function.

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Mike Gene doesn't post here any more, for family reasons. So I thought I would post the latest from his blog, The Design Matrix:

Recent research concerning tyrosine kinases continues to strengthen the case for front-loading evolution:

When it comes to cellular communication networks, a primitive single-celled microbe that answers to the name of Monosiga brevicollis has a leg up on animals composed of billions of cells. It commands a signaling network more elaborate and diverse than found in any multicellular organism higher up on the evolutionary tree, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered. Read the rest of this entry »