A common creationist debating tactic is to sneer at science, saying something like “It changes all of the time! Scientists can never make up their mind, and often times they’re wrong! Why would you want to trust something that admits it could be wrong?” And my response is usually to laugh, because that’s precisely what …
Category Archive: genetics
Jul 06 2011
Attention Seattle science fans!
The Department of Genome Sciences at UW (aka, mine!) is starting its summer public lecture series, Wednesdays at the Genome. Tonight is the first talk on “Recent adventures in human evolution” by Dr. Josh Akey. I did one of my lab rotations with Josh, and I can assure you it’ll be an interesting, fun presentation. …
Apr 11 2011
I just bought my genome!
Well, kinda sorta. 23andMe, one of the more popular personalized genomics companies, is having a DNA Day sale today. Usually the price to get your genome analyzed (more on this in a bit) is $199 for the kit and $9 a month for a year for their update service – where they’ll rerun your data …
Apr 06 2011
You know what else has unique human DNA like a fertilized egg?
Cancer. Just sayin’. Science aside of the day:Well, and T lymphocytes. “T cells” are a type of white blood cell involved in the immune response. They’re special because they undergo something called somatic recombination. Try to remember back to high school biology. During meiosis (the formation of gametes) there’s a step where Chromosome 1 from …
Jan 24 2011
Genetics will not be used to abort straights OR gays
Not because of ethics, necessarily, but because of science. Genetics is complicated. This is a concept that all non-scientists, regardless of political leaning, seem to have a hard time grasping. I’ve heard liberals who are worried that advances in genomics will result in a simple prenatal test, which bigots would gobble up to make sure …
Jan 13 2011
More quotes from the lab
There’s another first year graduate student rotating in the same lab that I’m rotating in, though he’s working on a different project from me. How do our projects differ, you ask? 1st Year: *talking to another labmate about something completely off topic*Post doc: Hey, that’s five minutes you just wasted that could have gone toward …
Jan 06 2011
Grad school is hard
Obvious statement of the day, I know. But grad school is also pretty cool. The new quarter has started, and here are my classes: Advanced Genetic Analysis (first half) – basically how to set up experiments using a bazillion different genetic tricks in order to investigate, well, anything. You know how cool it was solving …
Dec 05 2010
This is what I do in lab
From xkcd:What, you think we learn something from staring at all those As, Cs, Ts, and Gs? Nah, we just want to freak you out. …Now, back to doing genetic tests :\
Dec 03 2010
End of semester madness!
What am I up to? I’m writing a “fake” research proposal for one of my classes on doing a genome wide association study and exome sequencing to search for genetic components of homosexuality. I say “fake” because it’s a project for a class, not something I’m actually submitting to the NIH or NSF. Well, I …
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