Sandwalk

Today is the 50th anniversary of my Ph.D. oral defense. The event took place in the Department of Biochemical Sciences at Princeton Universi...

Should universities remove online courses that contain incorrect or misleading information? There are lots of scientific controversies...

I've been reading Philip Ball's book on "How Life Works" and I find it increasingly frustrating because he consistently de...

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is arguing against junk DNA by claiming that the human genome ...

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is arguing against junk DNA by claiming that the human genome ...

That's part of the title of podcast by Kat Arney who interviews Matthew Cobb [ Double helix double crossing? What really happened betwee...

I just learned that Don Voet died on April 11th, 2023. Don and Judy Voet were the authors of one of the most successful biochemistry textbo...

It was 70 years ago today that the famous Watson and Crick paper was published in Nature along with papers by Franklin & Gosling and Wi...

In spite of what you might have read, the human genome does not contain one million functional enhancers. The Sept. 15, 2022 issue of ...

A few months ago, the press office of the University of California at San Diego issued a press release with a provocative title ... Illu...

The generation of ATP in mitochodrial membranes is driven by the energy from a protonmotive force caused by the movement of protons from a h...

Richard ("Rick") Young is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Whitehead Insti...

It was 68 years ago today that the famous Watson and Crick paper was published in Nature along with papers by Franklin & Gosling and Wi...

When doing an exeriment, it's important to keep the number of variables to a minimum and it's important to have scientific controls ...

The key features of the mRNA vaccines are the use of modified nucleotides in their synthesis and the use of lipid nanoparticles to deliver t...

The Central Dogma of molecular biology states ... ... once (sequential) information has passed into protein it cannot get out again (F....

The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) is a large-scale, and very expensive, attempt to map all of the functional elements in the human g...

Cytokines are a diverse groups of small signal proteins that act like hormones to turn on genes in blood cells and cells of the immune syste...

I've thought a lot about how to define the word "gene." It's clear that no definition will capture all the possibilities b...

The term "Function Wars" refers to the debate over the meaning of 'function,' especially in the context of junk DNA. 1 Th...