Bacteria Fossils in Meteorites

When I first heard about the discovery of fossil bacteria in meteorites I immediately read the paper in the Journal of Cosmology [Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites: Implications to Life on Comets, Europa, and Enceladus]. The first thing I noticed was that this "journal" seemed to be of very low quality. A little bit of digging revealed that it was some sort of online journal that publishes just about everything.

The second thing I noticed was that the evidence of fossils in these meteorites was not convincing. It seemed like the author, Richard B. Hoover, was not being very skeptical about what he was seeing. I dismissed the paper, it was almost certainly not true.

Lot's of other people reached the same conclusion.

Ian Musgrove at The Panda's Thumb [Life from Beyond Earth on a Meteorite, or Pareidolia?] [Commentaries posted at Journal of Cosmology]

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy [Followup thoughts on the meteorite fossils claim]

PZ Myers at Pharyngula [Did scientists discover bacteria in meteorites?]

Rosie Redfield at RRResearch [Is this claim of bacteria in a meteorite any better than the 1996 one?]

The Journal of Cosmology has now published 21 commentaries on the paper and only two of them are the least bit critical or skeptical of the results. That inspired the journal to insert this statement in the introduction to the article.

Official Statement The Journal of Cosmology,
Have the Terrorists Won?
Only a few crackpots and charlatans have denounced the Hoover study. NASA's chief scientist was charged with unprofessional conduct for lying publicly about the Journal of Cosmology and the Hoover paper. The same crackpots, self-promoters, liars, and failures, are quoted repeatedly in the media. However, where is the evidence the Hoover study is not accurate?

Few legitimate scientists have come forward to contest Hoover's findings. Why is that? Because the evidence is solid.

But why have so few scientists come forward to attest to the validity? The answer is: They are afraid. They are terrified. And for good reason.

The status quo and their "hand puppets" will stop at nothing to crush debate about important scientific issues, and this includes slander, defamation, trade libel... they will ruin you. Three hundred years ago, they would burn you for questioning orthodoxy. Has anything changed?

The scientific community must march according to the tune whistled by those who control the funding. If you don't do as you are told, if you dare to ask the wrong questions, they will destroy you.

JOC offered the scientific community a unique opportunity to debate an important paper, but for the most part they have declined.

The message is: Be afraid. Be very afraid. Or you will be destroyed.

Why is America in decline?

Maybe the terrorists have won.

Did you need convincing that this is not real science?

Now here's the tough question. Why did so many people immediately see that this paper was flawed while many others, including some journalists, were taken in? I think it's because many of us recognized this as an extraordinary claim that required extraordinary evidence. We also realized that if this was even close to being true it would be published as a front page story in Science or Nature. In addition, we have lived through many examples of exaggerated claims, including previous claims of meteorite fossils that proved to be untrue; not to mention the 3.5 billion year old fossils that weren't fossils [Did Life Arise 3.5 Billion Years Ago?].

It's a combination of skepticism and experience. Can that be taught?

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Astronomy and Biology

This is a remarkable picture. Depending on your personal preferences, you may be attracted to the sky in the background or the beautiful blue color along the shoreline of the lake. Are you an astronomer or a biologist, or both?

Phil took the picture and he explains it at: Gippsland Lakes.

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Hat Tip: another Phil at Bad Astronomy

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

 
Here's an article from the Atlantic that everyone should read: Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. It highlights the efforts of John Ioannidis to discover what's true and what's not true about modern medical research publications and clinical trials. I think this is going to become one of the hottest topics in science within a few years. The fallout will be horrendous when the public realizes that doctors are not as scientific as we thought.

Some interesting quotes from the article should prompt you to follow the link to the Atlantic website.

It didn’t turn out that way. In poring over medical journals, he was struck by how many findings of all types were refuted by later findings. Of course, medical-science “never minds” are hardly secret. And they sometimes make headlines, as when in recent years large studies or growing consensuses of researchers concluded that mammograms, colonoscopies, and PSA tests are far less useful cancer-detection tools than we had been told; or when widely prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were revealed to be no more effective than a placebo for most cases of depression; or when we learned that staying out of the sun entirely can actually increase cancer risks; or when we were told that the advice to drink lots of water during intense exercise was potentially fatal; or when, last April, we were informed that taking fish oil, exercising, and doing puzzles doesn’t really help fend off Alzheimer’s disease, as long claimed. Peer-reviewed studies have come to opposite conclusions on whether using cell phones can cause brain cancer, whether sleeping more than eight hours a night is healthful or dangerous, whether taking aspirin every day is more likely to save your life or cut it short, and whether routine angioplasty works better than pills to unclog heart arteries.

.

Still, Ioannidis anticipated that the community might shrug off his findings: sure, a lot of dubious research makes it into journals, but we researchers and physicians know to ignore it and focus on the good stuff, so what’s the big deal? The other paper headed off that claim. He zoomed in on 49 of the most highly regarded research findings in medicine over the previous 13 years, as judged by the science community’s two standard measures: the papers had appeared in the journals most widely cited in research articles, and the 49 articles themselves were the most widely cited articles in these journals. These were articles that helped lead to the widespread popularity of treatments such as the use of hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women, vitamin E to reduce the risk of heart disease, coronary stents to ward off heart attacks, and daily low-dose aspirin to control blood pressure and prevent heart attacks and strokes. Ioannidis was putting his contentions to the test not against run-of-the-mill research, or even merely well-accepted research, but against the absolute tip of the research pyramid. Of the 49 articles, 45 claimed to have uncovered effective interventions. Thirty-four of these claims had been retested, and 14 of these, or 41 percent, had been convincingly shown to be wrong or significantly exaggerated. If between a third and a half of the most acclaimed research in medicine was proving untrustworthy, the scope and impact of the problem were undeniable. That article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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[Hat Tip, again to John Wilkins]

Astigmata

 

Today's taxon of the week at Catalogue of Organisms is Astigmata [Life in the Fast Lane]. If you think you're not familiar with astigmata then get on over to Christopher Taylor's blog and correct that false assumption.

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Advertising 23andMe

 
Some bloggers are huge fans of genetic testing. They frequently post articles promoting one of the private companies that charge you for doing these tests. ScienceRoll recently posted this video of Anne Wojcicki making a pitch for her company. Wojcicki is one of the co-founders of 23andMe. It's interesting to see how she mixes various rationales for genetic testing with a pitch for 23andMe.

Imagine this was a talk by the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company about the importance of their drugs and why you should buy them. We would probably be more skeptical than we seem to be about Ann Wojcicki. Why is that?

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Name This Tree

 
Seriously, what kind of tree is this? It grows in Belgium.

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[Photo by Ms. Sandwalk]

Name These Geneticists

This is a collection of "geneticists" from the latest issue of Genetics (November 2009). How many can you identify? The correct answers are here.

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The Cutest of all Invertebrates

Catalogue of Organisms features these cute little animals on "Taxon of the Week."

If you follow the link on that blog to a more detailed overview of the taxon you get a bonus—a description of why Christopher Taylor didn't make it to the International Conference of Arachnology in Brazil.

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The Problem of Race .... Again

 
The current politically correct view of human races is that they don't exist. Surprisingly, this view has been adopted by many scientists, including biologists, who should know better.

Bruce T. Lahn and Lanny Ebenstein have published an opinion piece in this week's issue of Nature. Everyone should read it [Let's celebrate human genetic diversity].

They begin by pointing out the problem and then they state their position.

The current moral position is a sort of 'biological egalitarianism'. This dominant position emerged in recent decades largely to correct grave historical injustices, including genocide, that were committed with the support of pseudoscientific understandings of group diversity. The racial-hygiene theory promoted by German geneticists Fritz Lenz, Eugene Fischer and others during the Nazi era is one notorious example of such pseudoscience. Biological egalitarianism is the view that no or almost no meaningful genetically based biological differences exist among human groups, with the exception of a few superficial traits such as skin colour3. Proponents of this view seem to hope that, by promoting biological sameness, discrimination against groups or individuals will become groundless.

We believe that this position, although well-intentioned, is illogical and even dangerous, as it implies that if significant group diversity were established, discrimination might thereby be justified. We reject this position. Equality of opportunity and respect for human dignity should be humankind's common aspirations, notwithstanding human differences no matter how big or small. We also think that biological egalitarianism may not remain viable in light of the growing body of empirical data (see box).

These guys seem to be a bit late in realizing that the scientific data doesn't support the politically correct "biological egalitarianism" viewpoint but, as they say, better late than never.

Here's their bottom line.

• Promoting biological sameness in humans is illogical, even dangerous
• To ignore the possibility of group diversity is to do poor science and poor medicine
• A robust moral position is one that embraces this diversity as among humanity's great assets

Bravo! I'm glad that more and more scientists are speaking out on this issue.

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Lahn, B.T. and Ebenstein, L. (2009) Let's celebrate human genetic diversity. Nature 461:726-728 [Nature]

[Hat Tip: Nils Reinton at BIOpinionated: I Wish I Wrote This (me too! -LAM)]

UCSC Official Mascot

 
Fred Zlotnick took this picture of a banana slug in his back yard.

Believe it or not, the banana slug is the official mascot of the University of California Santa Cruz.

The Banana Slug, a bright yellow, slimy, shell-less mollusk found in the campus's redwood forest, was the unofficial mascot for UC Santa Cruz's coed teams since the university's early years. The students' adoption of such a lowly creature for a team mascot was their reaction to the fierce athletic competition fostered at most American universities. UCSC has always offered a wide-ranging physical education and recreation program designed to appeal to the greatest number of students, but it has based its approach on some unusual ideas: that athletics are for all students, not just team members of major sports; that the most important goal of a collegiate physical education department should be to introduce as many students as possible to lifelong physical activities; and that the joy of participating is more important than winning.

In 1980, when some campus teams wanted more organized yet still low-key participation in extramural competition, UCSC joined Division III of the NCAA in five sports. Since the application required an official team name, UCSC's then chancellor polled the student players, and out of this small group emerged a consensus for a new moniker--the sea lions. It was a choice that the chancellor considered more dignified and suitable to serious play than the Banana Slugs. But the new name did not find favor with the majority of students, who continued to root for the Slugs even after a sea lion was painted in the middle of the basketball floor.

After five years of dealing with the two-mascot problem, an overwhelming proslug straw vote by students in 1986 convinced the chancellor to make the lowly but beloved Banana Slug UCSC's official mascot. By the time the chancellor had left office, he was won over to the proslug camp, even to the point of featuring the Slug on his personal holiday card.

In May 2004, Reader's Digest named the Banana Slug the best college mascot. The Banana Slug even figured in a court case involving campus mascots. Judge Terence Evans, writing the opinion for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, stated the following: "We give the best college nickname nod to the University of California, Santa Cruz. Imagine the fear in the hearts of opponents who travel there to face the imaginatively named 'Banana Slugs'?" (Crue et al. v. Aiken, June 1, 2004)

Our Sammy the Slug mascot has been appearing around campus at sports events and other functions. And, when the men's tennis team played in the NCAA championships, their T-shirts read: "Banana Slugs-No Known Predators."

UC Santa Cruz Foundation trustee Anne Neufeld Levin wrote a children's book, Sally Slug, illustrated by UCSC alumna and former Foundation trustee Patricia Rebele. The book, published in 2002, is available at slugstore.ucsc.edu. Proceeds from sales of the book benefit the UCSC Foundation and provide for art history purchases and exhibits in the library.

Sounds like my kind of school. I wonder if they need a biochemistry Prof?

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Land Snails and Slugs

 
Most of us don't know very much about slugs and land snails but Christopher Taylor at Catalogue of Organisms is doing his best to educate us (and himself): Wild Slug Chases (Taxon of the Week: Gastrodontoidea).

I need to warn you that his posting isn't suitable for all audiences. Some of these animals are capable of having sex with themselves and that's not something you want your children to know. Also, some of these animals aren't as pretty as warm fuzzy animals like cats. I find it helps to think of snails and slugs as dinner rather than pets.¹

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1. For some people, this works for cats too.

Oenothera californica subsp. eurekensis

 

This is a photo of the rare, endangered, Eureka Dunes evening primrose. Read about it on Botany Photo of the Day.

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How Many People Have a Tape Worm Named After Them?

 

How many people have a tape worm named after them? Quite a few, as it turns out.

Do you know any of these people? Yes [A Tapeworm To Call My Own].

Ugh!

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Taxonomic Inflation

 
The number of new species discovered is growing every year, although we often hear more about threatened extinctions. In many cases this is because of new observations leading to the identification of new species. For the most part, these are not entirely new organisms—they are species that are closely related to existing species.

Given the ongoing battles between lumpers and splitters in the taxonomic community, one wonders whether the discovery of new species isn't just due to the elevation of varieties to the level of species. For example, there are many varieties of giraffe and some people propose that the current species, Giraffa camelopardalis, should be split into several species. This depends on your definition of species.

Christopher Taylor of Catalogue of Organisms reviews a recent paper that addresses the problem [Keeping an Eye on Inflation]. Turns out that the recent redefinition of species doesn't correlate with the increase in splitting so that doesn't seem to explain taxonomic inflation.

Unfortunately Chris doesn't answer the most important questions.

• Is it true that God has an inordinate fondness for beetles or is it just overzealous insect taxonomists?


• If you split G. camelopardalis then why not split Homo sapiens as well?

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The Debut of Science Nation

 

Science Nation is an online magazine produced by the National Science Foundation (USA). The first "issue" was published yesterday.

Before looking at it, let's see why this is happening.

In the National Science Foundation's Science Nation online magazine, we examine the breakthroughs, and the possibilities for new discoveries about our planet, our universe and ourselves: An artifical retina that can help the blind to see; new materials to build things bigger, better, lighter, and stronger; new ways to make our lives better without making the environment worse; and what we can learn from organisms that can live and thrive in frozen deserts or steaming-hot volcanic vents. Each week, Science Nation takes a dynamic, entertaining look at the research--and the researchers-- that will change our lives.

That's not very helpful. The motivation seems to be to promote NSF by reaching out directly to the general public—"The online magazine that's all about science for the people." I guess NSF wants to publicize work that it's funding. Maybe it wants to contribute to science education?

The first video is called Extremophile Hunter. It highlights the work of Richard Hoover who looks for bacteria that live in extremely cold environments. Hoover also believes that life may have originated in other planets and was brought to Earth on meteorites.

To test that theory, he cracks open so-called carbonaceous meteorites, which are the remains of cometary debris or water-bearing asteroids that have hit the Earth. Being careful to avoid contamination, he examines their insides with an electron microscope.

"They are older than the planet Earth, which is accepted at being 4.5 billion years old," said Hoover. "So I like to say these carbonaceous meteorites are actually older than dirt!"

Some of the structures he has imaged from these meteorites are intriguing, bearing striking similarities to bacteria here on Earth. Could these be the fossilized remains of extraterrestial life?

"I am convinced that what I am finding in the carbonaceous meteorites are in many cases biological in nature, and I think they are indigenous and not terrestrial contaminants," said Hoover.

It is a highly controversial interpretation.

"We have for a long time thought that all life, as we know it, originated on Earth. And there isn't any life anywhere else," he said. "That's an idea, it's a hypothesis, it's a totally unproven hypothesis."

Hoover hopes his work will help get at the truth, whatever that may be. And as interplanetary probes become more sophisticated, scientists may eventually turn up a biological sample for examination. Then we'll know if life out there looks anything like it does here.

The National Science Foundation goes on record supporting the idea that traces of extraterrestrial life have been detected in "so-called carbonaceous" meteorites that are older than the Earth. Yes, they admit that the idea is "controversial" but what message is being conveyed to the general public? Is it the message that the vast majority of scientists dismiss these "imaged structures" as artifacts?

I've been critical of science journalism for not doing a good job of reporting science. I've also been critical of scientists for not doing a good job of doing science properly—making the job of science journalists that much harder. Now we have a scientific funding agency taking on the role of science journalism. One might expect that the number one criterion of science journalism; namely, scientific accuracy, would be ensured. It's disappointing to see that scientific accuracy is the first casualty in the first episode of Science Nation. It was sacrificed on the alter of media hype.

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Glass Knives

 
One of the best labs I ever took as an undergraduate was an advanced cytology lab where we learned to use the electron microscope.¹ Part of the process was preparing thin sectioned material and that involved making our own glass knife that would cut very thin slices from wax-embedded tissue.

Here's a video from Leica showing how it's done today.²



I was reminded of this recently when I had occasion to refer to an electron micrograph taken by Harrison Latta. Latta invented the glass knife back in 1949. You can read about his discovery in this tribute to him on the University of California, Los Angeles, website.

This is one of those simple technological innovations that made a huge difference but would never have been recognized by the Nobel Prize committee.

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1. Yes, they had electron microscopes back in those days!
2. You can also buy diamond knives but that's a lot less fun.

Octo-mom: could it happen in Canada?

 
The short answer is .... no.

The University of Toronto Bulletin publishes an interview with fertility expert Robert Casper [Octo-mom: could it happen here?"

Q. The woman in California who gave birth to octuplets was single. Is this common?

Yes. While couples (both heterosexual and same-sex) comprise the majority of IVF patients, we see many single women using donated sperm as well. We don’t discriminate.

Q. The California woman was implanted with six embryos using in-vitro fertilization. Could something like this happen in Canada?

In Canada no reproductive infertility specialist would be putting back that many embryos.
There’s no law in Canada—it’s up to the doctor and the patient to decide. Our guidelines are to transfer up to two embryos in women under 35, up to three for women between 35 and 39 and up to five for women 40 and older. The reason that the number of embryos goes up as you get older is that there are more and more chromosomal abnormalities that accumulate in the eggs as a woman ages. By the time a woman is 40, for example, 90 per cent or more of her eggs have a chromosomal abnormality that would be incompatible with a live birth. So the idea of putting more embryos in an older patient is to try and ensure that there’s one healthy normal embryo that will actually implant.

Q. So, in a nutshell, this is pretty much unheard of?

To put six embryos in someone who is 33 is way, way outside what it is considered to be normal standard of care.

Q. Any thoughts on what the doctor was thinking?

I have no idea what was happening in that clinic. It sounded like they didn’t have much experience. They put a lot of embryos in to increase her chances—I don’t think they were counting on the fact that she was so fertile or thinking about the fact that she had six previous children.

Q. Are women counseled psychologically before receiving IVF? This woman had six other kids – should her doctor have discouraged her from trying to have more?

Psychological counseling is mandatory—a standard of care in Canada—for women using donor sperm. However, we wouldn’t turn away a woman who has six children and wants another—it’s her decision if she wants to have another child. But at 33, we would encourage that she have only one embryo put back, especially, as with the case with this woman, she has proven very high fertility.

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Bacteria in Your Mouth

 
A paper examining the diverstiy of human salivary bacteria has recently appeared in the journal Genome Research (Nasidze et al. 2009).

The authors looked at 120 individuals from different locations all over the world. They extracted DNA from their saliva and isolated small fragments of DNA copied from a highly variable region of 16S ribosomal RNA. On average, they sequenced 120 different DNA fragments from each individual. After eliminating artifacts they were left with 14,115 fragments.

The DNA sequences were compared with a large database of bacterial sequences in order to identify the bacterial species present in the mouths of each person. In most cases it was possible to positively identify the genus although they did find 196 sequences that were not in the database. These are probably unknown species of bacteria.

There were 101 different types of bacteria (genera). Each person has between six and thirty different species of bacteria in their mouth. There are about 45 different genera in each location (e.g. Bolivia, Congo, China, California, Germany, etc.).

Some genera were seen only once while others are quite common. The most common ones are listed below.

Actinomyces: Actinomyces are rod-shaped, gram positive bacteria that can survive under both aerobic (oxygen) and anaerobic conditions. Such bacteria are called facultative anaerobes. A. naeslundii forms dental placque by adhering to the surface of your teeth.

Enterobacter: Enterobacter species belong to the γ-proteobacteria group of gram negative bacteria. They are facultative anaerobes. Enterobacter are related to Escherichia coli—no examples of E. coli were found in this study.

Fusobacterium: These are gram negative, anaerobic, bacteria that are normal inhabitants of the oral cavity. They cause periodontal disease under some (unknown?) circumstances .

Granulicatella: The Granulicatella species belong to the phylum Firmicutes. They are gram positive bacteria related to Streptococcus.

Haemophilus: These species belong to the γ-proteobacteria as well. They are rod-shaped, gram negative bacteria related to E. coli.

Leptotrichia: The Leptotrichia species are long, filamentous, gram negative, anaerobic, bacteria in the Bacteroides group.

Neisseria: Neissria is a genus in the β-proteobacteria group. They are usually small, aerobic, bacteria. N. gonorrhoeae causes gonorrhea and N. meningitidis causes meningitis but most of the species in your mouth are harmless.

Porphyromonas: These are gram negative, anaerobic, members of the Bacteriodes group. P. gingivalis is normally harmless but it can cause periodontal disease.

Prevotella: Prevotella species are gram negative, rod-shaped, anaerobic, bacteria closely related to Bacteriodes. They are among the most common bacteria in the intestines of sheep and cattle where they aid digestion.

Rothia: These gram negative bacteria belong to the phylum Actinobacteria. They are related to micrococcus.

Serratia: These are motile, rod-shaped, gram negative bacteria. S. marcescens grows in bathrooms where it is often found on tile grout. The bacteria produce a characteristic red pigment and that's why contaminated areas appear pink.

Streptococcus: Streptococcus species are small, gram negative, nonmotile, and round. They are mostly facultative anaerobes. Individual bacteria associate in long chains. It is the most common genus in mouth cultures.

Vellionella: These common species are gram negative, anaerobic cocci.

There are problems with bacterial phylogeny, especially with a classification that relies exclusively on the sequences of ribosomal RNA [Bacteria Phylogeny: Facing Up to the Problems]. Reliable trees can be constructed using concatenated sequences and these trees (see below) reveal that the main groups of bacteria diverged from each other billions of years ago.



(You can see a high resolution image here.)

Note that the Firmicutes (red) are on the same branch as Actinobacteria (olive green) but these two groups are still as distantly related as dogs and dandelions. The α-proteobacteria (orange) are also very distantly related. The diversity of bacterial species in your mouth is truly remarkable.

Stoneking's group was interested in the differences between humans and especially between groups living in different parts of the world. Stoneking was one of the original authors on the Mitochondrial Eve paper so I suspect he was looking for bacterial markers that he could use to trace human ancestry.

Unfortunately, there isn't much difference between individuals or between groups from different parts of the world. The most significant geographical variation is between the samples from the Congo and everyone else. People in the Congo have a higher percentage of Enterobacteria. The only other significant difference is that there tend to be fewer Prevotella in people from Louisiana.

The somewhat surprising conclusion is that diet, culture, and environment don't seem to play much of a role in the diversity of the human salivary microbiome.

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Nasidze, I., Li, J., Quinque, D., Tang, K., and Stoneking, M. (200() Global diversity in the human salivary microbiome. Genome Res. Published in Advance February 27, 2009, [doi:10.1101/gr.084616.108] [Genome Research]

I. Nasidze, J. Li, D. Quinque, K. Tang, M. Stoneking (2009). Global diversity in the human salivary microbiome Genome Research DOI: 10.1101/gr.084616.108

Junk DNA Is "Dead as a doornail"?

 
I just received an email message from András Pellionisz informing me that in America the concept of junk DNA is "dead as a doornail." He "proves" his case in an article on his website [HoloGenomics].

A Eureka Moment concerning the fractal character of neurons led in turn to a novel picture of genomics where protein structures act back recursively upon their DNA code -- in outright contradiction to prevailing orthodoxy. A household name in neuroscience for his tensor network theory, Dr. András Pellionisz has recently had another far-reaching discovery borne out. This insight has now received striking confirmation in stunning results from the new field of epigenetics -- promising a whole raft of novel medical diagnoses and therapies.

Sunnyvale, Calif. (PRWEB) July 16, 2008 -- A landmark article on "The Principle of Recursive Genome Function" (received December 7, accepted December 18, 2007) by András J. Pellionisz appears online in Springer's e-Journal Cerebellum.

The paper marks the first anniversary of an historic event--the release of pilot results for ENCODE, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements project. Building on the results of the Human Genome Project, the ENCODE effort revealed a far more complex DNA coding sequence than was ever previously imagined. "There's a lot more going on than we thought," said Collins, who was director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Dr. Collins issued a mandate a year ago "the scientific community will need to rethink some long-held views".

A happy few did not need to rethink either the "central dogma of molecular biology" (Crick, 1956) or the misnomer of "junk" DNA (Ohno 1972), since they never believed them in the first place. The dictum claiming that a flow of information from proteins back to DNA "never happens" or the idea that 98.7% of the human genome should be disregarded as junk was never very believable.

THEME

Genomes & Junk DNA
There are some interesting scientific debates about the role of noncoding DNA in large genomes. Much of it is junk but there's lot of other functions that we've known about for decades. Many respectable scientists dispute the notion that most of our genome is junk.

Unfortunately, very little of that interesting scientific debate can be seen on András Pellionisz's website. Instead, I direct you to the site in order to see a classic example of a modern kook in action. The site has all of the characteristics of kookdom (see crank) and serves as a self-evident answer to the question Is András Pellionisz a Kook?.

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Does This Look Designed?

 
Check out today's Botany Photo of the Day from the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research. The species is Euphorbia caput-medusae L. from South Africa.

It's an example of a strange-looking species that most of us are not familiar with. We need to keep in mind that life is complicated and weird.

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