Sandwalk

The three main human databases (GENCODE/Ensembl, RefSeq, UniProtKB) contain a total of 22,210 protein-coding genes but only 19,446 of these ...

Nature is arguably the most prestigious science journal. Articles published in Nature are widely perceived to be correct, unbiased, and fa...

Several readers alerted me to a paper that was posted on bioRxiv a few weeks ago (May 28, 2018). The paper claimed that the human genome co...

Press releases have become a serious problem. I'm frequently upset whenever I read a press release covering a field I'm familiar wit...

There's an interesting discussion going on about lateral gene transfer (LGT) in eukaryotes. LGT is the process by which DNA from one spe...

The citric acid cycle 1 is usually taught as depicted in the diagram on the right. 2 A four-carbon compound called oxaloaceate is joined t...

It's important to define what you mean when you use the word "gene." I use the molecular definition since most of what I write...

This is a list of scientific papers on junk DNA that you need to read (and understand) in order to participate in the junk DNA debate. It...

It's Bruce Alberts' 80th birthday party in San Francisco. There will be food, wine, cake, and (probably) dancing but first you go t...

Dan Riskin: The Good, Bad, & Natural: What Mother Nature says about morality? Thursday, April 12, 2018 7:30 - 10:00 pm The Franklin...

Continuing my survey of recent papers on junk DNA, I stumbled upon a review by Subash Lakhotia that has recently been accepted in The Procee...

The March 2018 issue of Chromosome Research is a Special Issue on Transposable Elements and Genome Function . I found it as I was doing my ...

Here's my latest compilation of the composition of the human genome. It's depicted in the form of a pie chart. 1 [ UPDATED: March 2...

Some DNA sequencing technologies aren't very good at sequencing and assembling DNA that's rich in GC base pairs. What this means is ...

Kostas Kampourakis is a specialist in science education at the University of Geneva, Geneva (Switzerland). Most of his book is an argument a...