¡Viva La Evolución!

In the last edition of Mendel’s Garden I made a comment about ads in some blogs, and as can be seen (check comments) some people took it personally, I got e-mails too.

I just want to clarify for those that can’t read a text that I was complaining about “the amount of ads that some blogs have”. I think that there is a clear distinction between saying “It annoys me to see any advertisement” and “It is starting to be annoying the amount of ads…”. If you don’t see the difference is not my problem.

I absolutely agree with those that can get a bit of extra money into their account by putting some banner or linking to some website, but from this to put flash animations, popups, and half of pages covered with advertisement absolutely out of any scientific context, there is a huge gap. Again if you don’t see this is not my problem.

It goes without mention that I would put some link if I had the offer, but to the extent that it doesn’t compromise the legibility of my posts and it doesn’t subordinate the content of them. Also I can see that when you get into the ad circle you start having certain responsabilities such as keeping the blog daily active, which explains why some people have posted in the last few months more about the world cup than about any serious science.

Also there’s something that upsets me like hell which is the victim syndrome and the pseudojustifying of oneself’s behaviour. For instance, if you acuse me of hanging too many banners about my personal and political affinities ( I’m against military research, religious teaching in school, and I like Linux and open source journals…) I would proudly agree since one of the main reasons of Viva la Evolucion! is to share my personal thoughts and my preferences. But some people don’t like saying that they have a blog to make money. If some day I get to that point (which I doubt…nobody would like to have ads in my poorly visited site) I will happily say to all of you that you’re paying my rent with your visits, but to the moment I’ll have to keep doing science which is my passion and luckily my job.

I hope any misunderstanding has been clarified.

By the way, don’t take me too seriously since I’m not a professional science blogger.

Hi everyone!
Welcome to Mendel’s garden #3, as can be seen 40 celsius of temperature has not been enough to stop our bloggers. My apologies for the one day delay, but yesterday there was a power cut in half of the city that prevented me from using the computer.
Well, let’s see what comes from the melting blogs, by the way, I have ordered the posts timewise, so the first that I got is the first in the list, and so on. No preferences:

We start with Maggie Kirk from Genomics policy blog, whose post entitled “Mendel’s Garden – blog carnival on genetics: Some thoughts on the value of peas” reminds us a bit of history and social implications of genetics.

David Ng from the World’s fair shows an alternative way of using DNA… to make music!

Like birds? then have a look at Joe Kissel’s post at interesting thing of the day about the kakapo, a flightless parrot from New Zealand whose naive behaviour is putting the species at the edge of extinction.

Tara at aetiology has a post about the diverse foci where H5N1 appeared in Nigeria, and how phylogenetic analysis helps us to understand the origins and spread of the disease.

Rich at evolgen shows why mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is not as reliable as previously thought to infer certain characteristics of a population.

In genetics and health we have got a four parts story of a woman (Rica Lode) and her search for preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

From RadicalHop comes a particular “comparison” between…

In salamander candy we have a interesting proposal : that of stimulating people interested in science to browse sequence data and mine it in search for the secrets stored in the net.

At Migrations we can find a comment of an article about the evolution of phosphoinositol 3-kinases in eukaryotes.

My post is about polyploidy in prokaryotes.

I hope everything is fine and if not try to find me in the sunny beach of the south of Spain where I am… I’m the hairy and tanned one…

One last comment: It is starting to be annoying the amount of ads that some blogs have. I didn’t start a blog to pay my bills.

Salud y Libertad! (health and freedom for you all!)
…and Viva la Evolucion!

Hey lads,
There won´t be any post this week since I´m in the jazz festival of Vitoria and can only use the computer to check mails.

I have received very little posts, some of them really good by the way!

If you haven´t send anything go for it, and if you have sent already I would delightfully publish two posts per blog.

¡Viva el Jazz!
…yesterday ´s concert of Paco de Lucia with Wynton Marsalis was outstanding…

The first story comes from the sea. There is a group of phages that specifically infect cyanobacteria, guess the name… cyanophages… which are divided into three main families: Podoviridae, Myoviridae, and Siphoviridae. Well, it’s been found that these phages carry genes that encode two photosystem II* core reaction-center proteins. By expressing their own copies during infection these phages can manage to enhance photosynthesis. Interestingly, cyanophage production is optimal when photosynthesis is maintained during infection.

I’m only guessing, but I suposse that during infection the host cell stops photosynthesizing, due to the stress conditions, and for some reason the virus needs this machinery working. Why? not a notion! Do you know anything about this, help me. By the way there’s a paper studying the evolution of this genetic exchange between bacteria and virus.

* Photosystems I and II are the two reaction centers in photosynthesis

The second story is about viral trade-offs. Marianne De Paepe and François Taddei from the University of Paris have published an article about the increase in the decay rate* of coliphages when certain conditions are given. They found that this decay rate increases with the density of the packaged DNA (into the phage), so, higher internal pressure higher mortality. This also increases when surfacic mass decreases, so the bigger the better. And finally, and this is the main reason of this comment, they found the highest correlation between decay rate and multiplication rate in the bacterial host.

So, interestingly for phages, survival rate is inversely proportional to multiplication rate. The reason behind this is yet to be known but will be fascinating for sure.

* It is not very accurate to say death since they are not alive

A bit late but just to remind you that Mendel’s Garden #2 is on at Genetics and Health.

By the way, I’ll be hosting the next edition of Mendel’s garden, so send me a link to your post:
vivalaevolucion@hotmail.com, or go to the carnival’s site.

Don’t be shy!!