...but it's not quite simple. 
I'm at Scientific American blogs today discussing a recent paper recording mouse songs, and using them to find kinship patterns among mice. You can even listen to the mice sing to the their ladies! CUTE! Head over and check it out.
It's been a while since I kept my lovely readers (all two of you! Hi Dad!) up to date on what's happening on our guest blog (blogge?). But if you haven't been reading along, please do! We just finished up an really interesting run with 27 and a PhD, who had some really interesting and thought provoking posts. I recommend you head over there and check out her work over the past two weeks.
And coming up for the next two weeks, we have Rumblings of the Grumpy and Untenured, who, judging from their intro post, are going to be HILARIOUS. Keep an eye on our guest blog, there's great things going on!
Sci is at SciAm blogs today, talking about using blood levels of BDNF to predict whether or not patients will respond to antidepressants. It's a very preliminary study, but I think in the long run it could be very clinically useful. Head over and check it out.
Today's word of the week is transcription, in the biological sense. Not the process of converting speech into a written document (though I know a lot of science writers who spend a lot of time doing that, so I suppose it could count as part of the biological definition), but the part of the central dogma that is incredibly important to molecular biology. The process of information flow is this:
DNA -> RNA -> protein
This represents the flow of information in a cell at its most basic level. DNA is transcribed to RNA, RNA is translated to protein. We used to think that this flow only went in one direction. We now know (thanks to retroviruses like HIV) that RNA can transcribe back to DNA. We also know that proteins can influence DNA transcription, though whether proteins can translate back to RNA is not known (it seems like a big leap to me, but a lot of this stuff seemed like big leaps to a lot of people, only a few years ago).
And in all this, there is transcription.
Transcription describes the process of DNA -> RNA, the process performed by RNA polymerase and other enzymes, which break up the bonds between two DNA strands, make a new RNA pair to one of them (RNA nucleotides are just like DNA nucleotides, with the exception of Uracil for Thymine and ribose for deoxyribose), and allow the DNA to be attached to its original pair strand, ready to be transcribed again or put away for another time. Transcription is the first step of what will become gene expression, and things that affect it affect what proteins are made, and in the end, the function of the cell as a whole.
This paper is one of those papers that gives official science manuscript writing a bad name. It's not that the paper is badly written, nor is it that the science is bad (in fact it's pretty cool). No, it's the JARGON.
"...posterior surface of the posterior telopod, which is actively moved over a field of sclerotized nubs on the inner margin of..."
"seems to prevent the female from volvating..."
"...and seems to be species-specific, arguing for a species recognition function of the stridulation during courtship..."
You know what this all translates as? Millipedes. Making sexy noises for the ladies.
With their BUTTS.
But I guess reviewers wouldn't be thrilled at that kind of description.
This is the creepiest thing I've seen today.
But they DID go most of the way with the title.
Wesener et al. "How to uncoil your partner—“mating songs” in giant pill-millipedes (Diplopoda: Sphaerotheriida)" Neturwissenschaften, 2011.
Sci doesn't celebrate Valentine's Day much. Rather, I celebrate the day POST-Valentine's when all the candy becomes a delicious 50-75% off.
But this has become harder since I moved to a large city. In the suburbs, buying cheap candy was a breeze. Huge grocery stores were overstocked with the stuff and desperate to move merchandise. You had your pick of all the delicious sales.
But the city is another story. The small local markets and chains (usually pharmacies) can't have as much stock, and even the evening of Valentine's day it looked like a tornado had gone through. Nothing was on sale because nothing NEEDED to be on sale. Disappointing to say the least. I noticed that in particular, Reese's and peanut butter M&Ms were not on sale, and still completely sold out. We know what's popular, and what's popular is peanut butter and chocolate.
Still, by superior effort at several stores I managed a respectable haul.
You can see that the bars were on sale, a Cadbury sale in the US should never be passed up. I also obtained some Nestle, Dove, Ghiradelli, Lindt, and a few boxes of truffles. Not too bad, but nothing like the awesomeness that was the suburb chocolate sale. So if you are in suburbs, go NOW! You may even find a deal on Reese's. Sweet, sweet Reese's.
I got a reader question in my inbox recently which caused me to go on an instant pubmed hunt: is there a link between hypotension and major depressive disorder, and if so, does increasing blood pressure help? And the more I dug, the more I realized that the answer is both very complicated...and pretty unknown. So today I'm going to talk a bit about hypotension and major depressive disorder. I've got a few papers in mind, but I'm not going to focus on a specific one. And if anyone has any better insights or information, please do chime in in the comments! This is an area to which Sci is not accustomed.
Sci does not celebrate Valentine's Day in general. I prefer to celebrate tomorrow, February 15th, otherwise known as the day when all the chocolate goes 50% off and I wallow in glorious sugar.
But for those of you who want to celebrate Valentine's Day SCIENCE-STYLE, head over to the Stanford website and twitter feed, where they will be having an expert to answer your questions on the neuroscience of pain and how love could affect it. I think it's a fabulous way to do science outreach and get people interested in research.
Follow @@SUMedicine and make sure to add the hashtag #AskSUMed. They'll take your questions until Friday and have a scientist ready to answer!
And tomorrow, or maybe the day after, I'll have to post photos of my post-Valentine's candy haul.
Sci is at SciAm Blogs today, talking about a new study in humans looking at normal, every day social interactions and cytokines, one of the important signaling molecules in inflammation. IS you competitive spirit bad for your health? Head over and find out!
This word of the week has meanings both in science and in normal, every day language.
Bromide: An anion of the element bromine, element 35.
Bromide: A word used to indicate a platitude, especially one used WAY too often, and which has no real use or meaning, except that meant to make you feel better, like "take things a day at a time", or "go with the flow". Do you feel better yet?
I now wonder how many chemists have made bromide jokes in their dissertations.
Blogging all that is good, bad, and weird in physiology and neuroscience.
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