by Melissa Lau | May 5, 2014 | BioGPS, cancer, GeneOfTheWeek
With over 100 billion tablets produced (and consumed) yearly,1 aspirin has come a long way from its humble beginnings as the active ingredient in willow bark—a medicinal remedy used since ancient times, by the likes of Hippocrates and Pliny the Elder. Since its first...
by ginger | Apr 28, 2014 | GeneOfTheWeek
In the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Rabbit of Caerbannog was a seemingly innocuous leporid with “nasty, big, pointy teeth” and “a vicious streak a mile wide.” It appeared harmless enough, but was capable of decapitating a grown man wearing a full suit...
by Kerin Higa | Apr 21, 2014 | BioGPS, GeneOfTheWeek
If you’ve ever taken a biology course, you should be familiar with glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase—or at least its abbreviation: GAPDH. GAPDH is a simple, highly conserved enzyme required for glycolysis, the process of turning glucose into energy....
by Andrew Su | Apr 15, 2014 | BioGPS, crowdsourcing, games, Gene Wiki, jobs, recruiting
In addition to recruiting for new postdoctoral associates, my group also just posted an ad for a Scientific Outreach Program Manager. What exactly is a Scientific Outreach Program Manager? In truth, we’re not completely sure. What we do know is that our lab...
by Melissa Lau | Apr 14, 2014 | BioGPS, GeneOfTheWeek
Like so many behind-the-scenes gaffers and stagehands, cell adhesion proteins ensure structural integrity and thus proper functioning of all our cells. Cell adhesion may not be one of the more showy or glamorous cellular processes, but it is no less vital to organism...
by Kerin Higa | Apr 7, 2014 | BioGPS, GeneOfTheWeek
Gene nomenclature is complicated and sometimes, as you’ll see, hilarious. Take polycomb group RING finger protein 2 (PCGF2), for example. “Polycomb group” (PcG) comes from Drosophila biology. To the fly-ignorant, like myself, the term might sound like part of a...
