Nov 2010
The Rise of Asia
24/11/10 18:39 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
The Economist reported that in 1990, North America, Europe, and Japan carried out more than 95 percent of the R&D done in the world, and by 2007 that number had dropped to 76 percent, while China's spending on R&D is skyrocketing and the number of scientists there is set to overtake both the US and the EU. S. Pelech comments that while much of the research in North America is actually performed by Asian researchers living abroad, and it is actually nice to see places like China and India contribute more to the growth of global biomedical research, because ultimately we will all benefit in terms of improved diagnostics and therapeutics as well as new knowledge. Read More...
Something You Don't See Every Day (Anymore)
23/11/10 15:43 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Genomic Repairman described how charming it was to get a hard-copy reprint request in the mail. S. Pelech also recalls the pleasures of receiving posted reprint requests, but notes the advantages of the Internet for spreading new scientific knowledge, which include the extremely rapid exchange of electronic files in various formats including MS-Word, html and pdf documents for dissemination of scientific articles, blogs, private e-mails and more. Read More...
(Don't) Be Still My Beating Heart
22/11/10 18:56 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Jonathan Seidman at Harvard Medical School made a case for the importance of studying rare genetic variants that cause cardiomyopathy, while there are several common variants, there are multiple rare variants that can significantly increase a patient's chances of suffering from the disease. S. Pelech comments that while the rates of heart disease and stroke in North America and Europe have temporarily declined, the future is much bleaker for the younger generation with more than a 5-fold in child obesity in the last 25 years. Although the study of genetic mutations in families with documented histories of diseases has proven to be very insightful and worthy of continuation, the identification of SNP variants in the general population that are linked to predisposed risks for these and other diseases of aging by random genome wide sequencing will be immensely more challenging. Read More...
The Human Collective
21/11/10 21:02 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
The virome in even the feces of identical twins humans vary widely from one another, and from their mothers, in contrast to findings that family members tend to have similar microbiomes. S. pelech points out that the unique resident flora of each person with some 10 trillion bacteria arises from a combination diverse factors, and it largely protects us from pathogenic strains and provide nutrients in a symbiotic relationship. Even within our individual cells, bacterial-like entities known as mitochondria are essential for our good health. Read More...
Are Leaders Born or Taught?
21/11/10 20:10 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger DrdrA at at Blue Lab Coats suggested that grad schools teach students how to hypothesize, design experiments, analyze the data, and write research papers, but not how to lead a group or become an effective PI that can build a strong research team and program. S. Pelech points out that there are also many other qualities, such as the ability to teach, fund raise, and budget, that are also ingredients to success, and while leadership ability might be partly genetic, it is further developed during a lifetime of observation and experience. Read More...
'How Not to Get a Postdoc'
21/11/10 18:12 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
At Isis the Scientist's blog, a new faculty principal investigator shared satirical "tips on how NOT to get a postdoc in academia. S. Pelech shares his observations with applications from hundreds of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to his research laboratory over the last 24 years, and offers useful advice on finding and getting the right matches. Read More...
Graphs on Grants
21/11/10 17:43 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Jeremy Berg, the director of National Institute of General Medical Sciences observed in his analysis of NIGMS R01 applications from January 2010 that "many of the awards made for applications with less favorable percentile scores go to early stage and new investigators." S. Pelech comments that while this is not surprising, it is disturbing that new grant applications from experienced investigators that have a track record of successful funding have about the same chance at getting funded as a new investigator with little experience and no track record as an independent scientist. Read More...
Genotype-Phenotype Correlations Confer 'Chaotic' Evolution
21/11/10 03:24 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Keith Bennett at Queen's University Belfast examined the burgeoning "chaos theory of evolution," and argues that the connection between environmental change and evolutionary change is weak, which is not what might have been expected from Darwin's hypothesis, and that macroevolution may, over the longer-term, be driven largely by internally generated genetic change, not adaptation to a changing environment. S. Pelech comments that it would be unwise to under-estimate the impact of a rapidly changing environment on evolution, including the rapid disappearance of dinosaurs following an asteroid impact 65 million years ago or as a consequence of human activity today. Read More...
The Happy Medium
19/11/10 16:45 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Jeremy Berg, the director of National Institute of General Medical Sciences, suggested that mid-sized labs do best from his analysis of NIH data to study correlations between grant size and scientific output. S. Pelech comments that Dr. Berg's data confirms what he and many others have suspected all along, i.e. too high amounts of funding for a laboratory group can provide diminishing returns and this has enormous implications for the funding of mega projects. Based on US NIGMS data from 2007 to mid-2010, the Division of Information Services in the NIH Office of Extramural Research determined that the median annual total direct cost was $220,000 in funding, the median number of grant-linked publications was six, and the median journal average impact factor was 5.5, which indicates that the typical costs of a scientific paper with a 5.5 impact factor is about $128,000. Read More...
Save Data to Gene
19/11/10 04:10 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Georg Fritz at the University of Cologne and his colleagues say that a network of genes can act in a circuit as a "conditional memory" that stores or ignores information when told to do so, somewhat similar to a 'data latch' in an electronic circuit. S. Pelech comments that Dr. Fritz's work is entirely theoretical, no evidence is available for whether conditional memory circuits as proposed actually exist in real genetic networks, and that proteins would have to be equally important components in memory circuits. Read More...
Bias in the Peer-Review Buddy System?
19/11/10 03:00 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Ewen Callaway in Nature's The Great Beyond critiqued a PLoS One paper in which researchers analyze whether open peer review systems discourage biases, such as those that often surface when authors request specific reviewers for their manuscripts (e.g. "on papers where there was disagreement among ... reviewers, those recommended by the author were more likely to provide favorable feedback and accept a paper than the editor-recommended reviewer."). S. Pelech notes that at the end of the day, it is really up the to general scientific community to accept or disregard the validity of the data and conclusions in a paper, and advocates that peer-review should not be completely anonymous. Read More...
Make Your Application Memorable
19/11/10 02:12 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Odyssey at Pondering Blather offered advice on how applicants for faculty positions can distinguish themselves to improve their employment prospects, including thoroughly researching their prospective institution, crafting an intuitive, easy-to-follow CV and a comprehensive — yet concise — research plan and teaching statement, and having "the important stuff up front." S. Pelech comments that while this can help, applicants must also suitably prepare themselves well in advance for such an undertaking. If the applicant does not have the requisite training with clear evidence of research, teaching and management ability, then he or she should acquire such capabilities first. Read More...
What Work/Life Balance?
11/11/10 14:34 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Justine Cassell, the incoming director of Carnegie Mellon University's Human Computer Interaction Institute, in a Q&A-style profile for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, explained how she deals with "with work/life balance" by trying to integrate her work and her life in a synergy model. S. Pelech observes that while there are some less desirable aspects of an academic researcher's job, such as grant application writing and committee service, research and teaching is generally an extremely pleasurable experience. Naturally then, it is not surprising that many scientists are engaged for long hours almost every day in activities related to their scientific passions. Read More...
Bigger Not Always Better
09/11/10 15:09 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Massimo Boninsegni at Exponential Book said that when it comes to choosing a lab group with which to work, there is an approximate "optimal" lab size, "beyond which productivity ... no longer grows proportionally to the monetary investment, and even the effectiveness [of the lab] as a training and educational venue decreases. S. Pelech agrees and further points out that lab politics can be very problematic in "sink or swim" lab groups, when the principal investigator is just too busy to attend to the needs of each trainee. Read More...
The Business of Basic Research
09/11/10 14:47 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Nicholas Wade at the New York Times characterized NIH's funding of basic research as a risky government venture that produces far fewer hits than misses, but blogger Michael White at Science 2.0 thinks that basic research proceeds more through a series of "incremental" advancements that ultimately lead to success. S. Pelech agrees with Dr. White and notes that grant panels favour "safe" research where there are solid hypotheses and a wealth of preliminary data from investigators with the consequence that most basic research is pedestrian and plodding, but steady in its progress. Read More...