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A Developing Passion
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- May 2, 2010
- 07:01 PM
- 75 views
Boozing Treeshrews: Heavyweight drinkers in small packages (from Anne-Marie Hodge's blog)
by Heather Etchevers in A Developing Passion
Although political and moral stances on alcohol use have gone back and forth over the decades, anthropological studies suggest that low-level alcohol ingestion has been an important factor in primate evolution. Alcohol is associated with ripe, nutrient-rich fruits, in addition to functioning as an appetite stimulant to quickly take advantage of ephemeral food resources (Dudley 2002). As highly mobile herbivores, primates could have benefited these alcohol-producing plants through poll........ Read more »
Wiens, F., Zitzmann, A., Lachance, M., Yegles, M., Pragst, F., Wurst, F., von Holst, D., Guan, S., & Spanagel, R. (2008) Chronic intake of fermented floral nectar by wild treeshrews. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(30), 10426-10431. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0801628105
- April 28, 2010
- 08:20 PM
- 58 views
Saving face: Salamanders show why it's important to know thy enemies (from Anne-Marie Hodge's blog)
by Heather Etchevers in A Developing Passion
In the past I have focused on reviewing newly published literature, but I have decided to periodically take a look back at some “classic” zoology papers. Defining “classic” is difficult, I am using the slightly arbitrary criteria that the paper has been cited over 100 times, in addition to the very arbitrary and slightly self-centered criteria that the paper was published before the year of my birth, 1986. So, without further adieu, I bring you discussion of a ........ Read more »
Jaeger, R. (1981) Dear Enemy Recognition and the Costs of Aggression between Salamanders. The American Naturalist, 117(6), 962. DOI: 10.1086/283780
- November 6, 2009
- 07:20 AM
- 341 views
Gene therapy can work!
by Heather Etchevers in A Developing Passion
I am basking in the reflected glory of working at an institution that has more or less successfully applied gene therapy to alleviate the suffering of children with incurable genetic diseases. And they’re fighting the good fight, because sometimes, they win. Here, I discuss how they did it, and why.... Read more »
Cartier, N., Hacein-Bey-Abina, S., Bartholomae, C., Veres, G., Schmidt, M., Kutschera, I., Vidaud, M., Abel, U., Dal-Cortivo, L., Caccavelli, L.... (2009) Hematopoietic Stem Cell Gene Therapy with a Lentiviral Vector in X-Linked Adrenoleukodystrophy. Science, 326(5954), 818-823. DOI: 10.1126/science.1171242
- May 22, 2009
- 05:19 AM
- 597 views
Genealogical links from early primates to Moors to you
by Heather Etchevers in A Developing Passion
Brian Clegg brought up an interesting and somewhat confounding point in Henry Gee’s recent post on Missing Links.
Let’s say one does want to take an anthropocentric point of view, and trace a representative human genealogy over time.
Let’s say that one is not particularly interested in the fact that we are cousins with a particular species of coral reef alga. Just like the fact that we are all related here on Nature Network. These family ties are not relevant to how we intera........ Read more »
Capelli, C., Onofri, V., Brisighelli, F., Boschi, I., Scarnicci, F., Masullo, M., Ferri, G., Tofanelli, S., Tagliabracci, A., Gusmao, L.... (2009) Moors and Saracens in Europe: estimating the medieval North African male legacy in southern Europe. European Journal of Human Genetics, 17(6), 848-852. DOI: 10.1038/ejhg.2008.258
- December 1, 2008
- 05:16 AM
- 710 views
Realize your potential!
by Heather Etchevers in A Developing Passion
Be all you can be!
This morning brought notification of yet another delightful editorial by Gerald Weissmann in the FASEB Journal (which I don’t otherwise read much), entitled, Fashions in Science: From Philosophers’ Camp to Epigenetics.1
The idea that there are fashions in science is nothing new whatsoever. Who among us has not lamented the fact that one’s subject of predilection is not the easy sell and draw for money and personnel that we might have believed anything ̶........ Read more »
Gerald Weissmann. (2008) Fashions in Science: From Philosophers’ Camp to Epigenetics. FASEB J, 4033-4037. DOI: http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/full/22/12/4033
Jonathan M. W. Slack. (2002) Timeline: Conrad Hal Waddington: the last Renaissance biologist?. Nature Reviews Genetics, 3(11), 889-895. DOI: 10.1038/nrg933
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