Editor’s Selections: Parasites in your poop, the next big thing in green power, and rafting through time
July 22nd, 2011 Editor's Selections 24 Comments
Vincent Racaniello selects several notable posts each week from molecular and cellular biology and virology. He unravels viruses at virology blog.
<img title=”Vincent Racaniello” src=”http://researchblogging.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/smallvincent.jpg” alt=”Vincent Racaniello” width=”47″ height=”47″ />Vincent Racaniello selects several notable posts each week from molecular and cellular biology and virology. He writes about viruses at <a href=”http://www.virology.ws” target=”_blank”>virology blog</a>.
- When a 35 year old man was diagnosed with a type of inflammatory bowel disease, his physicians offered a drug with harsh side effects, or a colectomy. He decided to travel to Thailand where he acquired a bizarre treatment for his disease: parasitic worms.
- The microalga B. braunii naturally produces a triterpene oil comparable in hydrocarbon content to petroleum or natural gas. While too slow of a producer on its own to be a valuable energy resource, its oil-producing genes have been identified and used to engineer yeast strains that produce a similar oil at faster rates.
- Cell membranes were once assumed to be simple affairs comprising lipid bilayers with proteins floating in them. This “fluid mosaic” model took a beating in the 1970’s with the suggestion that eukaryotic membranes are composed of microdomains, where certain lipids and proteins become segregated into lipid rafts. Do bacterial membranes also have lipid rafts?
I’ll be back next Friday with more selections.
