Feb 2012
A Bargain Made
24/02/12 00:15 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Ananyo Bhattacharya at The Guardian 's Notes & Theories blog wrote that conventional thinking in science policy, which promotes a utilitarian view that research should be at the heart of sustainable economic growth and should serve the public interest, can result a dramatic undervaluation of basic research. S. Pelech comments that especially in the last 50 years, governments throughout the developed world have steadily built up their basic research capacities in the life sciences in universities, hospitals and government laboratories, but the translational gap between basic and applied research appears to have continued to widen. He explores the various reasons for this disconnect. Read More...
Dissecting DIY Letters of Rec
21/02/12 21:52 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Blogger Damn Good Technician is irritated that research supervisors sometime instruct their trainees to help prepare their own letters of reference. S. Pelech points out that when he requests such a draft letter, it is because it often provides a useful self-assessment by the person for their own benefit, so they can appreciate the amount of time that it takes to produce a good letter, and to improve the prospects of including points that might have over looked that could benefit the individual. Read More...
Cancer-causing mutations yield their secrets
16/02/12 07:30 Filed in: Nature
Three recent papers published in Nature have shed new light on how mutations in the isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) gene cause brain cancer and leukaemia. IDH1 acts early in the citric-acid cycle to produce ATP, and the IDH1 mutations associated with cancer inhibit the pathway, but also cause production of a bioactive metabolite called 2-hydroxyglutarate. S. Pelech notes that mutations of IDH1 and IDH2 are amongst the most common in human cancers and may be one of the contributing factors to the observation that tumour cells commonly demonstrate higher rates of glycolysis and anaerobic production of ATP from glucose, which is known as the Warburg Effect. Read More...
Cuts at AstraZeneca
03/02/12 18:28 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
The Wall Street Journal reported that AstraZeneca announced that it will be eliminating 7,300 jobs by the end of 2014, which will bring the company's total jobs cuts during the past five years to about 30,000. S. Pelech comments that the AstraZeneca's announcement is symptomatic of recent trends with several other major pharmaceutical companies, and it is likely that many of these jobs will ultimately be re-directed to emerging opportunities in Asia. He questions the wisdom of AstraZeneca instead to forge virtual alliances with small biotech and university-based researchers to help fill its drug pipeline. Read More...
Hold the Arsenic
03/02/12 14:39 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Rosemary Redfield at the University of British Columbia posted a paper on ArXiv that refutes NASA astrobiologist Wolfe-Simon's conclusions that described a bacterium that seemed to grow on arsenic and incorporate it into its DNA. S. Pelech provided a summary of many problematic aspects of the Wolfe-Simon NASA study in a previous commentary in GenomeWeb's The Daily Scan (url: http://www.genomeweb.com/blog/arsenic-yes-please). Read More...