I guess I picked the wrong time to discover I'm a Romney Republican. Here for science (genetics, cell biology and cancer), parenting, comedy and random crap.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the publication of NEUROMANCER, William Gibson's (@GreatDismal) debut novel. Nobody asked me, but I've written an essay commemorating the occasion, complete with pretentious title.
“We’re running out of molecular biology kits! How can we possibly isolate RNA without a kit?!”
With ominous creaks, crypt doors are swinging open. On the tombs, the names of irascible biochemists from the 1960s and 1970s. “We toooooold you sooooooo,” their ghastly voices echo.
Even as a snide joke, this is retarded. Reproductive organs are not the same as reproductive cells, and male embryos never produce ova, nor do female embryos produce sperm.
I think we need to talk about how devastating this cancer microbiome refutation paper from
@StevenSalzberg1
and colleagues is. It really speaks to how devoid of critical thinking and intellectual depth our glam publishing ecosystem has become. 1/n
Because my lab members are officially the Worst People Ever, today they celebrated the 5th birthday of a set of samples that I put in fixative back in 2014 and have left on the shaker ever since. I swear, though, I can still be useful at the bench.
Again, not true. With the same or greater certainty that we can say a newly fertilized human egg with produce an individual with two arms and 10 fingers, we can say that an XY embryo will develop sperm and be male, and an XX will develop ova and be female.