PCR primer design

Must remember about this site "PCR Primer Design" at the University of Capetown in Zuid Africa. Its a little outdated, but gives some of the basics of PCR primer design in a compact and manageable form. It would be nice to do a similar thing somewhere somehow sometime...

New cork, old bottle

Craig Ventner is back in the news again, after the on-line publication of his experiments involving "Changing One Species to Another". I haven't read the full article (and look forward to doing so) but the experiment seems straight forward enough: isolate genomic DNA from Mycoplasma mycoides (which has a very small genome but possesses a tet resistance gene); transform Mycoplasma capricolum with this DNA and select for tet resistance. The abstract suggests rigorous testing to ensure that all the genetic properties of M mycoides are present in the new species, and none of M capricolum. A very neat experiment, but does this really show one species being changed to another?

In the rather fluid species definition of Bacteria, the genome is the most important thing. It alone defines the characteristics of the bacterium. Isn't this procedure a bit like (by very very dodgy analogy) implanting a sheep foetus into a goat and calling the whole thing a new hybrid?

Nothwithstanding the semantics of the use of the word species in the title, it does signal a small jump forward in the quest to design bacteria with particular properties.

There are a few more details here though this is a dynamic link that may not repsond for very long.

New Specialized Transition

VeloNews have some pictures of the new Transition:


It includes a hidden rear brake for reasons I can only guess at - why wasn't the front one hidden too?



I've always liked these, but I wonder what the seat angles are like?

Firefox extensions again

My experience with Firefox is on the whole good. The capability of using extensions is particularly useful, though not always a good experience. I found the Google Reader extension caused the browser to occasionally mis-load, though I have used Zotero (as an alternative to EndNote, click here) and NoScript (a script and Flash media blocker, click here with great success.

NoScript does an excellent job at blocking scripts, but I do wonder about the difference between malicious and trusted scripts. Why does CyclingNews run scripts from its website? Should I care? Having said that, I've just put some script in this blog, an excellent test for anyone reading this to see if NoScript is working.

Today I have mostly been...

..concerned with random words and images for some reason.

This site seems to fit the bill!

Obsessive behaviour

Its quite possible that I am obsessed with cycling. Unfortunately the Tour de France starts in London this year. Why is this so unfortunate? Mainly because the prologue falls on the 7th July, a day on which I am not overly keen to go to London.
The next day the Tour winds its way from London through Kent. The map suggests that it might be possible to see it in more than one place (for a pdf of the route click here).
There is only one, you know...