MIT Biology Hypertextbook
Another useful online biology
resource.
Another resource that is in the same spirit as the
previous
post about Kimball's
Biology Pages, is the MIT Biology
Hypertextbook. The hypertextbook is a bit more bare-boned than the
Biology Pages, but it gets to the point quickly, so you can get on with your
life without getting tripped up by the endless jargon of biology. I wonder if
there is a correlation between language skills and a propensity to enter the
life sciences. Fortunately for me, my language skills are rather good (save
spelling, of course).
I was at a meeting of people who have funding through the Human Frontier Science Program last week (fortunately, I am one), and I was sitting there listening to what were surely some very top-notch bioscience peoples' talks. I was hoping for a little interdisciplinary inspiration, and I got some, but mostly I determined that the biologists were basically trying to impress each other. I would have been impressed if I understood one-tenth of what they were talking about. I've got hand it to them, though, because they have some funny terminology. I mean physicists are always inventing new particles with funny names, so there is some stiff competition in the amusing-terminology-department. But I heard one phrase that I think should be the goal of all science, and of all scientific talks: "nonsense suppression." If more scientists attempted to perform nonsense suppression, the world would be a better place. I presented a poster there that anyone in my field would have thought was for preschoolers, but I had a full audience for three hours. I made every attempt to suppress as much nonsense as possible!
(By the way, good luck searching for "nonsense suppression" in the hypertextbook, their search doesn't seem to work. Too bad.)
It turns out that a nonsense mutation is really cool. Basically it changes a coding series of bases (three bases code for a given amino acid) into one that is called a stop codon. A stop codon forces the apparatus that synthesizes polypeptides (or strings of amino acids) to...stop. It's like riding on a train, patiently waiting for your station when all of a sudden the train goes express and you're at your destination, and you get off. The only thing is that you weren't really there yet, so you're not home. What really happened was that the next stop was just labeled as your destination. A problem like this is clearly a catastrophe for a nascent polypeptide. A simple example is a mutation that changes CAG (that codes for glutamine) to TAG, a stop codon. Ouch.
Presumably, nonsense suppression fixes this, or stops if from occurring in the first place. I think I need to ask a real person, since most of the descriptions I read don't make any sense.
I was at a meeting of people who have funding through the Human Frontier Science Program last week (fortunately, I am one), and I was sitting there listening to what were surely some very top-notch bioscience peoples' talks. I was hoping for a little interdisciplinary inspiration, and I got some, but mostly I determined that the biologists were basically trying to impress each other. I would have been impressed if I understood one-tenth of what they were talking about. I've got hand it to them, though, because they have some funny terminology. I mean physicists are always inventing new particles with funny names, so there is some stiff competition in the amusing-terminology-department. But I heard one phrase that I think should be the goal of all science, and of all scientific talks: "nonsense suppression." If more scientists attempted to perform nonsense suppression, the world would be a better place. I presented a poster there that anyone in my field would have thought was for preschoolers, but I had a full audience for three hours. I made every attempt to suppress as much nonsense as possible!
(By the way, good luck searching for "nonsense suppression" in the hypertextbook, their search doesn't seem to work. Too bad.)
It turns out that a nonsense mutation is really cool. Basically it changes a coding series of bases (three bases code for a given amino acid) into one that is called a stop codon. A stop codon forces the apparatus that synthesizes polypeptides (or strings of amino acids) to...stop. It's like riding on a train, patiently waiting for your station when all of a sudden the train goes express and you're at your destination, and you get off. The only thing is that you weren't really there yet, so you're not home. What really happened was that the next stop was just labeled as your destination. A problem like this is clearly a catastrophe for a nascent polypeptide. A simple example is a mutation that changes CAG (that codes for glutamine) to TAG, a stop codon. Ouch.
Presumably, nonsense suppression fixes this, or stops if from occurring in the first place. I think I need to ask a real person, since most of the descriptions I read don't make any sense.
Posted: Tue - June 21, 2005 at 11:06 AM |
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Published On: Jul 18, 2005 04:17 PM
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