DNA The most beautiful experiment in biology Watson and Crick solved the structure of DNA and everyone lived happily ever after, right? Wrong. That was just the opening argument.
DNA Solving the structure of the DNA double-helix took a village History is written by victors, and that statement couldn't be more true than it is in the case of Watson and Crick's 'discovery' of the DNA double helix.
DNA Linus Pauling and his DNA triple helix Linus Pauling proposed a triple helix as the structure of DNA in February 1953. Here's why he got it so wrong.
DNA Beighton and Astbury beat Gosling and Franklin to a pristine diffraction of DNA. They never shared it Elwyn Beighton and William Astbury generated a nearly flawless diffraction of B-DNA in 1951, a full year ahead of Franklin and Gosling. They never shared or published it.
Genetics Ethnic Stratification: Sounds complicated, but in genomics it helps everyone Ethnic stratification and why single reference based analysis methods aren't 'good enough.'
DNA The structure of DNA proposed by William Astbury and Florence Bell in 1938 The first 3D structure of DNA was published in 1938. It was generated by Florence Bell, a scientist you need to know.
DNA Phoebus Levene and the discovery of the 2-dimensional structure of DNA Watson and Crick were the first to describe the structure of the DNA double helix. Their major contribution to science was, at its core, a synthesis of all of the best data available at the time.
Genomic Sequencing Son of a Bias, why does my sequencing dataset look like trash? High throughput sequencing: Biases and how they can get the best of you and your data
DNA I sometimes give Illumina a hard time, but they've commercialized some killer products Illumina is considered by many to have single handedly transformed the field of genomics. They did it by building on the foundation Solexa established in 1997.
DNA Rosalind Franklin's legacy goes well beyond her work on the structure of DNA The most famous photo in the history of genetics wasn’t generated by Watson and Crick, but that didn’t stop them from using it to solve the structure of DNA.
Prenatal Testing Circulating cell free DNA testing was born in 1997 The two gels above spawned a multi-billion dollar industry that didn't exist prior to their publication in 1997.
DNA Featured What came first, DNA methylation or the variant? DNA sequence variants can change more than just the properties of the proteins that genes code for, they can also change what proteins get expressed!
Genomic Sequencing Frederick Sanger sequenced the first DNA genome, he didn't use 'Sanger Sequencing' to do it Frederick Sanger invented a famous DNA sequencing method. It's not the one pictured below (which he also invented).
Genomic Sequencing Counting the things short-reads are good for What's the point of short-reads if long-reads do basically everything in genomics better? There are five, FIVE, *thunderclap*, applications where short reads excel, ah, ah, ah!
Proteins Green Fluorescent Protein was first discovered in Jellyfish in 1960 In 1994, an obscure jellyfish protein was stuck into a worm. It has enlightened biology and medicine ever since.
Paid-members only Protein Sequencing There are a lot of companies working on protein sequencing, so who is in the lead?
Protein Sequencing Reverse Translation doesn't exist in nature, but that's not stopping us from trying to do it! There are few things deserving of the superlative ‘holy grail,’ but Reverse Translation is one of them.
DNA The Lac Operon: Everyone's heard of it, but do you know how it was discovered? 'If gene expression determines the function of a cell, it must be important to control that process?' Yes, very! Let me tell you about the PaJaMo experiment.
Paid-members only Omics One of the most underappreciated techniques in Omics is Hi-C. That needs to change
High-Throughput Sequencing In 2009, high throughput sequencing gave us our first glimpse of the 3-D organization of the DNA in our nuclei While chromosomes are usually depicted as X's, they actually spend most of their time jumbled up like a giant ball of yarn.
Genetics Genealogy databases aren't just for finding your relatives anymore The killer app for consumer genetics literally is to catch killers. Here's why:
Genetics The 'Histone Code' fundamentally changed how we think about gene expression Histones were once thought to just be dumb structural proteins that held chromatin together; now we know that the ‘histone code’ is a major regulator of gene expression.
Paid-members only High-Throughput Sequencing If you thought the sequencing wars were hot already, have you considered what a $10 genome might do to them?
DNA The 2-D structure of tRNA was solved in 1965, its solver probably isn't someone you've heard of before The next great mystery to solve after the discovery of the DNA double helix was to figure out how the nucleotide sequence coded for proteins.
Genetics The ends of our chromosomes are a paradox What if I told you that we didn't fully understand how human DNA was copied until 1989?
