Notes from the biomass

The older ones will remember: there was once a planet that lost its status because some astronomists thought it would be a good idea to have a solid definition for the term.

When the life sciences reach the same level of seniority as astronomy, will there be votes on what constitutes a proteins complex or the levels of pathogenicity for microbes? Which would lead to grave consequences such as bumper stickers on flying cars depicting the ribosome, saying “Once I shed those RNA, I will become a real protein complex”, right next to the one of Francisella tularensis: “Honk for a class A bioweapon”.

Nougayrède and colleagues describe in last weeks issue of Science that several E. coli strains, including established commensals, trigger DNA double strand breaks via peptide-polyketide based toxins, eventually leading to death of the host cells. The work has odd implications, such as that strains considered commensals could cause a predisposition to cancer. On the less severe side, bacteria possibly use the mechanism to slow the turnover of cells in the intestine on a daily basis.
Strangely enough, the news weren’t picked up much by the press, save this The Scientist article from what I can see. Maybe E. coli is just seen as an irrelevant model-only organism. I wonder what other mechanisms of human-bacterial interactions we have overlooked for many years.

The next big thing of the Public Library of Science, the journal PLoS ONE has just opened its online submission portal. PLoS ONE is a PLoS journal with broad scientific scope and a community based editorial board (instead of a few dedicated editors in traditional journals), amongst other small improvements. Several features, such as  interactive papers are announced but from what the site has to offer now, it is difficult to perceive how they will be implemented, particularly the ranking system(!). Other improvements are pretty typical. Every journal claims fast publication within weeks, and an objective rather than subjective editorial process. Despite the claim for a broad scope, most of the members on the editorial board are people who made the mark in the modern life science research as far as I can see. The peer review process itself appears to be highly similar to other PLoS journals. The most important innovation might be the chance to update your publication with new results or to tie in other findings. The publishing formats are kept broad. I had hoped for more possibilities, such as short papers, meta-analyses or hypotheses though. (more…)

This post is getting dangerously close to a the pityful null-post: “I won’t blog much/haven’t blogged much as I am very busy.” However, any scientist, (or anyone working self-motivated) is always very busy unless something gone wrong. The cause for the lack of posts recently is rather due to my lack of blog pressure - grew out of it recently. Hopefully, I can jump the chasm of filler posts by reviewing events in during the break. (more…)