tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83629619436549726272020-02-27T14:19:58.877+01:00What keeps me busy now. @randogpGianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comBlogger175125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-49443393657396718532015-02-03T22:07:00.000+01:002016-02-29T09:40:57.055+01:00

I just wanted to share a strange exploration of science funding I've started. (It's an exploration, no guarantee to find something). The 1000 Beer Genomes. www.genome.beer Alex Hantson from BeOpen Lab is helping me. He loves Belgian beers. Let face it, we all love research but there is more demand than funding. The result is talented post-docs competing for impact factor points. This is

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-54275086118327999972014-08-25T15:23:00.001+02:002014-08-25T15:23:05.031+02:00

Finish that PhD - the Wolf of Wall Street way «Listen, myself, as much as you'd like to, nobody can get on the bench and finish that PhD for you. Only you can pick up some more tubes and take action. Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions. Now, look down at the little blue tool right in front of you. You see it? It's a wonderful little invention

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-18037537649431702992013-10-16T16:18:00.004+02:002013-10-16T16:50:16.977+02:00

This is something you may have noticed on your grandmother skin: during aging, the ability of the skin to self-repair diminishes. What you might not know, is that a key hormone in reproduction - estrogen (17β-estradiol) - is also important for wound healing: in fact, there is strong association between menopause and reduced wound healing capabilities, whereas estrogen treatment favors healing.

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-17460480282473942222013-05-28T20:17:00.002+02:002013-05-28T20:17:19.637+02:00

Does the circadian clock affect your ability to adapt to winter cold? In press for Molecular Metabolism. My contribution to this paper is very limited, but our collaborators in Urs Albrecht laboratory made a very nice advance in understanding how the circadian and thermogenic pathways intersect on a molecular level by demonstrating a clear molecular defect in adaptive thermogenesis in mice

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-72487891891178738792013-01-22T22:42:00.001+01:002013-01-25T15:40:37.000+01:00

One of the 2012 top innovations, says The Scientist, is the new NanoLuc luciferase reporter. But what is NanoLuc exactly and what's really innovative? When I read Vicky Chandler on my free copy of The Scientist that NanoLuc was a 2012 innovation, I didn't know what she was talking about. I knew that firefly luciferase has some limitations, so I  started collecting information to evaluate if I

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-52104619468987625592013-01-08T13:00:00.000+01:002013-01-07T13:41:02.002+01:00

This is Qiagen's Tissue Lyser, the best tool to homogenize 24 or more tissue samples in Trizol in one single shot. Without cross-contamination. It has been three years that I don't touch a Polytron, and my life it's much easier. Basically, at the time of tissue dissection, I'm taking a piece of tissue, putting it into a 2 mL eppendorf tube, adding a 5 mm inox bead and flash freezing in

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-68533739166305625422012-12-30T16:46:00.004+01:002013-01-17T09:34:32.255+01:00

Italian scientist and Nobel prizewinner Rita Levi-Montalcini passed away today at the age of 103. Rita was of Jewish origin and I remember reading in her biography how, during World War II, she was concealing in the Alps with her brother. Far from the city (and from the university) they had only self-roared chickens as food, but Rita continued her researches on chicken embryos that were then

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-3428667068312961592012-12-15T13:39:00.000+01:002013-01-13T13:46:30.076+01:00

Fluorescence microscopy experienced a 'green' revolution when GFP sent a surge of excitement for live imaging through the life sciences. Meanwhile, electron microscopy (EM) has been waiting patiently for the right probe to come along. EM offers brilliant high-resolution images of ultrastructure, but labeling molecules with specific antibodies is finicky business: the same permeabilization that

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-3359459629674281412012-10-04T18:18:00.002+02:002012-10-04T18:18:22.354+02:00

Or when luciferase is positive because of a coincidence Sometimes an experiment is working but our interpretation of results is not. The underlying assumption of any reporter gene system is the relationship between the assay readout and the molecular/cellular mechanism for which the assay has been engineered to report. For instance, from a PPAR-responsive promoter placed upstream the

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-88552441031565243742012-05-25T16:11:00.000+02:002012-05-25T16:11:08.979+02:00

Forget the scalpel, use Fluorescent Proteins and FluoRender FluoRender is a publicly available interactive rendering tool for confocal microscopy data visualization developed by the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute of the University of Utah. FluoRender combines the renderings of multi-channel volume data and polygon mesh data, where the properties of each dataset can be adjusted

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-4886229694249662482012-05-10T18:35:00.000+02:002014-05-14T09:56:36.541+02:00

because I do not know what is inside Qiagen workers making the secret recipe WITHOUT GLOVES! - Jeffrey/MacMillan for: Capital Business I found myself using less and less kits dismissing some of them, because I don't know what is inside the bottle, so I don't know how to play protocol variations, I don't know how to optimize the assay, I don't know if I could afford them when I will have my

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-54431827171903232902012-05-07T13:43:00.000+02:002012-05-09T10:49:30.812+02:00

The creative use of reporter genes uncover a new mechanism shaping vertebrate organ development During development, the heart must accomodate to pump all the blood required by the incresing size of the organism. In fact, the heart can enhance its functional capacity by expanding its volume and increasing its muscle mass. How does this translate at cellular levels? Is that each heart cell

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-65445566365778643272012-04-13T15:13:00.001+02:002012-09-26T17:29:58.971+02:00

Molecular imaging of NF-Y transcriptional activity maps proliferation sites in live animals. Mol Biol Cell., 2012 23(8); 1467-74 doi:10.1091/mbc.E12-01-0039 Goeman F, Manni I, Artuso S, Ramachandran B, Toietta G, Bossi G, Rando G, Cencioni C, Germoni S, Straino S, Capogrossi MC, Bacchetti S, Maggi A, Sacchi A, Ciana P, Piaggio G. Abstract In vivo imaging involving the use of genetically

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-70333682644586574212012-03-22T14:40:00.000+01:002012-05-09T10:51:14.660+02:00

My preferred online place to exchange biology knowledge. This is the most interesting Q&A site for biology researchers, academics, and students I stumbled upon so far. I'm really excited about it and since some increased participation is required to exit the beta stage, I'm inviting you to have a visit and consider joining. Forget noncurated forums plenty of 'why my beta galactosidase

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-37817294281817886832012-03-05T21:30:00.000+01:002012-05-09T10:51:45.722+02:00

After a PhD in cellular and molecular medicine, Daniel Gorelick continued to study how steroid hormones affect development and behavior. He already wrote a guest post about enhancer discovery few years ago, and some days ago I had occasion to speak with him about his last paper. In a recent Endocrinology issue, Daniel describes a transgenic ERE-Luc zebrafish developed to visualize estrogen

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-37897605313329305172012-02-29T21:12:00.000+01:002012-02-29T21:12:00.142+01:00

Three generation approaches are today available for functional pathway analysis. Just brief notes and many links for my (and perhaps your) memory and benefit. Based largely on this Plos Computational Biology review by Khatri et al., 2012. Pathway-centric approaches are intended to reduce the complexity of the transcriptome profiling data and are well accepted because a significant modulation

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-10878870557739462482012-02-17T16:55:00.001+01:002012-03-02T09:35:46.898+01:00

In science, game-driven crowdsourcing makes 18 fold better Because of sequential nature of mRNA translation, proteins begin as strings of 50-1000 amino acids that immediately fold into specific 3D-coiled structures. Understanding how proteins fold into unique three-dimensional shapes is a big quest. Just a small protein can fold in astronomical number of ways, so one of the hardest problems

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-85343548094251407102012-02-15T10:12:00.000+01:002013-06-20T11:16:35.647+02:00

It is possible for researchers to start their own private lab? Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); If in your life you want to sell pizza, it is easy to find a business plan: just open a pizza

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-30388398239060643442012-01-31T15:18:00.000+01:002012-05-09T10:52:40.771+02:00

I did not check on the real original publications if the alleged image manipulations spotlighted in this video are really present, or were just fabricated for the video. And I will not do it. However, if the video is really reporting actual manipulations, my main conclusion will be that the peer-review system is going to fail.  For my academic CV, publications in peer-reviewed journals are a

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-69163894729045784642012-01-23T17:38:00.000+01:002013-01-25T15:58:57.139+01:00

Are your human cells coming from executed prisoners? During the Christmas pause, I had occasion to spoke with one of my elderly aunts that I probably see once or twice a year. She had always admired my path to pursue biomedical research, but often she had shown to be uncomfortable with the notion that biomedical research is also done by killing mice. So, while eating some killed turkey -

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-36981207733943529442011-12-20T18:04:00.000+01:002012-05-09T10:53:33.822+02:00

After the December 2009 'Bacteria towing Santa's wagon', this is the ultimate example of life-imitating art. Millions of E. coli bacteria glowing together. Biologists and bioengineers at UC San Diego constructed this remarkable living display by engineering the biological clocks of bacterial cells to fluoresce together like blinking light bulbs. And they synchronized thousands of these blinking

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-57558683320980436612011-11-15T12:59:00.002+01:002011-11-21T16:34:55.922+01:00

The 2010 has been the year of Venter's synthetic genome. What about 2011, new developments at the horizon? Synthetic physiology. One goal of synthetic physiology would be to integrate a new genetic function into mammalian cells, i.e., a circuit that can detect a diseased state and then trigger a therapeutic appropriate response. Two studies are pursuing this goal. The group of Martin Fussenegger

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-66037871847577387032011-10-27T20:54:00.001+02:002011-10-31T09:44:08.724+01:00

I should say thanks to Nick for having posted yesterday some pictures of Sigma-Aldrich packaging madness. Packaging has a cost and an effect on environment, however, as Nick correctly points, some chemicals shipped by Sigma are dangerous and this might justify some excessive packaging. This morning I received some chemically-inert stainless steel beads that I'm using to extract RNA with the

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-45850233372976087812011-10-11T20:49:00.001+02:002014-08-08T12:41:03.957+02:00

The opportunity to switch to electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) had been discussed for 2 or perhaps 3 decades without any concrete change. However, the recent boom for tablets, ipads and the new amazon fire costing less than one pipette, is pushing toward a ELN resurrence. We will have ELNs in the lab soon? In the last months, I gave my advisory counseling to some companies considering to enter

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8362961943654972627.post-70117224966460034142011-09-16T00:32:00.000+02:002011-09-16T00:32:01.958+02:00

I'm going to the EMBO conference on Nuclear Receptors. Last time I went - four years ago - my wife was pregnant and in the middle of the last talk phoned me because of the labor contractions. My house was 100 km long away, and I come back in time. Now, my wife is once again pregnant and tomorrow I'm taking the flight. Delivery is expected on February. Hopefully, it should be easier this time.

Gianpaolo Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06018299764535072090noreply@blogger.com