Final Post

I no longer post here. For posts, see "On Genetics". For brief comments, see Connotea or "News on Genetics".

News on Genetics

I posted in July that I was looking into sites for sharing bookmarks (link). After trying things out a bit this summer, I've settled on Connotea for bookmarks related to genetics, and I've created a specialized blog (News on Genetics) for brief comments on genetics news.

Follow up on selection vs. differential gene flow

An extensive comment by "Galtonesque" on my posting, selection vs. differential gene flow, that addressed a paper by Cochran et al. ("Natural History of Ashkenasi Intelligence" PubMed, J. Biosocial Sci.) deserves a pointer. This is it!

NMD mutations in Arabidopsis

Last year, Hori and Watanabe published in Plant Journal that an Arabidopsis upf3 mutation is viable but leads to the accumulation of aberrantly spliced RNAs. Now, Yoine et al. have shown that UPF1 is essential for growth and that low-beta-amylase1, (lba1 ), a missense mutation in UPF1, causes pleiotropic effects related to sugar metabolism. There are lots of tools now to study nonsense-mediated decay in Arabidopsis.

Science Blogs

Nature on science blogs: "weblogs written by scientists are relatively rare," but they find five exceptions.

ESRs are complex -- comparative and experimental analysis from the Ast lab

A new paper from the Ast lab (Goren et al. 2006. "Comparative Analysis Identifies Exonic Splicing Regulatory Sequences -- The Complex Definition of Enhancers and Silencers" PubMed Molecular Cell) introduces the term ESR for exonic regulatory sequences and studies some of their properties. There are no surprises here, but the paper provides a key confirmation of the importance of position within the exon to ESR function.

Transmission of epigenetic traits in animals

Rassoulzadegan et al. now describe "RNA-mediated non-mendelian inheritance of an epigenetic change in the mouse." Nature. Of course, Renato Paro showed non-mendelian inheritance in animals (in an artifical system) some time ago (Cavalli and Paro, 1999 PubMed ID 10542150, Science) in a paper that I used in my graduate genetics class.