Author: Robert Deyes

Put intuition aside for a moment and imagine a scenario where E.coli knockout strains that have been deleted for conditionally essential genes are rescued by proteins taken from a protein library composed of >106 de novo designed sequences.  The prevailing assumption- that functional proteins are constrained to a very small subset of possible sequences- would Read More…

In his 1987 seminal work entitled Impossibility In Medicine  the American psychiatrist Jean Goodwin presented to the world the following acutely insightful vista of the brain: “Despite many assertions to the contrary, the brain is not “like a computer.” Yes, the brain has many electrical connections, just like a computer. But at each point in a Read More…

Not for the faint-hearted….a fascinating clip on the work of Dutch kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen who has created his own brand of beach creatures.  With over twenty years of arduous work under his belt, Jansen started by pulling his ‘offspring creatures’ up into the wind, then gave them propellers and wings/sails to increase their running Read More…

Three months ago Princeton evolutionary biologist Andrea Graham became the talk of the ecoimmunology town through her summarization of the apparent connection between immunity and fertility (1). From trials carried out on 1476 individuals of wild Soay sheep from the St Kilda island archipelago in northern Scotland, Graham et al painted a complex picture of Read More…

Buried in the most recent scientific literature there is a story of love, sex, and intrigue that has all the makings of a hearty Mills & Boon novel.  The central characters of this plot are not lovers wrapped in each others arms but fruit flies that choose their sexual partners according to the microbiota that Read More…

Shattered assumptions, broken rules and overturned beliefs.  The science media seems eager these days to emphasize science’s capacity to shift paradigms.  And it was such a handful of descriptives that was used to convey the implications of a new study that redefines our view of genome architecture (1).  At the heart of such excitement lay Read More…

Unlike Darwin’s bicentennial, here is one anniversary that is certainly worth celebrating.   Unlike Darwin’s rock pile, here is one example of how the science of today is building on the solidity of yesteryear’s durable substructure.  Anti-evolutionists are not anti-science.  But they are opposed to the beligerence of those who contumaciously refuse to accept the broader Read More…

Written by Felipe Aizpún Viñes,  OIACDI; 2010, ISBN 10-1452800790; Review by Carlos Javier Alonso, University of Navarra, Spain (see original review in Spanish at OIACDI); Translation by Robert Deyes Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional (Evolution and rational thought) presents a thoroughly comprehensive analysis of both the arguments in favor and against evolution and demonstrates the author’s  Read More…

During the 1990s I had untold opportunities to witness the full exuberance of nature’s rich offerings. My parents’ house on the southwestern edge of Ecuador’s capital Quito was set in a prime location for observing all manner of wildlife. And most memorable of all were the hummingbirds that frequented our garden attracted as they were to the Read More…

Review Of Programming of Life By Donald Johnson, ISBN-10: 0982355467 There are some science writers that quite simply have a knack for combining the detail of their subject of expertise with a talent for exposition that a wide audience can easily understand. Donald Johnson is one of them. After carefully defining the various types of Read More…

“Keep walking back with your kite.  There you go.  Now stop where you are.  The distance between you and me right now is equivalent to about half the height of California redwoods—the tallest trees on earth.  Can you imagine that?” This was my stab at an illustration of how tall trees can really get.  But my eight year old Read More…

(The following piece makes reference to the late philosopher of science David Hull’s ‘God Of the Galapagos’.  Hull died peacefully earlier this week at the age of 75) Much has been said about how in The Origin of Species, the problem of suffering in nature tinted Darwin’s view and convinced him of a world that Read More…

A Review of Peter Forbes’ The Gecko’s Foot: Bio-inspiration: Engineering New Materials from Nature ISBN-13:978-0-393-06223-6 Bio-inspiration is a relatively new field of science that is trying to replicate the phenomena and designs of nature in ways that are of benefit to man. The manner in which a gecko’s foot allows it to climb glass, the Read More…

When I first picked up neurobiologist Jerome Siegel’s recent Nature review on the evolutionary significance of sleep, I was expecting to find a scientifically-buttressed counter-position to the age-old assertion that describes sleep as “a vulnerable state…incompatible with behaviors that nourish and propagate species”. Siegel’s evolutionary discussion was nonetheless unconvincing (1). While he supplied a nice Read More…