Bioinformatics or B101nformatics

I must admit I was shocked when I heard it: If there is a possibility that doing this we can cure something is enough for me to do it. That was what a friend said talking about modifying human germinal lines. A week later, discussing about transhumanism another friend told me that "Science will solve all problems". This two sentences were said some months ago but I still have them fixed and would like to write about them. First of all I follow a principle: Just because we can do something we have not to do it.  As an example no one  would give a friend with pine nuts if he/she is allergic to them. We don't do it because it is not good for him/her. The reasons why we do something are as important as why we don't do something. In this case (modifying human germinal lines) we have the possibility to gain the piece of knowledge to cure some big deseases (cancers, senescence, autoinmmune diseases...) but at the cost of losing the common biological definition of o...

Escric aquesta entrada com a recopilatori de la informació sobre les beques un cop es compleixen requisits per inscriure's en un programa de doctorat. Els requisits per inscriure's en un programa de doctorat actualment amb els nous crèdits ECTS són: Disposar del títol de una carrera amb un mínim de 240 crèdits ECTS. Haver aprovat 60 crèdits ECTS d'un màster (No implica haver-lo acabat, important en el cas dels màsters de dos anys) Podem classificar les beques per tipus de entitat que les otorga: Ministeri Conselleria Universitats Entitats financeres Fundacions Instituts Altres O a qui s'atorguen: Projecte de recerca Group de recerca Persona física Institució Pel que sembla la única manera de saber quines són les opcions disponibles és mirar totes les pàgines que puguin tenir informació al respecte. Sí que hi ha una associació ( Federación de Jóvenes investigadores/Precarios ) que porta en un forum informació al respecte però no hi ha cap...

Do you ever heard about hexamer likelihood used to determine if a sequence is coding or not? In one of my assigments on my master of Bioinformatics there was a project to use hexamers instead. The hexamers are defined with 6 nucleotides on a sequence. The idea behind using hexamers is considering that in coding regions there is an influence of the previous codon to the next codon, whereas on the intronic or non-coding regions there isn't. The script works need three fasta files, the first one with intronic sequences, the second one with coding sequences, and the last one with sequences to analyze. All files must use the IUPAC code for sequences, and on the right frame. This is due to the way of signaling in which frame a sequence should be, which varies between programs and descriptions. It is also more difficult to calculate the best score for the unknown sequence, without presenting two scores or biasing for a training set. Assuming everything is on frame is safer and easi...

I'm sorry this month the news post will come with some delay, but there will be another post with it. If you like potatoes take one:

Now again I want to share with you some news: Novel online bioinformatics tool significantly reduces time of multiple genome analysis Machine-learning scoring functions for identifying native poses of ligands docked to known and novel proteins In the First Bioinformatics Hackathon, Computer Scientists Meeting in Russia Use their Computer Skills to Fight Deadly Diseases Chemicals giant DuPont buying Taxon Biosciences MarkerMiner 1.0: An easy-to-use bioinformatics platform for DNA analysis in angiosperms New 3-D Method Improves the Study of Proteins OpGen raises $17 million in initial public offering , to develops tests to help hospitals identify drug-resistant bacteria  Massively parallel biology students: More than 900 students co-author genomics research paper , an interessting effort to do science Researchers obtain precise estimates of the epigenetic mutation rate BIB logo of their website. And last but not least, there was the announcement from the BIB of a n...