Basic Sciences

Synchronized Swimming Mitosis

The American Society for Cell Biology’s Image and Video Library is a great collection of still images and dynamic videos of the highest quality covering the field of cell biology. CellDance is an annual contest hosted by the ASCB that spotlights new video and digital images in microscopy.

My favorite is this video from University of California, San Francisco, which uses synchronized swimmers to illustrate mitosis. (The first place winner on the Golgi Appartus is pretty cool as well.)

The ASCB’s Image & video library invites contributions from all cell biologists who wish to publish high quality images and videos on the site, and all content is available to view for free online. As of yet there are no submissions from LSU! Maybe you could be the first to contribute.

Friday fun: Vollig Weichgekocht

This link is dedicated to anatomy fans:
http://www.sarahillenberger.com/news_sz.html

(The German translation in the title is something like ‘false softness’.)

MLA 2008: Continuing [my] Education on the PhD Experience

Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking the continuing education course The PhD Experience: Graduate School in the Basic Biomedical Sciences. As the library liaison to LSUHSC’s School of Graduate Studies, I was eager to learn more about what exactly goes on in those sometimes secret laboratories nestled away in the nooks of our urban campus.

Michele Tennant, Susan Kendall & Kevin Messner did a superior job at presenting an overview of graduate programs in the Basic Sciences. From departments to dissertations to dictostelium discoideum (that’s slime mold to us laypersons), the instructors gave a well-rounded overview of professional culture within the research community, as well as sound advice and techniques that librarians can use to reach these sometimes distant faculty, staff and students.

The course was about eight hours long, but don’t let that sway your choice if you have the opportunity to take this class. Anyone involved in library liaison activities with Basic Sciences, especially those who do not have a science background, will find this useful. What follows is a list of notes & resources I jotted down throughout the day.

• ‘omics: suffix indicating biology on a large scale (ie: genomics, proteomics, etc)
• “gene knockout”: when you knockout a particular gene to see what happens
• Barlow, Robert B., John E. Dowling, and Gerald Weissmann, eds. (1993). The Biological Century: Friday Evening Talks at the Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole: The Marine Biological Laboratory. (ISBN 0-674-07403-3): book recommended by Tennant – collection of science essays giving good overview of the development of biological science in the Twentieth Century.
• e-science trends – Kendall had attended a conference on this recently and had some interesting words on the development of the research process from a linear to circular structure with the advent of the web, which led to….
• Talking about a recent discussion in Science magazine about wikifying GenBank. (??!!) I’m all for 2.0 and all, but this does not sounds like such a good idea
• More info on trends in escience/translational medicine: Check out the session “Translational Medicine and the Library’s Role” on Tuesday afternoon (2-3:30) for more info.
• This book was recommended by Susan Kendall for information on how laboratory research works.
• Finally, Kevin Messner’s del.icio.us account offers all kinds of bioinformatics and biology links, in addition to other non-science related bookmarks

I hope you found this useful. Coming soon, the search for my missing mentee, the opening address, and more!

Anatomy got you down?

Get a leg up on your classmates and check out www.getbodysmart.com. Created by an anatomy teacher, this website is a great resource for learning about the skeletal system, muscle tissue physiology and the nervous system among other subjects. The animated drawings, diagrams and interactive quizzes will help you ace your next exam.

A fun way to browse your favorite bacterial genomes

From the Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Japan comes GENOME PROJECTOR, an awesome new tool for those interested in molecular biology.

Genome Projector, a searchable database browser with zoomable user interface, currently allows 4 different views: Genome map, Plasmid map, Pathway map, and DNA walk. It’s based on the same software concepts that run Google Maps, so the interface is pretty intuitive.

Check it out:
Genome Projector