6.14.2008

Yeast are smarter than people

A recent post on a great site, Panda's Thumb, summarizes a recent article on de novo origination of a gene. What does this mean? de novo is latin for "from new", and its usage is wide, and can mean different things. It can mean "newly arisen function," and might also be referred to as ab initio, or "from the beginning." Anyway, the paper basically shows how brewer's yeast made a brand new gene from a set of nucleotides.

2 comments:

Jackie said...

Hi, Bridget. I'm working on a review right now (write now :) and feeling the pain! I've enjoyed the reading, but the writing is so difficult for some reason. I suspect entropy is at play - the way I generally understand the topic doesn't appreciate being corralled by the specifics of English grammar. Plus, my memory is shot. Plus I doubt I really understand the topic well enough to review it for a bunch of scientists, as most likely the only ones who will read it are those who could write it themselves. I'd much rather go home and work in my garden/weed bed. Hope you're well :) - J

Unknown said...

Hi there-

I know the pain. I got picked to give a talk at a meeting I was just going to present a poster for. Eek. And I was thinking it was gonna be a chill time in New Hampshire. Oh well. Good luck to us both :)