When I was a graduate student, I did a rotation in a tuberculosis lab. Mycobacterium tuberculosis and research strains grow very slowly; one round of cell division can take nearly a day. E. coli can divide every 20 minutes, meaning that in the time it takes to grow two M. tuberculosis from one, you can get ten trillion E. coli. Since my rotation was only a couple of months, I was given an E. coli research project. And M. tuberculosis is still among the relatively small proportion of bacterial species that we can … [Read more...] about Science Corner: The Patience of Science
endosymbiosis
Science in Review: Symbols and Symbiotes
Given my interest in the metaphoric use of scientific language, I couldn't pass up this editorial on metaphorical science experiments. Physics has made some remarkable advances in its ability to study and hypothesize about features of the universe far removed from everyday experience. Black holes aren't on every street corner; there was just the one Big Bang; quantum entanglement doesn't work with billiard balls. In order to pair observational data with with theoretical developments, some researchers design clever … [Read more...] about Science in Review: Symbols and Symbiotes