This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Welcome to the fourteenth edition of the Carnival of Molecular Biology! Blog carnivals are collections of writing all about specific subjects, in the case of this carnival the fascinating world of the small and cellular. For the readers it provides a collection of quality blog posts, and for the bloggers it provides an opportunity to share work around, and get different perspectives on the topics they write about.
So without futher introduction, welcome to the carnival.
Starting off in the world of proteins we have a post from the blog Stringent Response about how biologists look at proteins. It's got a lovely little hand-drawn picture of the technique commonly known as FRET, so it's well worth a look. There's also a slightly older post from Lucas of Thoughtomics about the effect of random mutations in proteins and how this contributes to their evolution.
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Shifting the view slightly from proteins to antibiotics we have two posts about antibiotics from myself and J. Byrne of Disease Prone (who else!). James's post explores how a range of antibiotics work and again has some wonderful hand-drawn diagrams that explain these processes wonderfully. My post looks at how antibiotics, as well as killing bacteria, can also sometimes help them survive.
Even molecular biologists have to collide with the real world at some point, and from the DNA-Testing blog we have a report of the case of Warren Jeffs. The leader of a radical polygamist group, Jeffs was charged with child assault and prosecutors are using DNA evidence for conviction.
From the medical world we have a fascinating post from Connor Bamford at Rule of 6ix about the mechanisms of measles infection. Through an exploration of papers and techniques Connor looks at how the virus gets into your cells, and what happens when they do.
It's getting close to iGEM season - where groups of undergraduate students compete to produce a synthetically designed bacteria capable of the most impressive (and useful) feats. I'll be writing more about iGEM on this blog in future, but for now It Takes 30 has a post up about it, including among other things the practicalities of using bacteria to float the titanic!
And last, but definitely not least, a post from the blog Memoirs of a Defective Brain featuring some bacterial phylomon! They are hilarious and very cleverly done, with some great illustrations. Recently he's done a part two as well, featuring my personal favourite chromobacterium violacein.
That's the end of the line-up for this edition of the MolBio carnival. The next one will be hosted by J. Byrne over at Disease Prone. If you want to submit, just go here to send us the link to your post, we accept posts about any subject that explores the internal life of cells and molecules.