Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Charlottesville, VA, USA. more »
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7 replies on “The coming mammoth.”
I think the jury’s still out on whether a simple base-pair sequence is sufficient to represent the genome of a viable cell. There’s a lot of, shall we say, “metadata” that has a role in the life of a cell.
For instance, non-B DNA structures may play a positive role in promoting and repressing nearby genes. (They have not been directly observed, but the structures have been induced from sequence analysis and molecular modeling.) These structures cannot be read or reconstructed by current techniques, and they may not have survived the fragmentation mentioned in the article.
We’ll probably find a way to get past this obstacle, too.
I’m in for $20, and I imagine Jackson could be in for as much as $100 provided he can shoot it and it tastes delicious. ;-)
Flintstones… meet the Flintstones…
That’s worth $20.
Sam, I am in for a lot more than $100 even if only for the privilege of running away from it in a screaming panic.
Wait – Idea. We need a professional web developer to get in touch with these scientists about making them a free website with all sorts of info about the project and a little PayPal donation thing on the main page. If random people on the internet will send $10 or $50 to a political candidate then they will sure as hell spend it on a wooly mammoth.
This would go viral in an instant. Every blog on Earth would be pushing people to contribute. They’d have the money within 2 months. Much smarter than making the rounds of academic institutions that are tighter and tighter with money every year and will spend forever debating the ethics.
Someone, please do this now. THE WORLD NEEDS A WOOLLY MAMMOTH.
Jackson – close, but not quite. Just tell the Republicans that if we can do it for the Woolly Mammoth, we can do it for Ronald Reagan. Funded tomorrow.
So, a friend of mine asked me a few nights ago if I had given any thought to what he should get me for Christmas. My immediate response was, “No, and anyways, you don’t have to get me anything.” I now see what my response should have been…
I think the jury’s still out on whether a simple base-pair sequence is sufficient to represent the genome of a viable cell. There’s a lot of, shall we say, “metadata” that has a role in the life of a cell.
For instance, non-B DNA structures may play a positive role in promoting and repressing nearby genes. (They have not been directly observed, but the structures have been induced from sequence analysis and molecular modeling.) These structures cannot be read or reconstructed by current techniques, and they may not have survived the fragmentation mentioned in the article.
We’ll probably find a way to get past this obstacle, too.
I’m in for $20, and I imagine Jackson could be in for as much as $100 provided he can shoot it and it tastes delicious. ;-)
Flintstones… meet the Flintstones…
That’s worth $20.
Sam, I am in for a lot more than $100 even if only for the privilege of running away from it in a screaming panic.
Wait – Idea. We need a professional web developer to get in touch with these scientists about making them a free website with all sorts of info about the project and a little PayPal donation thing on the main page. If random people on the internet will send $10 or $50 to a political candidate then they will sure as hell spend it on a wooly mammoth.
This would go viral in an instant. Every blog on Earth would be pushing people to contribute. They’d have the money within 2 months. Much smarter than making the rounds of academic institutions that are tighter and tighter with money every year and will spend forever debating the ethics.
Someone, please do this now. THE WORLD NEEDS A WOOLLY MAMMOTH.
Jackson – close, but not quite. Just tell the Republicans that if we can do it for the Woolly Mammoth, we can do it for Ronald Reagan. Funded tomorrow.
So, a friend of mine asked me a few nights ago if I had given any thought to what he should get me for Christmas. My immediate response was, “No, and anyways, you don’t have to get me anything.” I now see what my response should have been…