A pretty cool development here for fans of gene therapy. The essence of gene therapy is that if a person is born with a defective copy of some gene you can insert a good copy into a critical set of cells in that person and restore the broken functionality. In this case the researchers injected therapeutic viruses into 12 patients brains and saw therapeutic benefits for parkinsons sufferers.
The reason you use viruses for gene therapy is that a virus has evolved to attach to a cell and inject it’s own genes to force the cell to make copies of the virus. It’s possible to gut the virus and insert your own genes of interest, so when the virus infects a cell, all it does is inject your genes. There’s no replication, no spreading viruses, etc. Gene therapy has had a pretty rocky history though, and not a lot of medical success.
Continue reading ‘Gene therapy for parkinsons has successful phase 1 trial’
I came across a short piece in the New York Times recently that’s worth pointing out. It’s about a particular startup in the Bay Area that’s focused on using metabolic engineering to produce anti-malarial drugs and the next item on their agenda is fuel.
For the layperson, metabolic engineering is a step beyond genetic engineering. Metabolic engineering involves creating a new network of complementary reaction pathways within a cell, essentially creating whole new ways of making biological products. In a big picture sense, metabolic engineering treats the cell as a factory, and adds or optimizes structures within the cell for some design purpose.
Continue reading ‘Metabolic engineering as path to medicine and energy’
Last night we hit a place in downtown San Francisco called Cafe Claude and had the best meal we’ve had since moving to the bay area 5 months ago. It’s a small restaurant tucked away down an alley that you probably wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know it was there.
We were attracted to the place because they were had live jazz, but the music ended up being pretty forgettable background fare. The food was universally excellent though. Service was a little snooty and french, but it wasn’t obnoxious.
I had a flat iron steak which was incredible, and it’s hard to impress me with a steak. It was perfectly medium-rare with a delicious sweet pepper sauce. My wife had a pork filet that was in an almost dessert-sweet sauce with hints of caramel. Everyone at the table commented on how delicious the sauces were on their various dishes. The chocolate mousse for dessert was great, and didn’t just feel like pudding the way a lot of mousse does. Entrees were about $30, and although portions weren’t huge the quality was great. We’ve definitely spent a lot more for much worse food so this place is definitely recommended.
We went to a Mediterranean place last night called Astaria in downtown San Mateo. It’s got nice presentation, and feels like it should have been a good experience and came highly recommended, but we were thoroughly unimpressed with everything we had.
The food is not strictly mediterranean, but more of a fusion with french (they served duck l’orange for example). We had the saganaki, a standard greek appetizer of cheese set alight in burning brandy. Then my wife had the mousaka and I had an herb stuffed salmon. Everything was just ok, but not as good as any of half a dozen generic greek places we went to when we lived in Florida (hardly a bastion of greek culture). I think the difference is that we are used to Greek food prepared in family owned restaurants and it’s got a more authentic flavor. This tasted like someone’s own takeon Greek. Not bad, but not what we were looking for. We won’t be going back.
The price was $60 total for the dishes above plus 1 glass of wine.
I’m a researcher in a pharmaceutical biotechnology company, and I’m concerned by the lack of public understanding about what it is we do. In this article I’ll explain some of the process of pharmaceutical manufacture at a biotechnology company, and how you go from a cell stored in liquid nitrogen to a vial of drug for injection. This is intended to be a readable, layman’s explanation of the process. My perspective is fermentation-centric, so apologies to the areas I can’t fully represent. In a later article I’ll discuss more of the research process, where I am involved. I’m also going to sprinkle the article with links to references that have more detail and explanations of technology or equipment.
The master cell bank
The basic concept in biotech is that you identify a molecule that you want, and the sequence of DNA that could be used to produce that molecule. Then you genetically engineer a cell line (CHO or E. coli) to produce it and come up with the correct bioreactor conditions so that they can grow and produce it. Once you have settled on this combination of cell and DNA you place that “master” cell line in liquid nitrogen for permanent storage. This is your gold standard copy from which all drug production starts. You probably have more than one master cell bank to protect you from things like fire and earthquake, since if you lose the master cell line you will have no FDA certified source of cells to produce your product! That would be bad.
The first step in production is to take some of your master cell bank and carefully grow it up in a bioreactor. The goal here is not to make any product, but just to make some more cells, which can then be frozen as a “working cell bank.” Because the master cell bank is so important you try to avoid accessing it as much as possible. Every now and then you take some master cells and create a new working stock.
Continue reading ‘How biotech drugs are produced’
There was an interesting article in the New York Times regarding the surprisingly large impact that the farm bill has on many aspects of life in the US and abroad. A pithy excerpt:
Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots? Continue reading ‘Why does a twinkie cost less than a carrot?’
Since I recently got into this whole blogging thing, and I’m someone who tends to exhaustively research anything I’m interested in ( I guess that’s why I like my job), I wanted to share a few tips for WordPress that I’ve worked out that may help others. One of those is determining exactly what is the right robots.txt file to use for your WordPress site. The goal is not so much SEO (search engine optimization) as it is to make sure the right content is being indexed by sites like Google, and the wrong stuff isn’t. I’ll break this down into somewhat basic terms for people who may be new to the process. There are a variety of blog posts on the subject, and I think I’ve compiled my own spin on the issue. The key is that you don’t want to block too much, so try to only block things that are meaningless to readers (like script files).
The root folder of your site can have a text file in it named robots.txt. This file contains some rules that you set that determine what files and folders you want to allow search engines to find, and which ones you want to label as being off-limits. Google has a bad rap for ignoring robots.txt files, but I believe that is coming from some confusion as far as how Google interprets this file. By playing with their robots.txt analysis tool I found something that I think many neophytes are missing.
First, a general primer. Below are the first few lines from my robots.txt file.
User-agent: *
# disallow all files in these directories
Disallow: /blog/wp-*
Continue reading ‘A robots.txt for WordPress’
I’ve been using a new in-car GPS for about 2 months now, and I wanted to share my thoughts in case other people are on the fence. I think these units have come a long way since the last time I seriously looked at them, and they’re pretty effective at getting you to where you are going.
I’ll write this from the perspective that you haven’t taken a serious look at what a recent unit can do, so I’ll list out what I think are the key features.
- A flexible route-generation algorithm. Stuck in traffic? Click the “detour” button and have it route you around the area you are currently entering. Take a wrong turn and it can generate a new route for you in a few seconds.
- A large, searchable index of locations, stores, parks, restaurants, museums etc. It can be searchable both near where you are, near your destination, or find matches along your current route. As an example, my wife and I were just out running errands and remembered that we needed to buy a new bed frame. I typed “mattress” into the GPS and it pulled up the name, address and phone number of half a dozen nearby stores.
- A map that you can scroll through by touch-screen. Drag your finger on the screen and the map drags with you to allow you to see nearby map areas without zooming out.
I found that pretty much all of the units I looked at had the same features listed regardless of price, but when I actually used them in the store there were huge differences in the implementation of those features.
Continue reading ‘Thoughts on Car Navigation Systems’
Last night we hit Joy Sushi in downtown San Mateo. It was recommended to us as being good quality and inexpensive. The restaurant itself was nice, with a clean, though non-asian atmosphere and the service was good.
The food itself was just “good,” with no real stand out items. The most notable fact is that the portions are very large. A single piece of nigiri here is maybe 50% larger than what I’m used to at other restaurants.
We split a nigiri mix plate (10 peices) and 2 specialty rolls and came out at $31. I’d say if you are looking for decent every-day sushi this place is pretty good.
Yelp reviews of Joy Sushi.
Regarding the mysterious bee die-off
Since October 2006, 35 per cent or more of the United States’ population of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) – billions of individual bees – simply flew from their hive homes and disappeared.
It’s an interesting situation, and not to trivialize it but it sounds like paraphrasing Douglas Adams. “So Long and Thanks for All the Pollen.”