Great books for the summer!

I'm super excited as my sisters just gave me this fabulous book:

Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology, The Centennial Edition

Here's its description:

This hugely influential book, published in 1966 as a 60th birthday tribute to Max Delbrück, is now republished as The Centennial Edition. On first publication, the book was hailed as “[introducing] into the literature of science, for the first time, a self–conscious historical element in which the participants in scientific discovery engage in writing their own chronicle. As such, it is an important document in the history of biology...” (Journal of History of Biology). And in another review it was described as “required reading for every student of experimental biology...[who] will sense the smell and rattle of the laboratory” (Bioscience). The book was a formative influence on many of today’s leading scientists.

I'm currently finishing Watson's Double Helix for the 2nd time (a great edition I picked up in the States a few years ago), so this will be a great read after that. Also in my reading queue:

which is sitting in my desk asking me when I will pick it up.

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Santiago is the place to be in 2011

We may not have the money or technology available in other research centers, but we have a kick-ass city!

Part of the new Gabriela Mistral Center, right next to my University, is to the right. The Lastarria neighborhood, filled with restaurants and bars is at the back (Image credit)

When science resources are scarce, you can always travel abroad as part of collaborations and do the experiments you can't do in your University. What you really wouldn't be able to get around of, is living in a boring city with nothing to do. Luckily, this is not our case.

Santiago, Chile, has been picked at the #1 place to visit in 2011 by the New York Times. Many things will go down here throughout the year, so if you have the opportunity to visit us, take it!

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2010 - A year in review. We are now 2 years old!

Another year has gone by and it’s time to evaluate how 2010 was for us. Yesterday was my blogoversary, making MolBio Research Highlights 2 years old. In these two years, a lot has happened and this blog has evolved from being a place where I linked to papers I considered interesting, to a full blog where we discuss primary research articles in the field, link to interesting things in the web (including molbio blog posts), organize the MolBio Carnival, discuss life as a scientist and more (See here).

Let’s talk about some of this blog’s highlights for 2010 and some things worth mentioning about my professional life.

1) We were finalists for Best Expert Level Blog and I was a finalist for Research Twitterer of the Year in the 2010 ResearchBlogging Awards.

This was awesome. Even though we didn’t end up winning these awards, being a finalist among several candidates was enough for us.

I use Twitter a lot for topics surrounding research in the life sciences (I think the award was given to a “Science” Twitterer, rather than to a “Research” Twitterer, but anyway), and yesterday I used an application to make a word cloud for my Twitter updates for 2010.

The resulting cloud speaks for itself: I-tweet-science (see also below, where I discuss my Twitter use on an interview for Wiley). So, if you are interested in the life sciences I invite you to follow me!

As I tweet a lot about articles I consider interesting, let’s see what this cloud has to say regarding the topics I discussed in 2010.

Genome, transcription, genetics, RNA, chromatin, microRNAs, cancer, evolution, and lately, arsenic, are some of the most used tags.

Also, apparently I laughed a lot (I see “haha” in there) and talked to Chris Dieni and Psi regularly.

2) We started a series of posts under the title “The hottest molbio topics: the next few years”, which until now, has featured David Garcia and Keith Robison

We had a poll inviting people to vote for what they thought were going to be the hottest topics in the field in the next few years (see Which will be the hottest topic in molecular biology in a few years? The results), and I decided to share the results by accompanying them with blog posts by experts in the respective areas.

So far, David Garcia from You'd Prefer An Argonaute and Keith Robison from Omics! Omics! have talked about small RNAs and new sequencing technologies, respectively. Fascinating posts. Go check them out!

3) I got invited to write an article for LabTimes because of my blog post on Yeast Recombinational Cloning

I wrote a post discussing a very simple and efficient cloning strategy that we routinely use in our lab, called “yeast recombinational cloning” (See here). Some time after that, I was contacted by the people at Lab Times (“a new, free, Life Science journal for the whole of Europe”), and invited me to write an article for them discussing this methodology. I immediately accepted, wrote the article and it was featured in their 03-2010 issue. You can check it out here.

4) We took a top place in the 2010 HAL Medical Blog Awards, sponsored by Apredica, under the "Future Leaders of Biomed – Best Blog Award" category

As taken from their website:

“A search for “medical blog” in Google will get you more than 175 million results.

But of those 175 million results, which should you actually read? The 2010 HAL Medical Blog Awards, which highlight the very best blogs in health and medicine, aims to answer that question.”

Someone nominated us and we got a top place in the “Future Leaders of Biomed – Best Blog Award” category, which “recognizes the top blogs covering biology and medical issues that are by graduate students with exceptional promise”.

See my post about it here.

5) We started the “Direct Connection” Section

We created “Direct Connections”, a section which includes blog posts discussing primary research articles in the field, written by the authors themselves (see below). We have many of these in the works, but the first post of this series was written by Chris Dieni, who discussed his paper entitled “Regulation of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase by reversible phosphorylation in liver of a freeze tolerant frog”.

Take a look at his post.

6) I was invited to write a post for Benchfly!

In early 2010, Benchfly organized the “Model Organism Week”, in which fellow science bloggers were invited to talk about some of the many organisms that have been instrumental for our current understanding of biology.

I wrote a piece for this initiative entitled “The Almighty Fungi: The Revolutionary Neurospora crassa”, in which I gave a historic view of the importance of this fungus for the advancement of modern molecular biology.

Go check it out!

7) We organized The MolBIo Carnival and hosted its first issue

A blog carnival discussing molecular and cellular biology was missing, so together with LabRat, Lucas Brouwers, Psi Wavefunction and Alex Knoll, we organized The MolBio Carnival, which groups together posts discussing peer-review articles, techniques, books and related topics in the field.

We hosted the first ever issue of this Carnival back in August (See The MolBio Carnival: the first edition) and this has been going one since then. The 6th one goes live on January 3rd, so there’s still time to get your posts in!

You can take a look at the Carnival’s history on its website.

8) I got interviewed for an article in Nature

That’s right. I was interviewed for an article discussing the "internationalization of science", which was part of a supplement entitled "Science masterclass", which commemorated the 60th Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates.

I won’t get into much detail and I encourage you to take a look to this article which was published back in October.

Francisco actually attended this meeting. Read his post entitled "My impressions on the recent Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting"

9) I was selected as an Advisor for Wiley and was interviewed for their “Advisor Spotlight” section

The Wiley Science Advisors initiative aims to start a correspondence with young scientists and hear their perspectives on a variety of topics in science and publishing.

I’m currently involved in this program and recently, I was featured in their “Advisor Spotlight” section, for which I answered some questions regarding my online presence, i.e my blog and Twitter use.

Take a look!

10) I was interviewed by the PostDoc Forum

My interview for the PostDocs forum has just been published. I was kindly invited by Susan Steinhardt, who, despite of my "inattention to schedule", was continuously interested in featuring me.

Thanks Susan!

11) I’m a Mendeley advisor

This year I was selected as a Mendeley University Advisor. Mendeley “is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research”.

I’ve given some talks in Santiago to fellow researchers on the benefits of using Mendeley and actually convinced some people to switch from other platforms to Mendeley. If you have any questions regarding Mendeley, please send me an email or contact me through Twitter.

12) I won a F1000 twitter contest

Back in March, Richard Grant organized a fascinating Twitter contest, in which the idea was to "post your most embarrassing scientific error or egregious lab-based manipulation to Twitter with the #scifubar hashtag".

I contributed with this little thing…

Undergrad said he couldn't "paint" the black lines on the autoclave tape as good as his supervisor (he even bought a black marker) #scifubar,

which got me first place!  Read about it here.

___

Well, I guess that’s it. A whole year in review.

Thanks to everyone who has helped us throughout these two years and we hope to continue to be of service to all of our loyal readers.Yes, to all three of you :)

Happy holidays!

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PostDocs Forum Featured Scientist

A (very) long time ago, Susan Steinhardt from the PostDocs Forum sent me an email with the idea of featuring me in their website. I immediately accepted, but I wasn't really diligent about it. I really appreciate Susan's continuous interest,  regardless of my  "inattention to schedule", as Keith Robison would say.

Anyway, my interview is now live at the Forum and I encourage you to take a look!

Also, be sure to check my Spotlight at Wiley Science Advisor's website.

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Middle Ages Science meets Present Times Science...

... and me!

Taken at the Karlsruhe Palace. Thanks to Alex Knoll for inviting me to his home while in Germany and for taking me sightseeing (and for taking the picture!).

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Advisor Spotlight

I'm part of Wiley Science Advisors, a project designed to connect with the next generation of scientists.

Every month an advisor is featured on the website and answers a few questions. This month was my turn and my Q&A was focused on my scientific online presence: how and why I use Twitter and blogs. 

Go and take a look!

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Generation X-change

A few months ago, I was interviewed for an article to be published in Nature, on the topic of the "internationalization of science". Basically, the idea was to interview scientists from different countries to address "whether or not the exchange of people and ideas is changing how science is done in countries all over the world".

The article, entitled "Generation X-change", was published today as part of the Nature supplement "Science masterclass", which commemorates the 60th Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates.

Go check it out... there's free full access to all articles in the supplement!

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My impressions on the recent Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

I recently attended the 2010 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, a “globally recognised forum for the transfer of knowledge between generations of scientists”. This exciting and mind-broadening conference was enriching in many ways (with actual science being only one of the many fantastic things about it), and in this post I’d like to share with you my impressions of it.

First of all, the historic city of Lindau (Germany) is a beautiful place, located near the Austrian, German and Swiss borders. The 2010 edition of this meeting was the 3rd one to be formatted in an interdisciplinary way, bringing together Laureates and young researchers working in biology, chemistry and physics. This made it all the more interesting since I had the opportunity to meet people from different fields and with varied backgrounds. 

Aerial view of Lindau Island (Image credit)

The meeting itself has been going on for 60 years now and it was started  after the Second World War as a way for scientists to meet each other and exchange ideas. The concept of also inviting students was put forward by one of the meeting's founders, the late Count Bernadotte. Interestingly, it wasn’t until 10 years ago that non-German students have been invited to participate. This year, notably, 70 different countries were represented at the meeting (or maybe I should say 71, because for some reason I was enrolled as a Spanish instead of a Chilean student), highlighting the global nature of this conference.

The lectures are available online, so if you are interested in the scientific aspect of the meeting, I encourage you to take a look at 3 that I considered to be among the most interesting ones in the biology field: Roger Tsien’s lecture (Laureate in Chemistry, sharing the Prize for GFP), Jack Szostak’s (Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, for his work on telomeres) and I highly recommend watching Oliver Smithies’s talk, which in my opinion, was really inspiring (you can comment on it here after watching it online).

The famous harbour entrance of Lindau (Image credit)

Besides getting to know more about the science behind a Nobel Prize, the thing that I considered to be most fascinating was the humane side to all of it. How researchers stumble upon findings (and most will tell you was sheer luck), and basically, how they went after the things they considered interesting and fulfilling. The take home message is this, then: work on whatever makes you happy and forget about prizes, they rarely come and if they do it is not by following any guidelines.

The other major aspect of the meeting is getting to know other students (undergrads, grad students, post docs and occasionally a young PI) from all over the world, which is always something exciting. The mixture of cultures, lifestyles and even research topics was remarkable. On this note I’d like to add that if you ever have the opportunity to attend this meeting (or another one of similar characteristics, if there is such a thing) I highly encourage you to attend: you won’t regret it.

In a nutshell, I learned 3 things from this meeting:

1) Work on interesting problems that make you happy.

2) Don’t be focused on awards and...

3) Do NOT walk from Lindau to Austria at 3 am (it was a 7 km walk back to my hotel!)

-Francisco

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(Top image credit)

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My article on Yeast Recombinational Cloning is out!

In a previous post, I highlighted the wonders of using yeast recombinational cloning as an alternative to “classic” cloning, particularly when a high-throughput approach was to be taken [See An alternative cloning strategy: yeast recombinational cloning].

Some time after posting it, I was contacted by the people at Lab Times, who asked me to write an article about this fantastic methodology for their journal. This, of course, was an invitation I gladly accepted, as I was very excited about the fact that a post on my blog had reached the people at this German-based journal. In fact, one of the most positive aspects of blogging involves being able to get through to scientists all over the world.

My article, entitled "Yeast Recombinational Cloning", was written for a section called "Bench Philosophy" which includes articles dealing with attractive methods and techniques.

The article is now live as part of the 03-2010 issue and you can check it out here.

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After a long day...

After a long day, which included Neurospora crassa RNA extraction and cDNA generation (from several samples), picking transformants into slants (way too many...), Neurospora transformation (again, several samples), reading papers, mentoring undergrad and a lot more (I had lunch about 3 hrs later than usual), there is nothing better than relaxing in a nearby bar with friends...

I think I'll start things off with a nice piscola

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(Top image credit)

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Thank you PLoS!

After a long wait, it finally arrived!! Here's a pic of me wearing my birthday present in the lab, courtesy of the Public Library of Science, taken last Friday.

I want to thank Liz Allen and Jessica Ashdown at PLoS for this kind gift. I will wear it proudly :-)

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Good luck, Roberto!

My dear friend and colleague, Roberto Munita (standing, blue t-shirt) left yesterday for a 3-month stay at John Mattick's Lab in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, Australia. The research at John's Lab is centered around the regulatory role of RNA.

We wish you success in this fascinating adventure! Keep us posted!

__
About the picture: This was taken at a field trip during the Gene Expression and RNA Processing meeting, in Bariloche, Argentina, 2007. On the left, Francisco Barriga. The girls belong to different Argentinean labs.

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In the meantime...

I haven´t had the time to blog a lot this week due to the setting up of several experiments and undergrad mentoring (I feel like the guy on the picture). In fact, Picks of the Week wasn´t published this week. I apologize to all my readers.... the two of you :)

There are, however, some great blog posts in preparation (many of which are guest posts) and will be posted here soon.

In the meantime, there are several fascinating molbio research articles you can check out at "Around the Journals".

Go there now!

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(Image credit)

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I won!!

Richard Grant, Information Architect at F1000, organized a fascinating Twitter contest. The idea was to "post your most embarrassing scientific error or egregious lab-based manipulation to Twitter with the #scifubar hashtag".

I read about it last night and decided to enter with two funny stories from my Department (remember you can post up to 140 characters in Twitter):

1) I saw someone try to melt agarose by adding a magnetic bar and placing the bottle on a magnetic stirrer #scifubar

and

2) Undergrad said he couldn't "paint" the black lines on the autoclave tape as good as his supervisor (he even bought a black marker) #scifubar

Today, the winners where announced through Twitter (by @f1000) , and to my amazement, I won!!:

We have a #scifubar winner! @aemonten for autoclave tape shenanigans http://bit.ly/bakPy9 ^rpg

A bag of F1000 swag, including the much-coveted laser-stylus-pen-torch thingy, is on its way to Chile!

Thank you "anonymous" undergrad, and thank you Richard!

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Powerful earthquake strikes Chile

On Saturday, at 3:34 am, Chile was struck by a powerful earthquake, one of the most devastating representations of nature. An astounding 8.8-magnitud quake (Richter), one of the most intense recorded in history, has hit Central and Southern Chile, bringing chaos and suffering to many Chilean families. Many people are missing, injured or have been rendered homeless, either due to the quake itself or the accompanying Tsunami, and to date, more than 700 casualties have been confirmed. Sadly, but surely, these numbers will rise. Our heart goes to all those families in this terrible situation.

Infrastructural damages are numerous (thousands of buildings are uninhabitable, including several hospitals) and water, electricity, and other basic services are limited. Mobile and land phone services have collapsed.

This has been the most intense quake in Chile in the last 50 years, and the second one in the world, since 1990. “State of catastrophe” has been declared in the hardest-hit regions, which allows for a faster distribution of aid (See image, taken from El Mercurio).

The current government, led by Michelle Bachelet, and the recently elected one (to take office in March 11th) are working together to bring quick solutions to everyone who has been affected by this quake. Military units have been deployed to critical locations to help and protect the population and maintain order, as supermarkets and other stores have been the target of pillage.

Several presidents around the world have offered their help in these difficult times. Their help will indubitably be of importance as the task ahead, the reconstruction of the affected zones, will be a great one. "This will take a great effort from all sectors, public and private” the president said.

On a personal note, I’d like to thank everyone, both in Chile and abroad, that have gone out of their ways to contact me during the last few hours. We are all OK; your concern is deeply appreciated. Also, I was pleasantly surprised to have received direct messages from Twitter friends, which I will reply to promptly.

I may be posting more updates through Twitter soon.

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Chile has a new President

Sebastián Piñera Echeñique has been elected President of Chile, for the period 2010-2014.

He represents the "Coalition for Change", an alliance that has embodied the Opposition for the last 20 years and finally gets a chance to hold office, supporting one of the most important aspects of the political dimension of democracy: the alternation of power.

Let's hope his administration is a successful one and that it can lead Chile to a period of growth and stability.

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