Mendel's Garden #5

Welcome to the fifth edition of Mendel's Garden -- the blog carnival devoted to all things genetical. In this edition, we have 17 articles from 14 blogs on biomedical research, evolutionary genetics, and molecular and cell biology. The entire collection can be found below the fold.

Biomedical Genetics

• Ruth Schaffer at Eating Fabulous reviews how genetically engineered tomatoes may help fight human disease. Ruth also writes for The Biotech Weblog, where she has written a post on genetic markers that can be used to predict premature birth.

• Hsien Hsien Lei, who blogs at Genetics and Health, recently met with the genetic testing company DNA Direct. She wrote about her experience in this post.

• Hsien must have passed on the word about Mendel's Garden to the folks at DNA Direct because they have submitted two entries from their company blog. Lisa Lee, director of content at DNA Direct, has written about coffee and diabetes and at home genetic testing.

• Genes and Drugs, a subsidiary of DNA Direct, has its own blog as well. Alan Eshleman has submitted a post on genomics, race, and medicine in which he summarizes some presentations from a conference he attended. Alan has also written a post on microarrays and tumor classification and shares with us an anecdote about genetics and life expectancy.

• Trisha at Ideas for Women blogs on the role of the breast cancer gene BRCA1 in translation.

Evolutionary Genetics

• Next week's host, JBruno at The Voltage Gate, summarizes the controversy surrounding the taxonomic classification of the red panda. It turns out that it may be a very distant relative of the giant panda, which means "panda" is a paraphyletic group. Oh, man, do I hate paraphyletic taxa.

• Sandra Porter, Discovering Biology in a Digital World, uses BLAST to determine the percent identity between human mtDNA and a few other ape mtDNA genomes.

• At Interesting Thing of the Day, Joe Kissell reviews hypotheses regarding the most recent common ancestor of all humans alive today. He touches on mitochondrial Eve, Y-chromosome Adam, and some mathematical calculations that tell us different stories about our last common relative.

• Knocking boots with your cousin is a poor decision. But so might be bumping uglies with a very distant relative (like someone from another race), as Razib at Gene Expression informs us in a post on the benefits and downsides of hybridization between human populations.

• I found this primer on population genetics, so I blogged it, focusing on null models in statistical tests for selection and demography.

Molecular and Cell Biology

• This post from nannerl could be put in either the biomedical or molecular genetics categories. The author discusses molecular biology, disease research, and immortality. FYI: I put it in molecular and cell biology because this category was looking a little bit sparse.

• Bora Zivkovic, aka Coturnix, blogs about clocks (biological, that is) at A Blog Around the Clock. In this post he tells us about circadian expression of nuclear receptors.

• Taking us inside the cytoskeleton, Alex Palazzo at The Daily Transcript reviews how microtubules are responsible for actin polymerization. The cell is a dynamic entity, and this process is important for the form of this shape-changing structure.

The next edition of Mendel's Garden will be hosted by JBruno at The Voltage Gate. You can submit an entry using either the blog carnival submission page or via email.