An Outsider's View "Over the past fifty years, factions of biologists have had a complex relationship. Some scientists have continued to carry out relatively traditional natural history work, with little need to delve into molecular (or computational) biology. Others have given little attention to natural history, focusing their efforts instead on deciphering the complexities of a membrane channel, or building new algorithms for identifying open reading frames. In some cases, biologists have bridged this divide, and the result has been a fruitful collaboration. But in other cases—such as the DNA studies on whales and hippos—one group moves into the other's traditional territory, sparking new conflict."[via]
posted by dhruva on Jul 22, 2009 - 12 comments

The Barcode of life is a short DNA sequence, from a uniform locality on the genome, used for identifying species. This can revolutionize taxonomy, if more people join the consortium and more species are added to the database. This device would be a biologist's Uber-pony. (via World Changing)
posted by dhruva on Feb 12, 2005 - 3 comments