Can a spoof be scooped by reality?

Well, if you read this blog, or a few others, you may already know that what I reported on here on April 1 regarding NIH cracking down on brain doping, was, in fact an April Fool's joke. I will write more about this joke later and how we planned it, starting at something called scifoo camp at Google headquarters in the summer of last year. But I do want to write about one thing here -- we sort of got scooped by reality. I had been planning for some time to do an April 1 joke on performance enhancing drug use among scientists. And as I was recruiting others to be involved in this plot, reality got in the way when Nature and then the New York Times started to report on brain doping as a real issue. It kind of took the absurdity away from our joke and made it seem like we were making some real commentary on brain doping when in fact, we were at least originally just trying to come up with something ridiculous but possibly believable at first look.

And now it has happened again. The second spoof I considered doing was to write about doing DNA and drug testing on some water bottles I collected from the Tour of California - a bike race that came 1 block from my house. I went for a little ride on the route of the race a few minutes after the peloton came by and got about 10 bottles from different teams. (This was real). And then I was going to pretend that we took those bottles and (1) figured out whose they were by DNA testing and (2) did drug tests of them. And this would allow me to write about 23 and me and other DNA testing companies as well as to make some fun of performance enhancing drug scandals. And I thought this would be ridiculous in a way because it could not possibly be legal to test someone's DNA without any real just cause. And low and behold look at what comes along --- Amy Harmon has an article in the Times yesterday on people doing exactly this type of thing --- testing other people's DNA (good article, by the way).

So now twice my spoofs end up getting scooped by reality. To me, a good spoof/April 1 joke is completely absurd in hindsight even if it is believable initially. So every time one of these jokes/pranks I want to pull gets close to reality, it becomes much much less funny to me. Who knows, maybe Craig Venter will in fact sequence his own microbiome, as I joked about last April 1.

Maybe before my next joke, I should call up Amy Harmon and other reporters to make sure they are not working on related stories first?

Open Evolution: Google supports open source code for evolutionary studies - Deadline 4-08 for Summer of Code

See email I received via Iddo Friedberg from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center which is seeking students and others to participate in the Phyloinformatics Summer of Code.

This is just a reminder that the student application period ends
definitively on April 7 (Monday), 5pm PDT/8pm EDT (0:00 UTC on April
8). (Google extended the period from the original end date of March
31.) There are still a few project ideas that have received little
attention from student applications so far. If you are interested,
please see below for URLs, and get in touch with us phylosoc {at}
nescent {dot} org to inquire for more information re: application
status of your favorite project(s).

Phyloinformatics Summer of Code 2008
http://phyloinformatics.net/Phyloinformatics_Summer_of_Code_2008

*** Please disseminate this announcement widely to appropriate students
at your institution ***

The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent: http://
www.nescent.org/) is participating in 2008 for the second year as a
mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code (http://
code.google.com/soc). Through this program, Google provides
undergraduate, masters, and PhD students with a unique opportunity to
obtain hands-on experience writing and extending open-source software
under the mentorship of experienced developers from around the world.

Our goal in participating is to train future researchers and
developers to not only have awareness and understanding of the value
of open-source and collaboratively developed software, but also to
gain the programming and remote collaboration skills needed to
successfully contribute to such projects. Students will receive a
stipend from Google, and may work from their home, or home
institution, for the duration of the 3 month program. Students will
each have one or more dedicated mentors with expertise in
phylogenetic methods and open-source software development.

NESCent is particularly targeting students interested in both
evolutionary biology and software development. Project ideas (see URL
below) range from visualizing phylogenetic data in R, to development
of a Mesquite module, web-services for phylogenetic data providers or
geophylogeny mashups, implementing phyloXML support, navigating
databases of networks, topology queries for PhyloCode registries, to
phylogenetic tree mining in a MapReduce framework, and more.

The project ideas are flexible and many can be adjusted in scope to
match the skills of the student. If the program sounds interesting to
you but you are unsure whether you have the necessary skills, please
email the mentors at the address below. We will work with you to
find a project that fits your interests and skills.

INQUIRIES:
Email any questions, including self-proposed project ideas, to
phylosoc {at} nescent {dot} org.

TO APPLY:
Apply on-line at the Google Summer of Code website
(http://code.google.com/soc/2008), where you will also find GSoC program
rules and eligibility requirements. The 1-week application period for
students opened on Monday March 24th and runs through Monday, March
31st, 2008.

Hilmar Lapp and Todd Vision
US National Evolutionary Synthesis Center

=====
URLs:
=====

2008 NESCent Phyloinformatics Summer of Code:
http://phyloinformatics.net/Phyloinformatics_Summer_of_Code_2008

Eligibility requirements:
http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_eligibility

Stipends:
http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_administrivia

Quote of the week "There are much yummier and easier things to eat in the human body"

An interesting new paper has appeared in one of the those non Open Access journals - Science. Normally I do not write about such closed access, closed minded things, but I want to make an exception here. The paper is by George Church and colleagues on bacteria that subsist on a diet of antibiotics.

The paper is perfectly reasonable, if not pretty cool. Although it is a bit over hyped. It is obvious that bacteria would be able to eat antibiotics. Not only has this been shown previously, (as Church is very careful to point out) but bacteria eat anything and everything. So of course they will eat energy rich antibiotic molecules. The real problem in this case is the fear mongering that will come with the reporting on this. In the first few articles we already see this. For example, Reuters says

Church said the finding underscores the extent to which bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics, a process that started almost as soon as penicillin was introduced in the 1940s.

Ummm ... antibiotics have actually been around for billions of years. Microbes make them all the time. So resistance too has been around for a long time. Yes, we are selecting for strains resistant to all our classes of antibiotics. But resistance itself did not start with the introduction of penicillin. I note the AP story got this right:

Nor is it a surprise that soil bacteria can withstand some antibiotics; some had already been found. After all, a number of antibiotics are natural — think penicillin. Some antibiotics have been derived from soil.

The only sense in all the stories I saw came from Jo Handelsman who was quoted in many of them:

"Thank goodness we have those bacteria to eat at least some of the antibiotics," said bacteriologist Jo Handelsman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who wasn't involved in the study. "Nature's pretty effective." From AP article.

Even better, Handelsman tried to calm the fears about whether bacteria would eat antibiotics given to treat infections:

But bacteriologist Jo Handelsman of the University of Wisconsin, Madison thinks this is unlikely, as “there are much yummier and easier things to eat in the human body."

And for that, she gets the quote of the week.

Open Access metagenomics selections

A quick post --- here are some relatively new interesting papers in metagenomics that are fully Open Access

• A statistical toolbox for metagenomics: assessing functional diversity in microbial communities. Schloss & Handelsman BMC Bioinformatics 2008, 9:34
  
• Picoeukaryotic sequences in the Sargasso Sea metagenome. Piganeau et al. Genome Biology 2008, 9:R5
• Microbial Ecology of Four Coral Atolls in the Northern Line Islands. PLoS ONE. 2008; 3(2): e1584
• The airborne metagenome in an indoor urban environment. PLoS ONE. 2008 3(4):e1862.

Yoga and Evolution - How are they related?

Trick question. They are related because I am posting YouTube videos on those topics here. Just a little YouTube humor to help everyone get through the week. Warning - the evolution one is truly over the top and might offend a few so click on it with caution.


EnlightenUp The Film




Dawkins Rap

Bill and Melinda (Gates that is) ask for your ideas ... lots of money on the line

Well, I signed up for emails from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, hoping to apply for some of their trillions of dollars to do a little bit of research.

And I got an email today I would like to share, since, well, they said I should share it. And here it is ..

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now accepting grant proposals for Grand Challenges Explorations, a US$100 million initiative to help scientists pursue innovative ideas for solving major global health problems.

Grant proposals are being accepted online at www.gcgh.org/explorations until May 30, 2008, on the following topics:

-- Creating new ways to protect against infectious diseases
-- Creating drugs or delivery systems that limit the emergence of resistance
-- Creating new ways to prevent or cure HIV infection
-- Exploring the basis for latency in TB

Initial grants will be $100,000 each, and projects showing success will have the opportunity to receive additional funding of $1 million or more. Full descriptions of the topics and application instructions are available at www.gcgh.org/explorations.

We are looking forward to receiving innovative ideas from scientists around the world and from all scientific disciplines. If you don't submit a proposal yourself, we hope you will forward this message to someone else who might be interested.

Thank you for your commitment to solving the world's greatest health challenges.

###
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world. In developing countries, it focuses on improving health, reducing extreme poverty, and increasing access to technology in public libraries. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that all people have access to a great education and to technology in public libraries. In its local region, it focuses on improving the lives of low-income families. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Patty Stonesifer and Co-chairs William H. Gates Sr., Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates.

Davis Life Magazine

Just got an email announcing a new issue of Davis Life Magazine which I meant to post about here previously. It is a nice little web magazine about, well, life in Davis.

What is so bad about brain doping? Apparently, NIH thinks something is.

UPDATE - FAKE SCIENCE NEWS HERE.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk around the web about brain doping ... that is, using some sort of drug to enhance intelligence or intellectual performance in some way. For example see

• New York Times article
• Would you boost your brain power? from Nature News and Opinion ...
• Pumping up your brain with legal drugs
• Nootropic - Wikipedia
• Performance Enhancing Drugs in the Boardroom? — Micromotives
• LA Times Story

A key question is - is brain doping bad? I am not so sure. However, NIH apparently thinks otherwise. NIH has just announced the formation of the World Anti Brain Doping Authority in conjunction with the ever so annoying World Anti Doping Authority. For more information see http://wabda.org and I attach the announcement below. Apparently, they are working on making a list of banned drugs and punishment for misuse for anyone funded by NIH. I have also heard they will be doing drug testing to new grant awardees. Lovely.

What is funny is this so fits in with the new top down style at the NIH. Forget about the individual scientist and the need for independence and creativity. There are so many rules about everything now that I think I will just seek out funds from other agencies.

See also other bloggers writing about this:

• Chris Patil
• Bora
• Anna Kushnir
• Genome Technology
• Sunclipse
• Egghead
• Eye on DNA
• Bob Ohara
• Martin Fenner
• Jennomics
• Castros Favorite Color
• Pedro Baltrao
• Rants and Raves

Here is the announcement:

NIH Announces New Initiatives to Fight the Use of Brain Enhancing Drugs by Scientists

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced three new initiatives to fight the use of brain enhancing drugs by scientists. The new initiatives are (1) the creation of the NIH Anti-Brain Doping Advisory Group (NABDAG), a new trans-NIH committee, (2) a collaboration with the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) and the European Commission to create the World Anti-Brain Doping Authority (WABDA) and (3) the adoption by the NIH of the World Anti-Brain Doping Code – a set of regulations on the use of brain enhancing drugs among scientists.

"These new initiatives are designed to level the playing field among scientist in terms of intellectual activities," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "These three activities are designed to get NIH ahead of the curve in terms of performance enhancing drug use among scientists."

NABDAG will serve to coordinate activities across different NIH agencies in terms of regulating the use of brain enhancing drugs. The trans-NIH group will be directed by internationally renowned doping authority Jonathan Davis, Ph.D., current director of research at WADA.

"The priority of NABDAG will be to seek out input from the scientific community and from within NIH," Davis said. "The availability of tremendous expertise and the remarkable infrastructure at NIH will make our activities more robust and will allow us to tackle questions about brain doping that were not possible to address in the past. For example, new testing procedures will need to be developed and we will be able to bring the entire NIH infrastructure to this task."

While “doping” is now accepted as a problem among athletes, it is less widely known that so-celled “brain doping” has been affecting the competitive balance in scientific research as well. It is for this reason that NIH is collaborating with the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA), which has led the fight against doping in athletics, to create the World Anti Brain Doping Authority (WABDA). “Because brain doping is not just an American problem,” said Richard Pound, the current Director of WADA and acting Director of WABDA until a permanent head can be found, “we are working with the European Union’s research funding agency, the European Commission Research, to make sure WABDA is effective.

NABDAG will be established within the NIH Office of Intramural Research and administered by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Additional support for the center will come from the NIH Office of the Director, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Center for Scientific Review (CSR). The research activities of NABDAG will take place on the NIH Bethesda campus. An additional focus of NABDAG will be to provide training opportunities for students and established scientists from developing countries and from minority groups in the United States.

Together with WABDA, NABDAG will work to develop the international rules for the use of performance enhancing drugs among scientists as well as testing and punishment procedures. Most importantly they will administer the World Anti Brain-Doping Code, a set of uniform anti-brain doping rules. The NIH and European Commission have formally adopted this Code for the conduct of all scientists which receive funding in any form (intramural or extramural) from these agencies. The Code includes regulations on which drugs are prohibited, what the recommended testing procedures should be, and what the punishments should be for positive tests. More information on the WABDA Code can be found at http://wabda.org/. We note that the implementation will include testing of all NIH funded scientists both at the time they receive funding as well as at random times during the course of working on an NIH funded project. Testing will also be implemented at all NIH-funded or NIH-hosted events such as conferences and workshops and at grant review panels.

NIMH, NIDA, and CSR are among the 27 institutes and centers at the NIH, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The NIMH mission is to reduce the burden of mental and behavioral disorders through research on mind, brain, and behavior. More information is available at the NIMH website http://www.nimh.nih.gov. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world's research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to ensure the rapid dissemination of research information to inform policy and improve practice. Fact sheets on the health effects of drugs of abuse and further information on NIDA research can be found on the NIDA web site at http://www.drugabuse.gov. The Center for Scientific Review organizes the peer review groups that evaluate the majority of grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health. CSR recruits about 18,000 outside scientific experts each year for its review groups. CSR also receives all NIH and many Public Health Service grant applications — about 80,000 a year — and assigns them to the appropriate NIH Institutes and Centers and PHS agencies. CSR’s primary goal is to see that NIH applications receive fair, independent, expert, and timely reviews that are free from inappropriate influences so NIH can fund the most promising research. For more information, visit http://www.csr.nih.gov.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

Metagenomics Education

Just a quick one here. I was reminded recently about an interesting publication about metagenomics education in which some people might be interested. It is by Anne Jurkowski, Ann Reid and Jay Lebov and was published in a journal called CBE Life Sciences Education. This journal, though not fully Open Access is freely available online.

I think the article is a useful callto arms for educators to get ahead of the curve and to start thinking about ways to teach metagenomics BEFORE it becomes an old field (i.e, while it is hot, and who knows how long that will last).

A different kind of Open Science - the need to track funding sources and conflicts of interest

Well, the News is abuzz with discussion of a controversy involving lung cancer studies that were funded by tobacco associated money (e.g., see MSNBC and TIME and the NY Times). The issue is that apparently the source of the money was hidden through some sort of laundering of the money through a foundation.

As many readers know, I am a bit obsessed with open access to scientific research publications. This here is a case where the need for openness goes well beyond publications. Here there is a need for openness about funding and conflicts of interest and the roles of all participants. In this case, I am not sure what could have been done by the journals involved to vet the funding of the project more carefully. But nevertheless, science in general can be severely hurt whenever there are cases of even the appearance of conflict of interest. I do believe that open access journals help in this in that anyone, anywhere, can look at the publication as well as the descriptions of the funding sources and the authors contributions. The more eyes we have on research products, the more likely problems will be discovered and (possibly) the less likely it will be to happen again.

Hey - that's my cat sitter on the UC Davis front page

Way to go Amanda Plunkett - featured on the UC Davis front page and in the UC Davis Magazine.

Happy to get this email on NIH Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications ....

Well, the new NIH policy is not perfect, but it is a good first step. And I must say, I got a tingle of excitement when I got this email from the UC Davis Administration:

March 20, 2008

I am writing to alert you to a new requirement for investigators who receive funding from the NIH. Under the Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2008, the NIH will require that all NIH-funded investigators submit or arrange for the submission of an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts accepted for publication to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central. PubMed Central (PMC) is the NIH’s publicly-accessible, digital archive of full-text, peer-reviewed journal articles. This new law requires manuscripts to be made publicly available via PMC no later than 12 months after the official date of publication. Please note:

1. This requirement applies to all peer-reviewed articles that arise, in whole or in part, from direct costs funded by NIH, or from work of NIH staff, that are accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008.

2. UC Davis investigators are responsible for ensuring that any publishing or copyright agreements concerning submitted articles fully comply with this requirement. To satisfy this obligation, UC Davis investigators should enclose a copy of the one-page letter prepared by the UC Office of the President with any articles submitted to publishers for possible publication either at the time the article is submitted or with the publication agreement. The subject letter is available at: http://www.ucop.edu/raohome/cgmemos/08-05a.pdf).

3. The final, peer-reviewed manuscript submitted to PMC must include all graphics and supplemental material that are associated with the article.

4. Beginning May 25, 2008, anyone submitting an application, proposal or progress report to the NIH is also required to include the PMC reference number when citing applicable articles arising from NIH-funded research. This requirement applies to proposals submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008 due date, as well as subsequent due dates.

5. Certain publishers have agreed to automatically submit articles to PMC on behalf of the authors. The list of these publishers can be accessed at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm

Even if a publisher is on this list, UC Davis investigators should verify that their published articles will be submitted to PMC in compliance with the law. If the publisher is not on the list, UC Davis investigators are responsible for submitting their articles to PMC and verifying receipt of the article.

6. Failure to comply with this policy may jeopardize future NIH funding.

Additional information about this law is available at http://publicaccess.nih.gov. Also, the UC Davis Library can provide further assistance to investigators. Please see http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/dept/hsl/resources/other/nihmandate/ or contact the Library’s sciences department heads:

Breaking News: PZ Myers expelled from Expelled (the Movie)

Everyone must read, immediately, Pharyngula now.

PZ Myers writes about how he was expelled from the movie Expelled (a pro Intelligent Design movie). And the best part - Richard Dawkins was allowed in ...

Genomes of Energy and the Environment - JGI Users Meeting

Just a little post here --- if you are interested in Metagenomics, or Bioenergy or Microbes, consider going to the JGI Users Meeting March 26-28. Speakers include at least one Nobel Laureate (Steve Chu) as well as Mitch Sogin, Jill Banfield, Terry Hazen, and many others.

Eisen Resigns in Disgrace Over Scandal #FSN #PLoSTitution

By Saul Jacobson and Frank Tepedino, Asociated Press Writers

(03-13-2008) 19:50 PDT San Francisco (AP) --

In a startlingly swift fall from grace, the new Academic Editor in Chief of PLoS Biology Jonathan Eisen resigned Wednesday after getting caught in a pay-for-access scandal that made a mockery of his straight-arrow “open access only” image and left him facing the prospect of criminal charges and perhaps permanent exclusion from journal editorial boards.

"I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people's work," Eisen said, his weary-looking brother and Public Library of Science (PLoS) founder, Michael, standing at his side, again, as the closed access-fighting scientist once known as Mr. Open Access answered for his actions for the second time in three days.

He made the announcement without securing a plea bargain with NIH prosecutors, though an NIH official said the former PLoS Academic Editor in Chief was still believed to be negotiating one. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Eisen will be succeeded on Monday by Alex Gann, a fellow scientist who becomes PLoS Biology’s first foreign-born Academic Editor in Chief and the nation's first legally blind chief editor.

The resignation brought the curtain down on a riveting three-day drama — played out, sometimes, as farce — that made Eisen an instant punchline on science blogs and fascinated Americans with the spectacle of a crusading scientist exposed as a hypocrite.

His dizzying downfall was met with glee and the popping of champagne corks among many on Crinan Street, where Eisen was seen as a sanctimonious bully for attacking high prices and abusive access practices in the publishing industry when he was a rising Academic Editor at PLoS Biology. And his resignation brought relief at PLoS headquarters in San Francisco after days of excruciating tension and uncertainty.

"Some rules can't be broken, and when they are broken there are consequences," said Harold Varmus, an Open Access advocate and ex-head of the NIH. "In this case, one of the most promising careers I've seen in a generation."

The scandal erupted Monday after NIH officials disclosed that a wiretap had caught the 39-year-old father of two spending thousands of grant dollars on journal articles about evolution at a fancy Washington hotel on the night before Darwin Day.

Investigators said he had arranged for a journal editor named Kristen to take the train down from New York while he was in the nation's capital to testify before a congressional subcommittee about the publishing industry.

Late Wednesday, the New York Times reported that her real name is Emma Hill. She declined to comment when asked by the Times when she first met Eisen and how many times she had helped him purchase and download closed access journal articles.

It was unclear whether she would face charges; attorney David Bora confirmed that he represents the same woman in the Times story but wouldn't comment further.

With every development, it became increasingly clear that Eisen, politically, was finished.

NIH enforcement officials said the Editor in Chief — the scientific heir to the PLoS banner — had spent multiple entire evenings downloading articles and had spent tens of thousands of grant dollars, and perhaps as much as $80,000, on high-priced Nature articles which cost as much as $35 each.

Senior Eisen aides, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Eisen had been informed Friday by NIH prosecutors that he was linked to the grant money laundering ring.

They said he had kept it to himself through Saturday night, when he attended the annual dinner of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. That night a reporter kept calling cell phones of Eisen aides.

Eisen first shared the news Sunday with his brother at his house in Davis, and after several excruciating hours they told their family, the aides said. By Sunday evening Eisen had called top advisers, personal friends and PLoS loyalists. The little band huddled in the house until midnight.

After making a watery-eyed, non-specific public apology Monday with his brother by his side, Eisen continued to talk to family and advisers through Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, aides said, he had decided to resign.

He and his brother rode in a black SUV from the Davis house to PLoS headquarters in San Francisco to announce his resignation — a trip whose every move was captured by TV helicopters. During the news conference, he and his brother stood inches apart, never touching as they entered or left the room.

Speaking in a strong and steady voice, he apologized for his actions and said: "Over the course of my public life, I've insisted, I believe correctly, that scientists regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself."

He did not address the allegations in any detail in the less than three-minute statement, and left without taking questions.

Officials said that Gann asked for the Monday hand-over because he needed more time to prepare and wanted Eisen to say the proper goodbye to his staff.

In a statement issued after Eisen quit, NIH Attorney Lisa Coffmancini, the chief grant money abuse prosecutor in California, said: "There is no agreement between this office and Eisen relating to his resignation or any other matter."

Among the possible charges that law enforcement authorities said could be brought against the former editor in chief: soliciting and paying for journal access; violating the Consolidated Appropriations Act, the 2008 federal law that makes it a crime to publish NIH funded research in non Open Access journals; and illegally arranging cash transactions to conceal their purpose.

Eisen, a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford graduate school, could also be disdoctorated. In California, a scientist can lose his license to practice for failing to "conduct himself both professionally and personally, in conformity with the standards of conduct imposed upon members of the scientific community."

It was a spectacular collapse for a man who cultivated an image as a hard-nosed scientist hell-bent on cleansing the state of corruption in scientific publishing. He served four terms as an Academic Editor at PLoS Biology, earning the nickname "Sheriff of Open Access," and was elected Academic Editor in Chief with a record share of the vote in 2008. The tall, athletic, square-jawed Eisen was sometimes mentioned as a potential candidate for president of the American Academy of Publishers.

But he also made powerful enemies, many of whom complained that he was abusive and self-righteous.

"I really don't feel vindicated," said Philip Campbell, the Editor in Chief of Nature who lost many papers to PLoS Biology via Eisen’s efforts. But he added: "One of the many things I said was that Jonathan Eisen had one set of rules for himself and one set for everyone else. I never would have imagined it could be so glaring."

Publishers on the floor of American Academy of Publisher’s annual meeting were transfixed by TV monitors broadcasting Eisen’s resignation, and his ruin drew scattered applause from publishers as they went about buying and selling articles. One said some firms even cracked champagne open — a ritual usually reserved for when subscription fees hit a milestone.

Gann said in a statement that he was saddened, but added: "It is now time for PLoS to get back to work as the people and scientist expect from us."

Barely known outside of his Cold Spring Harbor political base, Alex Gann, 53, has been in publishing since his election to the Nature editorial board in 1985.

Though legally blind, he has enough sight in his right eye to walk unaided, recognize people at conversational distance and even read if the text is placed close to his face.

While Eisen was famously abrasive, uncompromising and even insulting, Gann has built a reputation as a conciliator, and lawmakers quickly embraced the new order.

"The first thing he can and I think he will do is end the era of accusation and contempt and ridicule," said PLoS Co-Founder Pat Brown. "I think everyone will be better off because of it."






------------------------------------------------------------------
With apologies to those mentioned above and thanks to the real Associated Press story about Governor Spitzer by Verena Dobnik and Michael Gormley

Wall Street Journal on Open Access

There is a nice essay (Information Liberation) by Daniel Akst in the Wall Street Journal on Open Access to scientific publications (thanks to Bora for pointing this out). He leads of the essay saying

If your child has a life-threatening disease and you're desperate to read the latest research, you'll be dismayed to learn that you can't -- at least not without hugely expensive subscriptions to a bevy of specialized journals or access to a major research library.

Your dismay might turn to anger when you realize that you paid for this research.

Go to the WSJ site to read the rest but he has some useful points about OA including:

• That academic societies and their journals should be able to survive even if they provide the publications for free
• That "barriers to the spread of information are bad for capitalism"
• That open access can help limit plagiarism (by allowing anyone to search for copied text as has been done recently for a variety of literary works)
• That open access to information can help speed development in impoverished nations
• And his final point: "The challenge, in the coming new world of open access, will be keeping the best of the current system while jettisoning the rest. Maybe some scholar would like to study the question -- and publish his findings for all to see."

Open Evolution

I am starting a new blog theme here on Open Evolution. By that I mean, evolutionary biology studies that are in some form of open science format. This would include Open Access evolution publications, open source evolution programs, open data on evolution projects, etc.

Today I am focusing on Open Access publications with interesting Evolution themes.

First, there are some fully Open Access journals with a specific focus on Evolution (I found some of these through the Lund Univeristy's Directory of Open Access Journals). These include

• BMC Evolutionary Biology
• Darwiniana (in Spanish)
• Evolutionary Bioinformatics
• The Open Evolution Journal (I note - this one is published by Bentham Open who drive me crazy with all the SPAM email they send me, proving that OA can mean open access and overtly annoying at the same time)
  

There are of course other fully OA journals that have a decent chunk of the papers on some evolution related topic:

• PLoS Genetics
• PLoS One
• Nucleic Acids Research
  

If anyone knows of any other Open Access evolution journals, please let me know.

Genomics Blogger Dissed by the New York Times

Well, the New York Times has an article today on Knome, a company that is charging people $350,000 to have their genome sequenced. They have two people signed up so far. Amy Harmon, the author of the Times article, interviewed me by email for her article, mostly because I had blogged extensively about the recent AGBT meeting where many of these sequencing companies had presented their latest goodies. But alas, being a genomics blogger apparently does not carry as much weight as being (1) Jim Watson (2) someone who pays 350,000 to have their genome sequenced (3) running a genome center (Richard Gibbs) or (4) starting Knome (George Church). And so my quotes got left on the proverbial cutting room floor. Go figure.

Too bad for the Times, as I think I my quotes were pretty good. Although in all honesty, they would not have gone too well with the final article, which has some nice cohesion to it.

I should note that, other than the lack of my quotes, one thing that got left out of the Times article is any discussion of the quality of the genome sequence that will be provided by Knome. One would hope that 350K would buy a high quality genome sequence but it is unclear how good it will be. I note they claim they will provide analysis of the genome too, but as with other companies that cater to the rich and famous, details are limited on their web site.

This reminds me of a funny scene I witnessed involving Craig Venter and a wealthy friend of his. This was the day before Craig's personal genome was set to come out in PLoS Biology and the friend was asking Craig what it cost to sequence his genome. Craig said something to the effect of "man millions of dollars" and then Craig said, "but now it would cost only about 300K." The friend was intrigued. And Craig asked if he was interested and the friend, without seeming in any way to be joking, said, "sure sign me up." I guess, when money is abundant, why not get your genome sequenced? Maybe I should have told Harmon this story --- then I might have gotten in the Times.

Cool new tool to help decide where to submit a scientific paper and what scientists are working on

Just found out about a freaky and cool new tool called Jane - the Journal/Author Name Estimator. For more on the approach see this paper in Bioinformatics.

Here is how it works -- you paste some text into a box and you can get the tool to suggest a journal that is most suitable for your work. Or you can have the tool search for an author who is doing work similar to what is in the text (this is useful to find reviewers or papers to look at)

One thing I like about the journal tool is that it highlights which journals are Open Access and which are deposited in Pubmed Central. I have tried it out in a few different ways and it seems pretty useful. So if you want guidance on where to submit a paper or who might make a good reviewer of a paper, check it out. It seems like it would make a good tool to help reporters find someone to interview too.

The iPlant Collaborative - a new (and seemingly cool) collaborative informatics project

Just found out (from Steve Rounsley) about what seems to be a cool collaborative computational project on plants - the Iplant Collaborative. From their site:

The iPlant Collaborative (iPC) is a distributed, cyberinfrastructure-centered, international community of plant and computing researchers enabling new conceptual advances through computational thinking, and addressing an evolving array of the most compelling grand challenges in the plant sciences and associated, cutting-edge research challenges in the computing sciences.

For more info got to their web site. Also - they are having their 1st conference which apparently will be webcasted. So apparently anyone can watch.

iSEEM Wants You --- We are Recruiting Post Docs in Metagenomics Informatics

I am pleased to announce that a new project on "Integrating Statistical Evolutionary, and Ecological Approaches to Metagenomics (iSEEM)" is getting up and running. The iSEEM Project, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, takes an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to metagenomic analysis.

The project spans three labs (mine and those of Katherine Pollard (who is in the Davis Genome Center where I am) and Jessica Green (who is at U. Oregon)), each with different areas of focus. Overall, the plan is to develop and apply novel methods for analyzing metagenomic data with a focus on three main topics: phylogenetic characterization of organisms, ecological diversity, and population genomics. We will be posting more detail about the project at http://iseem.org.

We are seeking five post-doctoral scientists and a bioinformatics engineer to work on methodology for analysis of metagenomic data as part of this collaborative project. Each position will be associated with one of the PIs at their home institution. If you are interested in microbial diversity, metagenomics, or genome evolution, and are looking for a post doc and want to be part of a interdisciplinary collaborative project, please apply.

More detail on the jobs is below:

Qualifications

• We are looking for people with a demonstrated interest in working at the interface between the quantitative and biological sciences. We will offer a generous salary and benefits commensurate with experience.
  
• Postdocs: Applicants should have a PhD in a biological, computational, mathematical, or statistical field. Programming skills are highly desirable.
  
• Bioinformatics Engineer: Applicants should have substantial experience with database programming (e.g. SQL), scripting (e.g. Perl or Python), and bioinformatics tools.
  

Term: Appointments will last 2 years beginning in Summer 2008.

To Apply: Please apply using our online application system. You will be asked for:

1. a brief cover letter explaining your background, career interests, and preferred geographical location for work (if any),
2. CV (including publications),
3. names and contact information for three references.

Online Application System:

• Bioinformatics Engineer
• Postdoc

Punctuated equilibrium of my blog ... and a look at an old science rap

Well, with my new role in PLoS Biology as Academic Editor in Chief, I had planned to start blogging more about PLoS and PLoS Biology. And I will. However, I am going to have to do a half effort on this for at least a week or two as I have a lovely ailment called trigger finger which is making typing rather awkward. So in lieu of a detailed blog I simply have to make a brief comment on one of the articles in this months issue

The article in which I am interested is a nice primer on mutational meltdown in mammalian mitochondrial genomes by Dave Rand. This is in relation to a paper by Stewart et al. in this issue. But enough about science. For those who do not know, Dave Rand published what I believe was the first rap in a scientific article. In an article in Genetics he presented a rap about repeat induced point mutation (something known as RIPPING). This RAP about RIPPING I think was presented at the Evolution meeting in Berkeley (I think I was at the talk where he did the RAP but I am not sure --- I could have, like Andy Pettite, misremembered the whole thing).

And well, here it is:

Yo! you’ve got my DNA and you think it is a-RIPping,
Your dog is so excited her saliva is a-dripping,
She seems to think the polymerase is doing some a-skipping,
But then again, you never know, she might just be a-quipping.
Are you sure induction by repeats did make it happen?
If it’s just associated, why not call it RAPpin’?
What motifs are necessary to keep the strands a-snappin’?
I don’t know and I don’t care, but something did some zappin’.

A really good day at work

Overall, I like being a scientist. But some of the days can be quite dreary. As a grad. student you slog through days that resemble the reliving of events in Groundhog Day. Except that they are actually different days - they just seem the same. As a post doc you struggle to get work done to then get a job (OK, I skipped a post doc, but I heard about what it is like from others). And as a faculty member you spend an absurd amount of time wasted on useless administrative activities. And I sometimes seem to be stuck in these days a lot.

But today was a really good day. It was my first day after it was announced that I was the new Academic Editor in Chief of PLoS Biology. And I got lots of positive feedback from friends, colleagues and even strangers. And then we had "lab meeting" which I decided to turn into a picnic/hike. We went to a little spot only 2 miles from the UC Davis Genome Center, that was as close to wilderness as you can find in Davis. And I think everyone had fun, getting away from the grind AND I brought my 3 year old daughter too.

And this reminds me to say - in the past I have avoided talking about people in my lab in my blog because it seemed like it would be nice to give them some space from my blabbing. But today I was reminded of just how much I owe them. They of course do all the work that I end up getting credit for. So today I thank the current lab members specifically (Jenna Morgan, Amber Hartman, Marcel Huntemann, Dongying Wu, Martin Wu, and Sourav Chatterji) and with their permission you will probably be hearing more about them later.

PLoS Biology 2.0

Well, I guess it is official now so I should post about it here. As for this afternoon, I am now the new Academic Editor in Chief of PLoS Biology. To read more about this new role of mine go to the source. I will probably cross post the editorial here at some later point.

• My editorial on becoming AEIC.
• An editorial by the PLoS staff

Also see other blogs/notes about this

• Egghead - UC Davis Research Blog
• PLoS Blog
• Coturnix's Blog Around the Clock
• Deepak Singh at BBGM
• Pedro Baltrao at Public Rambling
• EVOLGEN
• Genome Technology Blog
• nsaunders at What you're doing is rather desperate
• Pimm blog
• Highlight Health "More steps for Open Access"
  

For more on what I think about Open Access publishing see some of my other blogs on the issue.

See Evolgen for a field guide to seminar audiences

EVOLGEN has a great post on the people at your department seminar. It is worth checking out and bringing with you next time you go to a seminar. Even better than looking around --- choose which one fits you the best. Up until a few years ago, I was definitely the pre-schooler

The pre-schooler: This dude uses the departmental seminar as his nap-time. He sits in the back, and when the lights go out, he's nodding off faster than River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho. Someone get this guy a good-night's sleep.

I simply could not stay awake in any seminar so I would have to sit at the back. Now that I have kids, I am used to sleep deprivation and only rarely nod off in a seminar. I am no longer sure which one I am ...

Calling Michael Ashburner - please start a blog

I just got done with reading Won for All by Michael Ashburner which came out a few years ago. This book discussed the sequencing of the Drosophila genome by Celera and is a fascinating read. The best part is the snarky, obsessive, and funny commentary by Ashburner on the players and the games they played in the course of this project. I know the book came out a while ago, but if there ever was a science author perfectly built for blogging it has to be Ashburner. So I am calling all science blog fans to try and find a way to get him to start a blog. Also - he is a big supporter of open access publishing ... as can be seen in the videos below:






See also some other Reviews of the book:

• John Sulston in PLoS Biology
• Matt Ridley in Nature
• Craig Venter in Science
  

How human rights work and microbial ecology are similar

The New York Times has a brief one page article in the Sunday Magazine on "The Forensic Humanitarian" In the article, Jim Giles describes the work of Patrick Ball, a statistician working on searching for evidence for war crimes. The work is clearly important. But what caught my attention was his method. Basically, he uses a form of mark-release-recapture statistics taken from ecology studies. In the article, Giles writes

To understand Ball’s accomplishments, you might start with the problem of counting rattlesnakes.

And then he goes on to describe how one can estimate how many rattlesnakes are in a population by marking ones that you find and then counting how many times you refind one you have marked previously. This is a method generally known as mark-release-recapture (e.g., see the Wikipedia entry here, which seems OK but I have not read too carefully).

Apparently, Ball uses a similar type of statistic to estimate the number of murders and/or deaths in particular areas, by looking for overlap among different reports of deaths.

What you say does this have to do with microbial ecology? Well, everything. Because one of the most common methods for estimating the number of microbial species in a sample is to use a gene survey method where one isolates DNA from environmental samples and then one looks in the DNA for multiple versions of a gene found in all species (the gene most commonly used is known as small subunit rRNA). The gene survey method is needed because appearance is not a robust method of identifying microbial species.

From the gene sampling data, one then compares each version of the gene to the others and counts how many times one sees the same form of the gene (suggesting that one has found two different cells of the same species). If one keeps seeing the same forms of the gene even with only a few samples, one would estimate there are few species in the sample. If one keeps seeing different forms of the gene, one would estimate there are many species in the sample.

Things that seem to be hidden - be the murders or populations of rattlesnakes or microbes - can still be studied with what the Times perfectly refers to as

"A statistical sleight of hand"

Forget McCain - the Real Problem in the New York Times - Adaptationism

Unlike McCain and his followers, generally, I really like the New York Times, especially the Science articles. But they do continuously irk me in one area - they repeatedly include lame adaptationistic evolutionary arguments. Now I am not the only person in the bloggersphere railing against people who say something MUST be adaptive simply because it is there (Larry Moran is the most persistent and interesting critic of adaptationism out there).

This week the Times has a doozy in the article on "Play" from the Sunday Magazine. In the article, Robin Henig writes

"If play is an extravagance, why has it persisted? It must have some adaptive function, or at least a benefit that outweighs its cost, or it would have been winnowed out by the forces of natural selection."

This is nearly a PERFECT adaptationistic line. And more importantly, it is simply not true. Some things persist in biological systems even when they have a cost that outweighs the benefit. And other things persist when they are neutral. Now I am not saying one way or another whether play has a benefit (the article is interesting and reasonably sound in many ways). But such statements as the one quoted above show a common misunderstanding of evolution. Evolution is NOT only about beneficial things persisting and detrimental ones going away. It is much more complex and interesting in fact. If you want to learn more about the perils of adaptationism, go to Larry Moran's blog. He really has some good stuff on it. Or go to the great gurus themselves - Gould and Lewontin.

Some pics of the new treefall

Harvard's Moving To Open Access - Let's Use this to Push for OA at other places

Well, Harvard is frequently criticized for being a bit conservtive in responding to new ideas and initiatives. But it seems that recently Harvard is more like a oceangoing yacht than an oil tanker. And yesterday, the New York Times reported on a proposed new initiative that could make Harvard a leader in the movement towards "Open Access" publishing.

The Times reports

"Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs."

and

"Under the proposal Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open-access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. Authors would still retain their copyright and could publish anywhere they pleased — including at a high-priced journal, if the journal would have them."

In my opinion, there is no doubt this is a smart move. Sure, there are some potential downsides to open access. Some journals do good things and they may have to reinvent themselves to continue to bring in revenue. But welcome to the 21st century. It is not like other industries - like music and TV and movies and electronics and so on - have not had to reinvent themselves.

And the result are in --- Harvard approved the initiative (see here for example). Now - I think we should use this as an example to get other institutions to do the same thing. As reported in the Boston Globe, Harry Lewis a CS Professor at Harvard said:

"Harvard is in a unique position to do the right thing in the academic world," he said. "In this case, I think others will be emboldened by Harvard to follow its lead, and the course of collective action will be greater than the course any individual school will take."

I will do my best to get UC Davis to do the same thing, but given the animosity towards open access exhibited by our acting provost Barbara Horwitz, it may be a tough ride here. Fortunately, they are interviewing candidates for provost now and hopefully whomever they pick will be more supportive.

So - here is a call to others out there. Push for the same type of thing at your institution. I will be posting more on this in the coming days/weeks. Maybe collectively we can follow Harvard's lead on this and make Universities more about what they are supposed to be about - spreading knowledge.

Creating Mitochondria and a sign that we need open peer review

Well, since everyone else is posting about this I figured I should too (see for example Steven Salzberg's Blog, The Harvard Crimson, Pharyngula). If you have not heard yet, there is an article in the journal Proteomics that discussed how mitochondria must have been created by an intelligent designer.

For example on p8 the authors say:

"Alternatively, instead of sinking in a swamp of endless
debates about the evolution of mitochondria, it is better to
come up with a unified assumption that all living cells
undergo a certain degree of convergence or divergence to or
from each other to meet their survival in specific habitats.
Proteomics data greatly assist this realistic assumption that
connects all kinds of life. More logically, the points that show
proteomics overlapping between different forms of life are
more likely to be interpreted as a reflection of a single common
fingerprint initiated by a mighty creator than relying on
a single cell that is, in a doubtful way, surprisingly originating
all other kinds of life."

Say what you want about the journal Proteomics but boy did they screw this one up. I think they probably should have caught this without much effort but who knows exactly what happened. In all fairness to them, it is possible for weird thin gs to slip through at any journal. Reviewers are busy. Editors are busy. Everyone is busy. How can we prevent this from happening again. There is a simple change we could make that would help. It is called Open Peer review. That is, if reviewers names were publicly attached to papers they reviewed, and their reviews were published, we would be less likely to see things like this happen. Then, if someone agrees to do paper review, they would be careful about it. Sure, we would probably have a harder time getting reviewers, but that would be better than publishing crap.

What are the risks with Open Peer review? Well, some people might feel afraid to criticize others especially people with power. Well, I find this sad. Scientists criticize our collaborators and friends ALL the time in private. Why not be public about it? Aren;t we supposed to be searching for the truth? If we are, shouldn't we be willing to give our opinions in public forums?

Marco Island - Saving Some of the Best for Last

Well, the Marco Island AGBT meeting just wrapped up and I they definitely saved some of the best for the end. I do not have a ton of time but here are my favorites:

Stephan Schuster gave a funny, entertaining and interesting talk on mammoth mitochondrial genomics. He riddled the talk with funny stories and one liners about his efforts to sequence old DNA and to publish the results. He did a good job of showing why Roche-454 sequencing is quite ideally suited for studies of old DNA.

John Leamon from Raindance Technologies summarize some of their work on droplet based microfluidics. He showed videos of droplets moving through their system and showed how it sould be used for various digital PCR-like activities.

But it was the last talk of the whole meeting that really did blow my mind. It was from Steve Turner from Pacific Biosciences. He presented an overview of their sequencing technology as well as a tiny bit of data. Now, normally I am uninterested in marketing talks where little data is presented. But this talk was different. First, their technology clearly has enormous potential for revolutionizing the sequencing field. Basically, what they are doing is reading the activity of a DNA polymerase as it replicates a single DNA molecule and they do it in real time. He referred to this as using the DNA polymerase as a sequencing engine and then he took the crowd through the details of the technology and some of the modifications they have made to make it work better. I will try to post later with more detail on their methods.

No - they are not quite ready for prime time yet. But the potential is pretty absurd. I see two key major advantages of their method if it can be fine tuned to work well -- (1) it is screamingly fast - because they let the polymerase do all the work in essence (2) it can potentially get long reads -- right now he claimed they could do up to 1500 base pairs and theoretically it could go much higher. If they can get this to work with reads of 10,000 bases for example, this will completely reconfigure the field. No longer will one have to worry about the complexities of mapping short reads as with many of the current "new" methods. And the long reads, coupled with many molecules per run, plus the high speed, this technology is the first I have seen that has shown some results and that could really lead to the $1000 human genome. Again, not clear when/if they will be ready for release to the world so don't hold off buying one of the other systems that currently work (i.e., Illumina, Roche, ABI Solid) if you want to do "next gen" sequencing. But this company is one to keep an eye on.


NOTE - SEE ALSO

• Bio IT world report on PacBio
• Eye on DNA
• GenomeWeb
• New York Times article #2
• New York Times #1

Marco Island sequencing frenzy - are we getting lost in all the data?

So - the Marco Island meeting could be summed up as a sequencing frenzy. Everyone and their mother presented something about how the next generation sequencers are revolutionizing their work. People are using these systems (well, people are using mostly Illumina and Roche sequencers and some are using ABI Solid) to do all sorts of new things - RNAi, gene expression, methylation, mutations, population genetics, comparative genomics, metagenomics, infectious disease, etc etc etc.

Certainly, much of this new work is truly revolutionary. Sequencing has gotten so cheap, and so easy, relative to even 3-4 years ago, that it can be used in all sorts of new ways. And new developments in sequencing seem poised to happen too, to make sequencing even cheaper and even better. Sequencing will get even better for a few reasons.

First, the current players in the market (Roche, Illumina, and possibly soon ABI Solid) are improving both their systems and their informatics such that they are getting more and more robust and easy to use and producing more data (Roche for example presented details on how they can extend their sequence reads to ~350 base pairs mostly by software and reagent changes). Lots of companies can say "We have some sequencing system about ready to be introduced" And lots of them are doing this at this meeting. But there is nothing like having sequencers in the hands of scientists to really test how well they work and to really help push the development of the technology.

Second, it does seem like some competitors for Illumina and Roche are coming. ABI presented multiple results from ABI Solid technology that makes it seem like these systems are ready for prime time. Whether other systems are ready for prime time is unclear. Helicos presented what could be seen as data. It was disappointingly minimal on detail but though I am rooting for them, it was far from convincing. But the discussions in the hallway seemed to suggest that Helicos is getting close. And there are 5+ other players itching to get into the market (some of which are apparently presenting later today). Some will fail. Some will succeed. And as long as their are a couple of good systems, the competition will push further development and reductions in costs. Thus everyone at the meeting I talked to said basically the same thing --- this is an exciting time in sequencing.

So - sequencing is getting better and cheaper. That certainly will be good in many ways. But there are some negative aspects to this frenzy. I see two in particular. The first, which was discussed extensively at the meeting, is that nobody is really prepared to deal with the sheer volume of data coming out of these new systems. Data storage, transfer and analysis will unquestionably be the rate limiting steps in turining the new sequence data into knowledge.

And this is the other negative aspect of the new frenzy. Right now there seems to be a mad rush to apply the new sequencing methods to everything under the sun. And the data piles up. And piles up. And the biology seems to have taken a back seat in some cases. Perhaps the bext example of this is exemplified by something Neil Hall pointed out yesterday to me. There has been almost no mention at this whole meeting of things related to function of genes. For example, I have not heard "gene ontology" once. I do not think I have even heard "annotation" once. Function and process have been replaced by terms like "systems biology" and "SNPs" and "networks" and "massively parallel." We have in a way regressed in terms of treating organisms (or communities) as a black box. Fine scale detail has been lost in a sea of data. In a way, we have all become born again geneticists. And I do not mean to disparage genetics. But I mean the part of genetics that treats organisms as a bit of a black box and focuses just on transmission of traits. We need to find a way to not get lost in all the data. I am not sure how to do that, but when we do, then the full potential of the new sequencing methods will be realized.

Coolest Thing at Marco Island - The Polonator

Without a doubt, the coolest thing at AGBT/Marco Island is the Polonator. This is a new sequencing system build by Denaher Motion based on the polony method from George Church's lab. Now I have no idea if this machine even works. And even if it works, I have no idea how useful it will be. But the idea is brilliant and appealing. They are trying to be an "Open Development" Massively High Throughput Sequencing system. By Open they mean, they will use open source software (and would love developers to help) and will use non proprietary reagents and supposedly try to make everything as cheap as possible. They will still make the main piece of equipment and I assume this is what they hope to make money off of.

I went to a showing in a room nearby the seminar room. There were many skeptics there. Most were concerned about the read lenght coming from the machine. But it should get better. And if the price is a lot less for reagents and the machine than anyone else's system --- this could be an important player in the market.





See also

• GenomeBoy

More notes from Marco Island/ AGBT

Some notes on talks here:

My favorite talk yesterday morning was David Cox from Perlegen. He had as usual some good one liners including "Everybody and their mother is doing this so doing this is not so novel. What is novel about it is that it worked." I should add that David Cox helped shape my career indirectly in many many ways. When I was a PhD student at Stanford, I got into genomics in part by teaching a course with David Botstein, Rick Myers and David Cox. When Craig Venter offered me a job at TIGR in 1998, I was not sure if moving to a non university was a good idea or not. So I asked many people for their opinions. Some said "You must do an academic post doc or you will never get a faculty job" I pretty much knew to ignore those folks. Cox gave the best advice. He said as long as I published things while at TIGR, it would not hurt me in any way. It probably would help. And so I took the job. And no doubt that was a great career move.

Other talks that were good were one by Joe Ecker, who discussed methylation in Arabidopsis and one by Andy Clark.

I skipped out on some of the lunch time to finish my talk for the PM session and also worked on my talk in the back of the room during the other PM talks. The PM session was on metagenomics and the most pleasing thing was that David Relman did not show up and he was replaced by Peter Turnbaugh from Jeffrey Gordon's lab. Now - I wam not saying it was good that Relman was not there --- he usually gives smashingly good talks. But Turnbaugh, a PhD student, stepped in as pinch hitter and gave a great talk on gut microbiome studies, really setting the stage for the whole session. I do not know if he was nervous stepping into a session like this but it did not show if he was. He certainly seemed relaxed when he said "Thanks to Dr. Relman for getting stuck in Chicago"

Forest Rowher gave a good talk on metagenomics and pointing out that viruses still get ignored in this field relative to their likely importance in communities. I have written about Forest before so I am going to discuss the other talks more ... but if you have not heard him talk before try to find a way. He has a VERY different perspective on genomics and metagenomics than most of the people doing it. And he is dead right about the need to do more work on viruses.

Garth Ehrlich gave a talk on "bacterial plurality" and why he thinks gene content variation within communities of microbes in biofilms is important. His data certainly seemed solid and he showed some results that call into question the claims that some aspects of the "pangenome" hypothesis (he showed that the total number of genes in the Steptococcus strain collection does seem to level off after sequencing ~ 30 genomes and thus that the number of genes is not infinite as some people have suggested). So I liked some aspects of his talk. But he did make some evolution statements I found disagreeable (for those who care about the nitty gritty - he showed a cluster diagram of strain similarity and then used the position of strains within the cluster diagram to reflect relative branching order and historical patterns. A cluster diagram is a bad thing to use and one should use a phylogenetic tree for this. In addition he implied that one could make a genome-phylogeny from gene presence/absence information that would be more robust than a standard alignment phylogeny. This is not a reasonable thing
in my opinion --- gene presence/absence patterns tend to end up grouping together unrelated lineages that have separately undergone gene loss. I just do not understand why people so badly want to not use alignments to build trees). Anyway - overall many of the things he said were interesting but I find certain non-evolution evolutionary analyses really grating.

Anyway - I was going to ask him a question after his talk about this, but then decided that, since I was talking next, getting into an argument with him just before my talk might seem lame. So I passed on the question. And then I gave my talk on the need to fill in the tree of life in terms of genome sequencing projects. I discussed a project we are just wrapping up that was part of the NSF "Tree of Life" program in which we sequenced genomes of eight bacteria that are from phyla that at the time had no genomes available. And then I talked about a new project I am coordinating at the Joint Genome Institute in which we are sequencing 100 genomes to really fill in some of the bacterial and archaeal tree. Next week I will post more about this project but I note - this is not done to study the tree of life per se. It is being done because if we have reference genomes from across the tree, all of our genome analyses of other systems and of metagenomes get better.

After dinner and some shell cllecting on the beach, there were evening talks and I went to the informatics session. Some of the talks there were good but the best thign I saw there was someone (I think Ben Blackburne) saying his slides were going to be on something called slideshare.net. I had never heard of this and checked it out and it seems pretty cool. I may use it in the future ... but gotta go off to other things.

Marco Island Evening One - The Strange and the Good

Well, I made it through my talk at Marco Island without too many scars. It seemed to go pretty well - I talked about a new project in which I am involved at the Joint Genome Institute on creating a Genomic Encyclopedia for Bacteria and Archaea. I will write about that more here at another time.

But what I want to do now is discuss some of the marketing ploys from last night. One of the strangest was from the Pacific Biosciences group which sponsored a beach party with fireworks. It was completely surreal. People lingering at the beach with drinks and loud music and then all of a sudden - fireworks were launched into the sky. Not the "greenest" of activities I must say. But never mind that. What was the reason for fireworks in the middle of February? I guess the company is trying to make a big splash but the whole thing was just strange to me.

Much better was the party sponsored by Genome Technology magazine. It was a few hundred yards down the road at a bar. Everyone had to walk there which was good since many people end up never leaving the halls around the conference area. And the place was packed to the gills with people drinking and eating and seemingly having a good time. No fireworks (thankfully) and a good respite from the hotel.

Needless to say, these types of festivities do not happen at any evolution or ecology conference I have been to. The genomics world is still heavy on the marketing and self promotion. Sometimes that makes it fun (Genome Technology) and sometimes it just makes me want to run away (Pacific Biosciences).

AGBT Marco Usland Update - Long Live Sequencing

Well, I am sitting in the back of the room at the AGBT meeting and just heard Eric Green give the introduction and Joe Ecker is talking right now. And the theme of the meeting is pretty clear:
LONG LIVE SEQUENCING

Basically, the meaning of this is that, though many said sequencing was dead a few years ago, sequencing is alive, thriving, and going a bit crazy. With the new massively parallel high throughput sequencing machines sequencing is being used for everything and anything. For example, Ecker is using sequencing to study methylation of the genome of Arabidopsis. And others are usign sequencing for expression studies. And of course there is population genetics. And genetic mapping. And my favorite - metagenomics. And so on. So, despite the push to move into a "post genomics" world, sequencing is growing in use not shrinking.

Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Meeting - First Post

Well, I have just finally gotten online at the "Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Meeting" also known as the Marco Island Genome Meeting (because it is held in Marco Island in Florida), or, as we used to call it at TIGR when I worked there, the "I don't want to go to Venter's Genome Meeting Meeting".

My flight in had some issues so alas I missed the workshop today on new technologies, and cannot report on that here, but I think I will get enough on the new technologies at the rest of the meeting to report later.

I got in to Ft Myers Airport at about 5 PM and took a shuttle bus ride from the airport to the Marriott on Marco Island. As usual, I blabbed away on the bus ride. Somehow, I always end up talking about my time at TIGR and my interactions with Craig Venter and Claire Fraser and my witnessing the fights between the Venter camp and the TIGR camp (if you do not know what I am talking about, feel blessed).

I checked in, dumped my bags and then went to the meeting registration where I got a free backpack full of meeting marketing material. Then I bumped into some colleagues and friends including Neil Hall, who was on the faculty at TIGR when I was there and has now moved back to the UK to Liverpool. I also saw Elaine Mardis, who was just at Davis giving a talk about new sequencing technologies (I missed her talk but took her out to lunch in Davis).

After ditching the backpack full of dead trees, I went to the reception/party by the pool. The food was not so bad, the drinks were free, and I bumped into many other colleagues, some of whom I have not seen in many years, and some who I should see more often (e.g., Chuck Langley, who is a colleague at Davis was there as was Len Pennacchio who is at the Joint Genome Institute where I have an Adjunct Appointment and where I try to spend some time, but alas, usually do not).

Anyway - I will post notes and pictures from the meeting as the days go by ... I will try to do it in some regular manner but we will see how that goes.

Charles Darwin Endorses Obama as the "Natural Selection"

LONDON (AP).

Charles Darwin, famous for his work on the evolution of species, has announced that he is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for President of the United States. Darwin through his family website said

"I have been watching the election in the States closely from my resting place. And though I like both Clinton and McCain in some ways, Obama is the clear choice from an evolutionary perspective."

Darwin has not endorsed a political candidate since Churchill and has never weighed in on elections in the US. He went on to say

"With all the trouble in the US over evolution, they need a strong candidate that embodies what evolution is all about. In this respect he is the natural selection. He stands for change and for survival. Plus he is the strongest advocate for science among the bunch"

Representatives from the Clinton camp would not discuss the endorsement on the record but one who asked to not be named since they were not authorized to discuss the issue said

"You know, we tried to reason with Charlie about this. We even got Bill to send some messages his way. But in the end, there is no changing the minds of some people, especially the dead."

Obama was thrilled. He said

"Since I was a little boy, I have been fascinated by dinosaurs. And I have carried that with me to today, where I am a strong supporter of having science education be independent of religion. I cannot think of a better person to get behind my candidacy."

Other deceased scientists are also considering endorsing candidates but none had made an announcement as of press time.

Top Roles of Microbes in the Superbowl

Well, it is the time of year for everyone to hunker down and watch some good ads on TV in between football plays (I am a football fan, but most years, the ads are better than the game).

And in the spirit of microbiology education I have created a my list of some of the fun roles microbes will play in the superbowl.

• Can anyone say HGH? Sure you can get it from grinding up cadavers, but it is a bit easier to get it from engineered bacteria.
• Cleanliness is next to Godliness.With all the blood, grass, sweat, and other stuff from the Championship games, cleaning those uniforms is going to be tough. Better use some detergents with extra enzymes like these.
• Victory celebration. To the victor goes the bubbly. And boy, that bubbly would really rot without microbes.
• Making a good football. Without some serious processing, a cowhide or pigskin is not something you would want to throw around. Enzymes are a key part of most leather processing. And hey - who makes most of the best enzymes on the planet. That's right, microbes.
• Obesity epidemic. Sure, pumping iron and taking steroids will get you big. But maybe those linemen just have a health dose of some of Ruth Ley's gut bacteria.
• Avoid double dipping. MSNBC (and everyone else) is reporting this story. MSNBC says "Keep an eye on the salsa this Super Bowl Sunday: A researcher inspired by a famous “Seinfeld” episode has concluded that double dipping is just plain gross." Not just gross. "They found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from an eater’s mouth to the remaining dip sample."
• Football transmits bacteria much like STDs. Yes that is right. Tara Parker-Pope in a blog via the New York Times is reporting about a Salon.Com discussion of MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Salon was weighing in on a recent study that focused on transmission of MRSA among gay men. Salon dug out an New England Journal of Medicine article about MRSA transmission among football players. And Salon says "When it comes to spreading the bacteria, it is not homosexuals we have to worry about….The medical researchers were not studying gays, they were studying the St. Louis Rams. That is correct: football players; in particular, linebackers."