Category Archives: My lab

The Imprinter of All Maladies

Any sufficiently convoluted explanation for biological phenomena is indistinguishable from epigenetics. Epigenetics is everywhere. Nary a day goes by without some news story or press release telling us something it explains. Why does autism run in families?  Epigenetics. Why do you have trouble losing weight? Epigenetics. Why are vaccines dangerous? Epigenetics. Why is cancer so hard to fight? Epigenetics. Why […]

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Why I, a founder of PLOS, am forsaking open access

PLEASE NOTE BEFORE YOU READ THIS THAT IT WAS WRITTEN FOR APRIL FOOLS DAY!!! I co-founded the Public Library of Science (PLOS) in 2002 because I believed deeply that the open access publishing model PLOS espoused and has come to dominate was good for science, scientists and the public.  Over the past decade open access […]

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Toxoplasma, Cat Piss and Mouse Brains: my lab’s first paper on microbial manipulation of animal behavior

All animals live in a microbe rich environment, with immense numbers of bacteria, archaea, fungi and other eukaryotic microbes living in, on and around them. For some of these microbes, the association is transitory and unimportant, but many make animals their permanent home, or interact with them in ways that are vital for their survival. Many […]

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Please review our new paper: Sequencing mRNA from cryo-sliced Drosophila embryos to determine genome-wide spatial patterns of gene expression

It’s no secret to people who read this blog that I hate the way scientific publishing works today. Most of my efforts in this domain have focused on removing barriers to the access and reuse of published papers. But there are other things that are broken with the way scientists communicate with each other, and […]

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Zelda (the coolest transcription factor ever) is a master regulator of embryonic adolescence

PLoS Genetics just published a paper from my lab describing our analysis of the binding and activity of a remarkable protein, known as Zelda, that appears to be a master regulator of genome activation in the earliest stages of Drosophila development, and thereby plays a major role in shaping the form and function of the mature […]

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Nature: Big is beautiful

Nature has a brief “Research Highlight” on our recent PLoS One paper. Nature 458, 263 (19 March 2009) | doi:10.1038/458263a; Published online 18 March 2009 Genomics: Big is beautiful PLoS ONE 4, e4688 (2009) Finding gene regulators in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster has proved difficult: looking for conserved non-coding DNA sequences, a method that works well in vertebrates, has been […]

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