Status Updates From Introduction to Genomics

I have to finish this book today…

“Prion diseases are a set of neurodegenerative conditions of animals and humans, associated with deposition of protein aggregates in the brain, and a characteristic sponge-like appearance of the brains of affected individuals seen in postmortem investiga-tion; hence the name, spongiform encephalopathies.
Prion diseases are unusual among protein deposition diseases in that they are transmissible”

"A walk through many neighbourhoods in temperate climates will reveal the many colours that roses can display, notably red, pink, peach, and yellow. Conspicuous by its absence is blue. It has not been possible to produce a blue rose by classical selective breeding. This is not for lack of trying: in 1840 the horticultural societies of Great Britain and Belgium offered a prize of 500000 francs for one."

"The first chocolate house in London opened in 1657."

"Samuel Pepys's diary mentions drinking chocolate on several occasions, alluding to its curative properties:
Waked in the morning with my head in a sad taking through the last night's drink, which I am very sorry for; so rose and went out with Mr. Creed to drink our morning draft, which he did give me in chocolate to settle my stomach (24 April 1661)."

Microbes are on us and in us. The human micro-biome contains bacteria, archaea, viruses, and fungi.
It is estimated that if a typical person were 'shrink-wrapped', the enclosed volume would contain approximately 30 trillion human cells and 39 trillion bacterial cells. (An 'urban myth' of a microbial:human cell ratio of 10:1 has been circulating since 1972, but it is not correct.)

Wow, a solar powered slug, the lettuce sea slug (Eysia crispata)

"The slugs, which are molluscs--that is, animals--eat algae. They open the algal cells and discard the contents--including the nucleus--except for the chloroplasts. The chloroplasts are taken up into host cells, where they carry out photosynthesis.
The slug can live for months on the molecules synthesized using solar energy."

“Sailors stopping at the island found the dodo easy prey—it could not fly, and lacked appropriate fear of human predators. As a result, the dodo became extinct. The last survivor was shot in 1681.”

As I typed that quote, dodo autocorrected into food. Even my phone wants to eat the dodo!

'From E.coli-gy to Ecology!'