Dear Colleagues,

This week we will discuss the following article titled "Electrostatic origin of the genome packing in viruses", which appears in the Nov 7th "Early Edition" on the PNAS website. PDF reprints are available at the publisher's site: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0608311103 . See you thursday!Ajay

Dear Colleagues, As Bill and Chuck are both away tomorrow (10/26), there will be no journal club. We meet next on the thursday after i.e. Nov 2nd, to discuss a paper of direct relevance to our RNA projects.The paper is titled "Secondary Structure Model of the Coat Protein Gene of TYMV RNA: Long, C-Rich, Single-stranded Regions" another interesting contribution from the Pleij group at Leiden.PDF reprints are available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/viro.1996.0505See you next week, Ajay

Dear Colleagues,

A suggestion from Ian, this week's journal reading is another classic.
It's the 1943 article by  Luria and Delbruck titled "Mutations of
Bacteria from Virus Sensitivity to Virus Resistance".

"Luria-Delbruck experiment (1943) (also called the Fluctuation Test)
demonstrates that in bacteria, genetic mutations arise in the absence of
selection, rather than being a response to selection. Therefore,
Darwin's theory of natural selection acting on random mutations applies
to bacteria as well as to higher organisms. Max Delbruck and Salvador
Luria won the 1969 Nobel Prize in part for this work." - Wikipedia.

PDF files are available for download at:
http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/28/6/491

See you on thursday,

Ajay

Hello colleagues, Inspired by a class in Stat. Mech that a good fraction of the group is attending, this week's reading material addresses the profound subject matters of time and irreversibility. Titled "The Arrow of Time", this article appears in the December 1975 issue of Scientific American. It is well written and easy to read, however the concepts (like they did for me) may take a while to digest for some of us. Since the article is not available online, a scanned version has been made available as PDF from the group website (upon login) at this URL. Happy reading and see you on Thursday! Ajay

Dear colleagues,

Tomorrow's journal club will discuss a topic that has implications for
many a project in the lab.

The article is titled "Hydrodynamic properties of RNA: effect of
multivalent cations on the sedimentation behavior of turnip yellow
mosaic virus RNA" and PDF reprints are available at:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/bi00335a032 .

See you tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Ajay

Dear Colleagues,

Tomorrow, we will discuss a few pages of an impending text on biological
physics co-authored by our collaborator Rob Phillips at Caltech
(http://www.rpgroup.caltech.edu). The selected reading describes "the
hierarchy of spatial scales" in biological structures. PDF files are
available, upon login, at the journal club download area here: [file:20060906072343602].

See you tomorrow,

Ajay

Dear virus enthusiasts,

Tomorrow's journal club will discuss a classic paper --- one of the
first to introduce Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy as a technique
for measuring the kinetics of biophysical reactions such as
intercalation of dyes into dsDNA by measuring the dynamic properties of
the system.

This 1972 paper is titled "Thermodynamic Fluctuations in a Reacting
System

Hello all,

Tomorrow's journal club is a discussion of the article titled "The Topology and Combinatorics of Soccer Balls" from a popular science journal called the American Scientist.

Due thanks to Aron for finding, suggesting and scanning the article for us. It is available for download from our group website (upon login) here: [file:20060823155006421]

See you tomorrow at 1:30pm (YH3057),

Ajay

Hello all,Following Bill's recommendation at group meeting a few minutes ago, we will discuss a more theoretical paper on RNA secondary structure entitled "Mechanical unfolding of RNA hairpins", this Thursday (8/17, 1:30pm, YH 3057).You can find PDF reprints at http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0408314102See you soon,Ajay

Hello all, This Thursday we will be meeting later than usual (around 3 or 3:30 wasmentioned, but I forget which; I'll send out a confirming email when I getthe correct info.).The subject of the discussion for this next journal club will concernpitfalls in the scientific process -- how easily we as scientists can foolourselves, and how thoroughly we can do it.Two sources will be used. The first is a transcript of a lecture given inDecember, 1953 by Irving Langmuir, titled "Pathological Science." It isavailable at: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/Langmuir/langmuir.htmThe second is a transcript of a commencement address given in 1974 byRichard Feynman, titled "Cargo Cult Science." I have attached the text ofthe lecture below. As an added treat (and just for the heck of it), I'vealso included two brief excerpts from one Feynman's books, "Surely You'reJoking, Mr. Feynman!"Best,Aron