Will Humans Succeed in Correcting Nature's mistakes?

In picture, Shinya Yamanaka, the investigator who is famous for generated induced pluripotent stem cells. He is the one that most scientists believe he will be granted a Nobel Prize in near future.

Eye vs Microscope

I asked, why the picture that I can see on the microscope is much better than the one showing on the monitor? Is it because of the low quality of the camera built on the microscope?

-No, That's because so far no one could design a camera to see better than your eyes!...maybe in future.

A Nobel Prize Winner Family

A scientist family from grand mother to mother and grand children.
I am impressed by achivments of this family and how they dedicate themselves for conducting science. Marie Curie, now the grand mother of this family win two Nobel prizes, her housband Peirre Curie did also win a Nobel prize. Their daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, continued their research and shared a Nobel prize with her husband. Now their children Helen and Peirre are good Scientists as well. Wonder if the genes of science and Nobel winning passed through the grand children to the grand grand children. Here comes the family in a few pictures.







Young Irene Joliot-Curie




Young Irene Joliot-Curie with her husband Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie



The grandchildren of Marie, Helen and Pierre

Hard Work

It is hard to define what is "hard working". "Hard work" feels different for different people. Stay with a regular basis work hours and make it your habit. Make sure you have accomplished something during your day time and have the feeling that you proceeded in your goals toward to your project.


From the quotes of my supervisor Q.F

Fellowship for Women in Science

L'Oreal will give fellowship to 15 best women scientist round the word who are from countries with less scientific equipment. Ms. Shiva Seyed Forootan from Iran, won this award in 2003 to continue her research in Molecular Biology of University of Liverpool. She plans to investigate the potential of using a molecular marker as a tool for early diagnosis of prostate cancer.

When is good to lay eggs?

There is an interesting news about finding a photo-receptor protein responsible for understanding changes in day's length. Being able to distinguish the winter, spring and summer days help birds to lay egg at the time which is safe for the babies and also at the time that enough food is around to feed them. Researchers of the University of Oxford found out a photoreceptor in the hypothalamus of birds. Hypothalamus regulates reproduction system. This receptor was first discovered back in 97 in Salmon eyes and was called "vertebrate ancient opsin (VA opsin)". This shows conservation of this protein, and it will be amazing if any mammalian lab group reports existence of the homologue of this protein in mammals.
The article on this discovery can be found in this issue of Current Biology.

Wnt signaling in early cardiac specification and differentiation.

(A) Cross-section of the trunk of a post-gastrulation mouse embryo depicting how various Wnt ligands and Wnt antagonists impinge upon early cardiac mesoderm specification. Dorsal is uppermost. Green tube represents the notochord, the green bottom layer represents the early definitive endoderm, blue indicates the neuroectoderm, red indicates precardiac mesoderm and yellow represents splanchnic mesoderm. Wnt1 and Wnt3a are expressed in neuroectoderm, while Wnt11 and others, including Wnt2a and Wnt2b (not shown), are expressed in precardiac mesoderm. Wnt antagonists crescent and Dkk1 are expressed in the underlying definitive endoderm and inhibit canonical Wnt signaling in the precardiac mesoderm. (B) Studies in ES cells (yellow) show that activation of Wnt signaling prior to, or around the same time as, cardiac mesoderm specification results in increased cardiac differentiation of cardiac myocytes (red), whereas later Wnt signaling activation inhibits cardiac differentiation significantly (Naito et al., 2006). (C) A model showing how Wnt signaling is important for cardiac induction but is inhibitory to later cardiac differentiation. This control could be partly due to the effects of Wnt antagonists secreted from the underlying endoderm.