Retinal Development Kwan KM, Otsuna H, Kidokoro H, Carney KR, Saijoh Y, Chien CB. A complex choreography of cell movements shapes the vertebrate eye. Development. 2012 Jan;139(2):359-72. PubMed PMID: 22186726. Morgan JL, Soto F, Wong RO, Kerschensteiner D. Development of cell type-specific connectivity patterns of converging excitatory axons in the retina. Neuron. 2011 Sep 22;71(6):1014-21. […]
From New York Times: CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — His Ph.D. is in pure mathematics, in a subfield so esoteric and specialized that even if someone gets a great result, it can be appreciated by only a few dozen people in the entire world. But he left that world behind and, with no formal training, entered another: […]
We have recently begun to work on a project that requires us to find out whether a zebrafish larva can see or not. To this end, we have built a small machine to check whether the larvae show a visual behaviour called the optokinetic response (OKR). This video shows the OKR machine, which is essentially […]
Today there is an article published in CELL about the generation of chimeric monkey. Unlike the traditional way for generation of chimeric mouse for making transgenic animal that can utilize pluripotent stem cells or inner cell mass, the process in primates requires the usage of totipotent cells at a much earlier stage – 4-cell stage. […]
I recently visited the Eye Hospital at Wenzhou Medical College, where they have very good research infrastructure that has integrated various aspects of basic and clinical ophthalmology research together. I gave two talks over there and had a great interaction […]
How Doctors Die – It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be A deep article written by Ken Murray about how some physicians and patients would opt for less or no treatments when they encounter terminal illness.
Medicine There seems to be a new effective drug for Cystic Fibrosis! Ramsey BW, Davies J, McElvaney NG, Tullis E, Bell SC, Dřevínek P, Griese M, McKone EF, Wainwright CE, Konstan MW, Moss R, Ratjen F, Sermet-Gaudelus I, Rowe SM, Dong Q, Rodriguez S, Yen K, Ordoñez C, Elborn JS; VX08-770-102 Study Group. A CFTR […]
This is a cross post from a discussion thread on my facebook, after the UC Davis pepper spray incidence. There are interesting ideas that are worthwhile to think further. It is also interesting to see that there are scientists joining the actual Occupy protests… um.. I still think the problem is not merely the lack […]
From Discover magazine: “Helpful Mouse Fetuses Naturally Send Stem Cells to Mom to Fix Her Damaged Heart” The punchline is When a pregnant mouse has a heart attack, her fetus donates some of its stem cells to help rebuild the damaged heart tissue. The original article is available here. Kara RJ, Bolli P, Karakikes I, […]
These days with tight budget and poor economy, I am always intrigued in finding ways to conserve my research funding, which I think is a responsible approach to research rather than the big spending and throwing-away-old-but-good-equipment mentality. For example, all monitors in my office are old, unwanted CRT monitors. The oldest one is a Sony […]