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randogp

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meet.hn/city/46.5218269,6.6327025/Lausanne

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Avian Visitors 2 months ago

Upvoted for the Theobroma cacao reference. Made me curious about what you are up to.

At the time they announced the full genome sequence I was an intern in molecular biology. We had a thermocycler in the lab and I had to book my slot on a paper agenda. I remember this portrait of him in front of multiple racks each plenty of thermocyclers. He taught me something about scale and he proved that sometimes it's worth looking at what you have and ask what if I could 200x this. In software this might seem obvious with GPU arrays etc.. but when you are trained in a wet lab and the instrument paper agenda, I wonder if we could have more breakthroughs in life sciences if we could use some bruteforce now and then. RIP

This Death by Coconut reminds me some mice from my colleague Jun.

These mice had a mutation in one gene but they were doing fine.

One Friday Jun gave them a chow diet from another supplier. The following Monday all mutant mice were died, control mice were OK.

TLDR, the new diet contained coconut oil instead of lard. After more study, this serendipitous observation led to discover a gene important for the break down of vegetal fat.

The study: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2013.08.032