Wikipedia seems to have a competitor now in “Knol”.According to Google -A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic and all one needs to contribute is a google account.It has been released recently but catching up soon with wide range of audience.They encourage you to give complete details about the knol you write making it a formal encyclopaedia.One also has the possibilty of making money through the knol’s via adsense.
So make your contribution now to fast growing Knol as i did on Hox genes.
Webpage : http://knol.google.com/

Olivia Judson has written some excellent articles on her blog in NY times to celebrate 150 Years of Charles Darwin Natural selection.She gives her views on Darwin and Natural selection in four parts.she sights some wonderful examples about evolution in action.
Check them here
Read another interesting blog post by Snail’s Tales on Natural selection.

Prof. Ulrich Technau from University of Vienna is looking for a senior post doc in Developmental Biology Section. Technau’s lab uses Nematosstella and Hydra as a model system to understand evolution of the mesoderm and the evolution of the two body axes. It will a great opportunity to work with such a nice group exploring development of Cnidarians.
For more information vist the website of Prof. Technau Deadline for applications is 29 only but some later applications can be considered according to Prof.Technau.so if you are looking for career in evo …

European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) believe that they are still not sure about the safety of cloned animal products and further study is needed,as data available is not substantial.Dr. Dan Collins of EFSA is of the opinion that There are possible concerns as there is an impact of animal health and welfare on food safety. More data is required he said before fully accepting the use of cloned animals products in EU,which was decided after the final scientific opinion on the implications of animal cloning on food safety, animal …

Amazon basin is known for its richest diversity of life on this planet but reason for this abundance remained unknown. Some excellent work by American and Brazilian researchers, led by former graduate student Dr. Scott Solomon of The University of Texas at Austin, studied three species of leafcutter ants from Central and South America to determine how geography and climate affect the formation of new species led to some important clues for rich biodiversity in amazon basin.The team published their results in open access journol PLOS ONE .Results obtained by …

Wikipathways is a new platform for open, collaborative contribution and organisation of ever increasing information on biological pathways and will be great addition to the list of databases.Wikipatways which is primarily built on the MediaWiki open-source software that runs Wikipedia, also has custom graphical pathway editing tool and integrated databases covering major gene, protein, and small-molecule systems.The public approach of Wikipathways makes it reach a wider audience which benefits both students and researchers.
Each pathway at WikiPathways has a dedicated wiki page, displaying the current diagram, description, references, version history, and …

Let’s move on in Annelid series which i started few days back ( Annelids on a roll- Part I) talking about the emergence of annelids as a model system for evo devo studies.We will briefly look into the two articles published in BMC evolutionary biology and Developmental Biology journals.
First one from Detlev Detlev Arendt and Michel Vervoort dealing about evolution of neural basic-Helix-Loop-Helix genes by studying the role of achaete scute complex genes in neurogeneis of Platynereis dumerilii .The authors show that the neurogeneis situation in annelids are similar to …