I've been trying to think carefully about what our world will be like once the current pandemic is over.  Most people are rightly focused on the current situation and on short term measures to limit the spread of the virus and the harm it causes, but we should also be thinking about, and planning for, what the world is likely to be like once populations...

 The points in purple are objections raised by Ambur et al. to the hypothesis that the main function of DNA uptake by competent bacteria is acquisition of DNA as a nutrient: These points are typical of those raised when the goal is to dismiss the nutrient hypothesis rather than to carefully consider all the issues.  (i) As yet, there is no clear evidence...

Optimizing design of masks to prevent spread of COVID-19: (Originally a series of tweets that came out in the wrong order) 1.     COVID-19 is transmitted mainly by droplets and particles in the air we breathe, not by contact with contaminated surfaces. 2.     Surgical and cloth masks only poorly protect an uninfected wearer from becoming infected. ...

I think the current rush to invoke extreme flatten-the-curve measures needs to be accompanied by careful thought about what we'll do once the measures have had the desired effect.  In particular, how long would restrictive measures need to remain in force, and how will we decide when they can be lifted?  And how can we mitigate the personal, social...

My goal for the rest of my time in Andrew Lang's GTA lab  is to gather data that constrains estimates of the efficiency of GTA transduction.  I have lots of ideas but they're not very well organized, and I keep getting distracted by the minutiae of GTA biology (and our general ignorance of same).  So this post is an attempt to get a sensible plan written...

I've been modelling the production and uptake of GTA particles in a culture, hoping to understand the cause of the surprising GTA-accumulation curve I described in the previous post.  But this has led me to a more fundamental surprise. Only a very small fraction of the cells in a GTA+ culture produce GTA particles and lyse, and all the other cells are...