Recreational Genomics

The naming of human genes is guided by the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) Gene Nomenclature Committee ( HGNC) (https://www.genenames.org/ ), which provides unique symbols and names for every human gene. The process of gene naming is complex and follows prinicples intended to improve clarity in scientific communication.  Key principles: Uniqueness:   Each human gene is given a unique name and symbol (an abbreviation) to avoid confusion. The symbols are often derived from the gene's function or its original name, but they can also be named for the conditions they are associated with. Format:   Gene symbols are brief, usually contain no more than five characters, and are written in italics. The letters are all capitalized if the gene is from a species other than humans; in humans, only the first letter is capitalized. Gene names, on the other hand, are written in full and in non-italic font. Descriptiveness:   Whenever possible, gene names and symbols should reflect ...

  Picture drawn by DALL-E to the prompt "Microbial nanowires and OmcZ filaments on Bacteria" What are nanowires? Microbial nanowires are specialized structures produced by certain types of bacteria, most notably a species known as Geobacter sulfurreducens. These nanowires are essentially tiny conductive filaments, capable of transmitting electrical currents. They play a significant role in the bacteria's metabolism and environmental interactions. Geobacter sulfurreducens and other similar bacteria are anaerobic, which means they do not require oxygen to live and grow. These bacteria are often found in environments such as soil and sediments where oxygen may be limited or absent. To survive in these conditions, they utilize a process called extracellular electron transfer (EET), where they transfer electrons to external acceptors when oxygen is not available. This process is critical for these bacteria to dispose of excess electrons generated during their met...

Where is it from? It is from OpenAI,  who are developing a suite of AI applications including Access GPT-3, which performs a variety of natural language tasks, Codex, which translates natural language to code, and DALL·E, which creates and edits original images.  ChatGPT can access these tools via a keyboard input as a free trial. What can it do? It can provide concise definitions:  Define the "N50" of a collection of DNA sequences The N50 of a collection of DNA sequences is a measure of the contiguity or continuity of an assembly of DNA sequences. It is defined as the length of the shortest contig (a contiguous stretch of DNA sequence) that is longer than half the total length of the assembly. In other words, it is the length of the contig such that 50% of the assembly is in contigs of that length or longer. For example, consider an assembly of 4 DNA sequences of lengths 100, 200, 300, and 400. The total length of the assembly is 1000. The N50 of this assembly would be...

 ChatGPT Developer(s)    OpenAI Initial release    November 30, 2022 Type    Chatbot License    Proprietary Website    chat.openai.com ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 family of large language models, and is fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning) with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. ChatGPT was launched as a prototype on November 30, 2022, and quickly garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. Its uneven factual accuracy was identified as a significant drawback. Following the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI was valued at $29 billion. Here are some examples of ChatGTP output, some sillier than others....    Writing an essay Describe, in 2500 to 3000 words, the role of nucleotide repeat expansion in autosomal domi...