Okay so bear with me as I have never had a blog before and am not very tech-savvy! I found an article about the possible use of re-engineered E. Coli to produce fuel, which may not be what you are looking for as developmental biology but I found it very interesting.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100903104828.htm
Hey, I have a question for you.
I understand how natural selection works, at least on a superficial layman's level. But in the nuts-and-bolts detail, I don't understand how the number of chromosomes can change, though clearly they can.
Apparently our last common ancestor with chimps had one more pair than we do, and two of those fused, giving us one fewer pair than chimps. That such a thing could happen once in a great while and result in a viable creature is possible because it has happened.
I don't understand how that first being with one less pair of chromosomes could mate with any creature from the rest of the population.
Have you covered this in your coursework?
Hi, a pharyngulite here.
On one had they're saying that production of biofuel is done on the expense of food production but then Lun talks about his his own e. coli diesel factory.
Bacteria need to be fed too. They don't magically receive energy out of the aether...
Now, except for gene networks specifically build for the production of biodiesel, making the process more efficient (which is very cool by itself), the dependence on plant biomass is still there, right? So it's still going to eat our food.
Oh, and first commenter's question is pretty interesting. A post about that would be very cool.
For a biology blog (most importantly, for credit from a biology teacher!), do learn scientific notation. To wit, the binomial: genus capitalized, species lower case, all in italics; thus, E.coli.