Biology friending meme?

[sciatrix]

It occurs to me that I have an awful lot of subscribers and friends who have varying interests and expertises in biology, psychology, and all sorts of related topics and ideas. 'Related' being read broadly here--if it touches on natural or social sciences and you want to share, please do.

Therefore, I thought I'd spin up a biology friending meme. What kind of background in the subject do you have? What things do you find interesting?

Comments

[codex8]

This could definitely be fun! My experience is primarily anthropology, but recently I've been training more in psychology by way of social work. Either way the "people are doing things and it's fascinating" segment of the sciences is squarely up my alley!

[felinejumper]

the "people are doing things and it's fascinating" segment of the sciences

feeling v. seen by this; hi! let's be friends! I also think people doing things is incredibly fascinating!

[codex8]

Yes, lets!! People as cultures are delightful to learn about and it's both a special interest and an actual area of expertise for me! I will happily discuss it at length and without end (even when heavily medicated and about to go under for surgery apparently as we've recently discovered)!!

[sciatrix]

both of those things are super cool! :D

[codex8]

😁

[siderea]

OH HEY! I'm a psychotherapist (mental health counselor) who is very interested in anthropology, who thinks there should be more communication between these fields.

[codex8]

I started in anthro and moved to mental health counseling after and let me just say you are so very correct and I often struggle SIGNIFICANTLY with the lack of knowledge that my coworkers can show with regards to socio-cultural dynamics.

[felinejumper]

Ooooooh, yes please, I would love to have more thoughtful science & science-adjacent in my life/reading page.

Background wise, I flirt with molecular neuroscience & synthetic biology; on the more technical level, I am/have been interested in flexible signalling pathways & molecular influences on human experience (because I am a terrible reductionist even though I try not to be). I am also sort've in developmental biology -- or, rather, at the somewhat-newish confluence of synthetic biology applied to developmental biology, which is my current science/history research/writing project.

I reallllllllllllllyyyy like & am fascinated by how science is made of people, and am sort've...tentatively...making my way into history of science & science studies from research proper with questions about: the way people use science to define themselves & communities, how "scientists" function as this monolithic voice of authority ++ when that breaks down, and how that interacts with the legal system ([epi]genetic testing, psychological diagnoses vs biological, parentage, embodiment of social constructions into epigenetic mechanisms). Do I post about any of that? Not that often, but I have Big Ambitions about it all!

[sciatrix]

reductionism is the only way we can begin to unravel the great knots of understanding, though!

Synthetic biology and developmental biology--are we talking optogenetics here or...? Flexibility and context are my watchwords, intellectually speaking, although my own work focuses a little bit more into the periphery and how hormonal signaling works to let individuals integrate their internal and social contexts.

I would read all of these things! In particular, the embodiment of social constructions into epigenetic mechanisms topic--god, I feel like many biologists don't really appreciate how easily that can be done; that one I would volunteer to help co-write with you if you wanted, because it is such a fascinating topic.

On the other hand, what if you just posted a PARAGRAPH about these things and then we had an exceedingly nerdy discussion in the comments?

[siderea]

Oh, hey! This is me encouraging posting about those things! *encourage* *encourage*

What is synthetic biology?

[felinejumper]

hauls enormous soapbox out, clambers on An embarrassment of question riches!

Synthetic biology is, to sciatrix's question, definitely optogenetics-y! I think of it as using biological mechanisms for engineering ends. That might be to produce chemicals we make anyway more efficiently—Ginkgo Bioworks is a company that bioengineers yeast to produce specific chemicals (they also have an insanely cool laboratory space and do extremely nifty automation things).

There's also genetic circuits, wherein you use proteins and RNA to turn a cell into a logical circuit of on/off switches. The circuits are nominally-independent¹ of each other, so the cell is a tiny modular human-designed computer, but with all the super specific amazing things evolution has given us. So like —if we figure out the system that birds use on a cellular level to detect/navigate via magnetic fields², we could then lift those genes powered it and put them into our cells/organism of choice, and have, I dunno, slime mold that always pointed north. Or you can use them as detector: IF there's high levels of lead, THEN produce green protein, or IF you sense [x toxin in the gut], THEN do [something] to let us know.

The applications I'm MOST excited about though, and comparatively the least leery of, is using biology to report on itself. Because the cost & difficulty of synthesizing, sequencing, and modifying DNA has gone waaayyy down (source), DNA can act as a non-invasive, long term, and organism- or cell-comprehensive information storage mechanism. A favorite example of this idea does come out of the Boyden lab, actually, and it's this proposal for a "molecular ticker tape" for recording neural signalling. Here's the problem: we want to record as much information from as many neurons as possible about when they talk to each other. Ideally, we would know when every neuron was firing, and how much, and what other neurons they were synapsing to, and at the single cell level. Most methods rely on jamming some glass needles in there and recording from a group of 100 neurons at a time (temporally accurate, but non-comprehensive and not single cell) or fMRI-like things (temporally slow, also non-comprehensive and not single cell i have such a chip on my shoulder about fMRIs jeeez) or recording from a single cell in a dish. All really cool; all obviously limited in time and throughput. BUT WHAT IF.

WHAT IF. What if instead, you had a mouse where in each neuron of that mouse there was a very specific and engineered DNA polymerase. Mostly, this polymerase just chugs along, synthesizing some known and inert sequence. But then, the neuron gets activated and there's a massive ion flux where the voltage inside the cell goes from -70 mV to +40 mV, and our special polymerase's synthesis error rate is sensitive to ion changes (i.e. more positive ions, more errors!). And what you end up with³ is: DNA produced over the entirety of the cell's lifetime, that theoretically records every time that cell has fired. And you have that in every single one of the 71 million cells of the mouse, so you haven't been bottlenecked by your sample, and it isn't limited by "wow putting a rig on a mouse is a PAIN", and it isn't limited by even needing to pick a specific time: you have the whole record from birth to death. It's. So Cool. SO COOL. So00ooo00ooo cool.

And um. That's. Some information about synthetic biology! I am most familiar with the Boston biotech scene (hi, neighbor!) and also this is of course my particular lens, which is very much "relevant to my [former] lab or people in it" rather than "a review paper of the field."

<sup>1. I mean, though, ARE THEY REALLY probably not because nothing operates independently anywhoooo
2. Although, even saying this, I do think magnetic sensors are really cool, but I quail at the idea of reducing the extremely complex navigation system of a pigeon to "it's got magnetoparticles all balled up on one side that's it." I basically don't like genetic circuits conceptually because I think biology-as-is is...way better at making things than we are
3. if you solve like 100000000 technical issues with implementation shh we're talking concepts here!</sup>

[siderea]

AHA!

if you solve like 100000000 technical issues with implementation shh we're talking concepts here!

Well, yes, my first thought was, "How very clever. So having made these recordings of every neuron's entire lifetime in the brain of a mouse... how do you extract them from those neurons and read them back? For that matter, how do you keep track of which recording came from which neuron? And how do you capture how each neuron related physically to all the other neurons, i.e. fine morphology?"

But details, details. :)

[sasha_feather]

I am out of the science game due to disability, but I trained as an epidemiologist. Part of me is still a public health nerd, and I know more about microbiology than I need to. As a teen and young adult I went on a deep dive learning about prion diseases. Nature is amazing.

[sciatrix]

Aw maaan, epidemiology is my other great love--it was either behavior for me or infectious disease, and EEB has better work/life balance. Epidemiology has some great, great stories, though.

Did you know how infectious prions manage to perpetuate themselves in nature? I thought it was weird that all the non-human infectious prion diseases I could think of was ungulates one day, not carnivores--but then the answer turned out to make total sense, especially since most carnivores don't do a ton of scavenging conspecifics.

[sasha_feather]

I don't think I know that! I know with deer in Wisconsin, they've theorized that it spreads through saliva. But I'm not at all up to date on my info.

[melannen]

Hi! I am a librarian with a degree in geography with a geology emphasis. I like science! And science-y things. Probably what I am most likely to start talking about spontaneously is anything involving non-mesozoic palaeontology but my tastes are very broad. And I have a sister who does North Atlantic archaeology and follow her work as much as I can. I am also into scientific skepticism in both the 'I will debunk UFO stories on command" way and the "reads retractionwatchblog_feed way". I will occasionally just post on my journal about a paper I recently read or a topic I've been studying up on. I am also passionate about science communication/outreach and STEM education, particularly as it applies to my job.

I am always in the market for new podcasts of the format "working scientists get drunk, talk about recent research in their field" (or similar.)

I don't do real science personally though, because having to cite my sources and do my own stats is too much work. :P

[sciatrix]

I am not entirely sure they're drunk, but a couple of my fellow students (one of whom is a yearmate of mine) I respect very much have been doing STEM Fatale lately, about historical and current women in science. Both are currently working scientists, but I know Emma is planning to go for a career in scicomm when she graduates.

I spent much of last weekend trying to make sure I properly understand the statistics for my own work, so I very, very, very much feel you on that one. Oof.

[writerkit]

Autistic librarian with an undergrad psych degree; my psych expertise tends more towards the "personal experience" flavor than the "professionally studied" flavor. Mostly I talk about autism a lot and read about autism a lot and learn about autism a lot. (Or would if I had more of a community on here.)

[sciatrix]

*fistbump* I usually cannot bring myself to read much of the recent autism literature except occasionally to hiss at the more offensive offerings, so I am very much in favor of folks like you and listening to what you are seeing.

[sciatrix]

Belatedly, I thought I should mention what it is I do: by training, I do... uh... well, fuck.

Okay, I'm an integrative biologist, which means that what I'm really interested in right now is sexual selection as driven by models that come out of evolutionary biology, but my actual research plays a lot in behavioral ecology, hormonal signaling, and energy balance. I'm generally interested in things that touch on how individuals respond to context, so I've been dabbling in reading the human trauma literature (which is not my background) and epigenetics as well as the plasticity stuff that is my real background. I play around a lot with a hormone called leptin, which is mostly thought about as a satiety hormone but actually affects a bunch of things up to and including social/sexual behavior.

But I'm interested in all of it! The "people are doing things and it's fascinating" segment is of course very much what I'm in here for, and I wanted to hear what everyone else is into because--*flails hands* you all have wide varieties of interesting backgrounds and expertise and that includes both formal credentials and informal areas of expertise and I find I learn so many things from so many people here.

[dancing_crow]

I finished a BA in Geology with a strong affection for sedimentology and paleontology, so I got some bio through following evolution and fossils. I like reading about people being excited about things.

[sciatrix]

fossils are really fun! I think my favorite recent work that I've been casually sort-of following is the recent stuff about pigmentation in dinosaur feathers.

[dancing_crow]

Between dinosaurs getting faster and feather-ier and the whole Ediacaran and other Pre-Cambrian fauna getting better definitions, paleo /is/ really fun! Also early mammals are coming around again, so that's exciting.

[sebenikela]

I am... I do agriculture stuff?

Currently in a postdoc helping a big human-earth system model (usually used for climate impact assessment) better model agricultural technology change, which in practice is mostly data analysis and coding (and fighting with proprietary data formats and badly-designed "web portals")

Research for my PhD, which I am defending April 15 *knocks on wood*, was working with smallholder farmers in Southern Mali, and covered everything from testing new crop varieties to biomass sampling and species ID in rangelands to remote sensing image analysis to economic analysis to participatory modeling of farming system and land use change scenarios. I have Opinions about ag-related international development and associated research.

Before that, I studied agronomy for my masters, before that I was working on a small scale irrigation project for Peace Corps in Ecuador, before THAT I did my undergrad in Mechanical Engineering.

........yes, I do have ADHD, it's a mystery how nobody noticed that until I was in my 30s.

I usually have some kind of science-related something I'm semi-obsessively into but I am very low on Brain right now so... maybe in a few months?

[felinejumper]

I wrote too much about molec. biology up above and got tired, but OOOH CLIMATE STUFF. OOH opinions about international development and research and participatory modeling!

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

Hello hello! I'm big on sociology--especially where it intersects with queer theory. My background is that I really wanted to major in sociology but my parents wouldn't let me, so I majored in some bullshit Spanish instead and minored in sociology, then got spit out of school with a degree I have no intention of using and a continued passion for sociology which was not brutally slaughtered, unlike my interest in Spanish. Also I'm hella queer.

Okay, I guess I should mention I'm like half-competent in bio because my mom's a molecular biologist, but the other half of me is beyond incompetent about anything science (took AP chem, forgot everything), and zero part of me understands the computer stuff the rest of my family does (even though I'm internet/tech savvy) so I average out to being a fairly boring non-sciency person. I'm the liberal science black sheep of my family.

[to_do_list]

Most of my background is in social and counselling psychology, as in undergraduate and a Masters degree. In the process, I read a bunch of sociological and social work papers as well. I have an interest in both qualitative and quantitative sides, but my personal experience is more quantitative. I had a particular interest in the issues of research reproducibility in psychology several years ago when writing my thesis - but I haven't stayed on top of recent updates since graduation, so I didn't feel comfortable commenting specifically on your post on reproducibility.

I had an interest in biology since early age. I was going through a diagram of animal cells in an atlas around age 7 or 8 or something. I hated classifications but I loved learning things about biological and behavioural mechanisms. Growing up in post-Perestroika Russia, nobody knew how to make a living doing science any more, so I was shipped off to study business instead. I switched to psychology a number of years later. I took one additional class each in psychopharmacology and human physiology while doing it.

My partner and I have also currently stumbled into involvement with some conservation organizations in Costa Rica: not field work by any means, more of a general/strategic involvement.

[siderea]

I don't usually participate in friending memes, because I'm not generally looking for more friends just to have more friends, and also because it feels a big gauche for me to do so? What with me blogging on DW professionally.

But I thought I'd introduce myself, for people who have seen me around here commenting. I'm a psychotherapist. More specifically, I'm what's called a clinical mental health counselor. I am a medical professional, and not a scientist. However, I am a consumer of medical research, a critic of medical research, and on occasion have professionally consulted to research projects in a variety of domains. Also, a very, very long time ago, I went to college to become a scientist, but then transferred into engineering, then dropped out of school to program computers for a living for about a decade.

I have a passionate interest in the history and anthropology of everything Western society all professional fields medicine, particularly psychiatry and mental health. I am also Full Of Thoughts And Feels about psychiatric nosology, and maybe all nosology.

I have a specialty in the history of homosexuality as a psychiatric pathology.

I am very political and often rant about the intersections of social justice, mental health, public policy, and healthcare. My healthcare tag is a good place to see some of that.

Also of potential interests to biologists: (1) I would also like to get around to posting more about climate change, but that's both not in my lane and something that will have to wait until I have a few more spoons. (2) I am more critical of biological engineering than I have gotten around to explaining, and may at some point post about that.

[rydra_wong]

May I signal-boost?

Also, I think I'm on the periphery of this, but: amateur but enthusiastic interest in anatomy geeking, sports science (especially as related to rock climbing), motor control. Also, psychopharmacology.

[sciatrix]

Very belatedly: absolutely, if you think people are still interested! I'm just catching up with stuff this week after a really low-energy phase.

Also, anatomy is the BEST. Have you seen Inside Nature's Giants?

[rydra_wong]

I have not! Looks like a lot of them are on YouTube, though ...

In return, may I offer you this write-up of the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons?

https://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/483629.html

[sciatrix]

Oh, oh, you should watch the whale ones first. Joy Reisenberg, the comparative anatomist who does most of the dissections, is a whale biologist first and foremost and she just shines with delight when she's climbing through the carcass of a washed-up whale. I love her.

!!! That looks really cool!

[rydra_wong]

Alas, the Hunterian is closed until 2021 as the whole building is being rebuilt; I miss being able to introduce new people to it.

They do have an online catalogue of the museum and archives, though:

http://surgicat.rcseng.ac.uk/

[rydra_wong]

Tangential, but I think you might appreciate: today I cooked an ox heart (well, half of one) for the first time ever.

That may be one of the meat items I have handled with most respect and awe; you get a very direct, tactile appreciation of exactly the size and muscle power (no nice marbling on the inside, that thing's pure protein) needed to pump blood round a cow.

[sciatrix]

Oh man, yes! I get so much more respect and understanding of inter-specific anatomy from cooking; it's really something to hold the tissues and look at them and see how they go together. I'm a little jealous--I've seen those hearts in the grocery, but not handled one. I should pick one up one of these days and maybe spend some time dissecting it with the spouse. (They're way more of an anatomy nerd than I am and I suspect they'd enjoy the opportunity to play with some more interesting anatomical pieces.)

[rydra_wong]

Lamb hearts are definitely more practical and easier to cook (and delicious sliced and pan-fried with rosemary). But the ox heart was EPIC.

[nyctanthes]

Hello! Came across your blog via dirty_diana I just added you.

I'm a political scientist by training, but my dissertation had a lot of anthro and sociology mixed in. I then moved into work at the intersection of public education and public health.

[sciatrix]

Oooh, those sound amazing! I love public health--what exactly are you working on with public education?

[nyctanthes]

I work in high need, urban public schools (Prek-12). Most of my focus is on helping the organizations working in these schools to improve their implementation (i.e., help them to do better what they say they do). In the past I've also worked directly with schools (classroom teachers, support staff, administration).

[minxy]

Hiya. Here via rydra_wong's signal boost, but I'll probably see dirty_diana's as well in a minute.

I'm a biochemist (structural biologist) and I teach chemistry at the college level. I am super interested in applied chemistry in general, and deeply need to learn how to process crystallography data in new programs soon. And I need to get a paper submitted. Oy.

[copperfyre]

Hello! Here and now following via rydra_wong's signal boost, and super down for finding fun internet biology friends!

I'm, um, unfocused at the moment, but I'm mostly an ecologist, and currently working in a bird lab. I'm really interested in species interactions, behavioural ecology, and I think maybe my heart lies with plants, and then periodically I get tempted over to the 'WTF we know so little!' side of phycology and mycology. (Common conversation I have: Someone else: 'So I hear you want to go to grad school, what do you want to research?' Me: 'I don't know! Everything is so interesting! There's so many cool questions out there! This is why I'm trying to get jobs in different fields and places to see what I like!')

I'm also eternally fascinated by cross-discplinary work; I love hearing the different perspectives people bring to things. Also the human and historical side of science; one of my best jobs was working in a herbarium and getting to find out how/why we had certain specimens and the people that were behind collecting, naming, and studying them. So, yeah, I'm kind of all over the place, interest-wise!