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Thursday, January 20, 2005 Science Nitpicking and Some Links In a recent Science article by Andries et al., researchers screened a chemical database and discovered that the drug diarylquinoline inhibits the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This is interesting news, not only because this drug is specific for Mycobacterium species but that it also inhibits strains of M. tuberculosis that have become resistant to other antibiotics. But--besides the fact that MTB is a really important human disease, this sort of research isn't precisely intellectually stimulating. Any idiot with enough money and resources can screen a drug library to check if one works or not. Quinoline-type compounds aren't exactly new either (quinine has been used at least since the 1600s to treat malaria) and how they work isn't a total mystery. Diarylquinoline was found to inhibit bacterial growth by binding to an ATPase. Then again, these kinds of drugs are already known to bind to metabolic enzymes. Off the top of my head, I know that optochin, a drug in the same chemical family first used for Streptococcus pneumoniae identification in 1911, also binds to an ATPase. 50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work. You want to write instead of just sitting around thinking about writing? Here's some tips that might help you. Notes on blogs. Yet another mainstream journalist doesn't quite get what blogs are all about. Not One Damn Dime Day. That's today! Except...if people don't buy anything today, I'm not sure if it'll really make the people in charge change their minds. I think it'll actually hurt the ones at the bottom of the food chain the most. Open-Source Biology Evolves. "BIOS will soon launch an open-source platform that promises to free up rights to patented DNA sequences and the methods needed to manipulate biological material." Grow Up? Not So Fast. Great. Yet another person who assumes that "growing up" means settling down, getting married, and having kids. Some people have all those things, but they still act like two-year-olds. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:54 AM : ]
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