The Open2Dprot project is “a community effort to create an open source n-dimensional (n-D) protein expression data analysis system”. It looks very promising and has a lot of interesting thoughts about how a 2D (nD) gel analysis should be done. It has a modular approach (each step will be caried by a specific tool or “subproject”; I think this is a good thing, à-la-Unix), it’s based on an old but functional version of Gellab-II and will be using Java (for the disponibility of the proprietary-JVMs under many operating systems), R (for the stats), SVG for graphics and MySQL/PostgreSQL for storing data. They even have plans to extend the use of Open2Dprot to n dimensions, incorporating tools for microarrays, liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry. When it will be finished, it will be a cool and useful tool, from the beginning of the proteome(s) analysis to its end. And we won’t be dependent on proprietary - and costly - software from big companies anymore. ...

I am currently reading " The behavior of the laboratory rat" and I found a very interesting point : don’t feed your lab rats too much or they will suffer and your experiments can suffer from that too! Of course, letting them have food ad libitum is the easiest way of doing. And we may think that they will only eat what they need. But rats are greedy! Unrestricted access to food is “unnatural” and compromises the health of the rats : it may cause obesity, diabetes, tumors, it shortens the life span and reduces the cognitive performance (formation of free radicals and/or glycation reactions of sugar with proteins). On the other hand scientists showed that dietary restriction is associated with increased production of proteins enhancing neuroplasticity and increased protection against metabolic insults like BDNF. ...

First post on my blog. Let’s see what I’ll be able to put here … Oh, by the way, thanks for visiting my blog :-)