Argh

Almost finished an elaborate post where I explained HIV-1 with an nice metaphor... and I hit the back button, browser eats it, and it's almost midnight :(. Will have to wait tomorrow at least :) Meanwhile, you can notice that Adsense now allow us to place up to 3 ads per page, which is nice and should increase revenues (which are right now abysmal, but it's ok, just starting). I opted for 2, a top banner and a side one, at the bottom... the ads are very relevant AND interesting, to the point where they interest me, but I can't click on them (by contract with google, to avoid fraud) so I have to write them down manually in my address bar... how ironic :) Hope you like them too! Got interested in microRNA this week... excellent primer by the mean of very complete reviews in Current Opinions in Cell Biology. Basically, it's a whole new field of gene regulation to study. Very small RNA duplex are produced by a complex machinery (involving Drusha and Dicer; the first cleave the precursor (pri-miRNA) at stem-loop structures to form 70 nts molecules (pre-miRNA), then Dicer cleave those in 22 nts fragments (miRNA, also called siRNA). Then, 2 complexes use these fragments to silence gene expression : RISC, which cleave mRNAs and RITS, who silence expression at the chromatin level. Very interesting (and new!) stuff... of course, siRNA (synthetic miRNA which are injected in cells to knockdown gene expression) is a big application of this discovery. We'll see if we can find a new strategy using them to cure HIV-1 (Many already did proofs of concept; few examples here, here and here)

As a last note, thanks to the good soul who provided me some Gmail love!