Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Websites of note

2006; Wiley; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/bmb.2006.49403401055

1539-3429

Graham R. Parslow,

Cuban History and Society

This site features a substantial presentation of witness and participant accounts of biomedical history. Irvine Loudon, a medical historian, has written “This is oral history at its best. Regardless of your own areas of interest, all the volumes make compulsive reading because the participants tended to ‘let their hair down’ and talk more freely than they would have at a scientific meeting. They discussed openly the hidden realities of the evolution of medical practice and medical research. But the witness seminars are more than just fun to read. They are, primarily, important historical records.” The first session (of 24 in total available) I looked at on the site was Volume 4, Hemophilia: Recent History of Clinical Management, edited by E. M. Tansey and D. A. Christie. Each session is a substantial and professional pdf file that can be printed as a booklet (83 pages for hemophilia). A series of oral presentations has become a reference texts. For example, Professor Ilsley Ingram contributed his knowledge of some landmarks in the history of hemophilia as follows. “The earliest known written reference to abnormal posttraumatic bleeding in maternally-related males is from rabbinical references from the second century to do with circumcision. The earliest clear medical description of hemophilia is probably in 1803, and the name ‘hemophilia’ is first found in a dissertation by Hopff in 1828. Hemarthroses were not clearly described in relation to hemophilia until 1890, because before that they were thought to be rheumatic manifestations. The first female hemophiliac, from a first-cousin marriage, is believed to be that recorded by Treves in 1886; and the diagnostic triad of lifelong, male bleeding, transmitted by females, is first really brought out in the monumental study of Bulloch and Fildes in 1911.” Scientists, hematologists, caregivers, and hemophiliacs all contributed to the treatise on hemophilia. Other topics in the series that attracted my interest included The Recent History of Platelets in Thrombosis and Other Disorders; The Rhesus Factor and Disease Prevention; Cystic Fibrosis; Environmental Toxicology: The Legacy of Silent Spring; Foot and Mouth Disease: The 1967 Outbreak and Its Aftermath; Genetic Testing; Leukemia; Intestinal Absorption; and Peptic Ulcer: Rise and Fall. Illustrations are sparse or negligible. As an illustration of a pragmatic pioneer, a drawing of Karl Landsteiner manually and simply pumping blood from a donor to a patient in the early 20th century has made a lasting impression on me (see page 164 in Ref. [1]). I would have been delighted to see that drawing included at this site, but there are other virtual objects and illustrations to compensate. Professor Ian Franklin (Academic Transfusion Medicine Unit, Royal Infirmary, Glasgow) and Jim Devine (Head of Multimedia, Hunterian Museum, Glasgow) have combined their strengths to mount this site. There is an emphasis on the history and acquired artifacts of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Association. Some pictured objects, such as an earthenware serum bottle, challenged my familiarity with only glass or plastic as practical containers of stored blood products. The Timeline/History section contains a succinct overview of the events in blood transfusion, but the links (e.g. to Landsteiner) failed with a “bad page” message. Obviously a work in progress, but the site may reward future visiting. Vijay Nalla and Peter Rogan (University of Missouri) have created software to interpret non-coding sequence variation within functional sequence elements such as splice sites. Analysis detects activated cryptic splice sites and associated splicing regulatory sites and can distinguish null from partially functional alleles. Human genes, genome-mapped mRNAs, user-defined sequences, or dbSNP entries can be handled using standard HUGO-approved gene symbols and HGVS-approved systematic mutation nomenclature. The server computes the information content of all potential constitutive and regulatory splice sites in the sequence. This is a specialist service available free to clinicians, researchers, and students. Registrants are requested to provide an e-mail address and institutional affiliation for access. Kevin Ahern is coauthor of an established biochemistry text book [2] and wrote 20 songs for classes at Oregon State University. Professor Ahern sings the songs to his classes and asks you to try them out and let him know how they work for you. Try clicking on Complete List Here (one big file) to get everything at one time. The songs are This Biochemistry (to the tune of “My Country 'Tis of Thee”), The Codon Song (to the tune of “When I'm 64”), The Ribosome (to the tune of “America the Beautiful”), Glucagon Is Coming Around (to the tune of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”), Biochemistry, Biochemistry (to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree”), N-A-D (to the tune of “Penny Lane”), The E. coli Song (to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”), The Vegetarian Song (to the tune of “Blowin' in the Wind”), B-DNA (to the tune of “YMCA”), Oh Little Protein Molecule (to the tune of “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”), The Cell's Lament (to the tune of “Yesterday”), If You're Molecular and Know It, Clap Your Hands (to the tune of “If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands”), The Sound of Glucose (to the tune of “A Few of My Favorite Things”), Hark the Sucrose (to the tune of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”), God Rest Ye Merry Lipoproteins (to the tune of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”), En-er-gy (to the tune of “Let It Be”), I'm a Little Mitochondrion (to the tune of “I'm A Lumberjack”), The Battle Hymn of Biochemistry (to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”), We All Need Just a Little ATP (to the tune of “Yellow Submarine”), and Fatty Acids in Our Cells (to the tune of “Halls of Montezuma”). Kevin Lehmann of Princeton University offers three concise debunkings of common mythology and bad teaching under the headings The Hydrophobic Effect, The Theory of Ice skating is all wet, and Ionic solutions don't look like that. The chemistry site given here is part of a ring of bad science sites so you can set off in due course to explore other insidious myths and mistakes (regrettably not specifically in biochemistry). The site icon is an image of a raindrop as presented by popular culture (the classic teardrop shape), but real raindrops do not look like comets with a tail. Small raindrops are spherical; larger ones assume a shape more like a hamburger bun, yet everything from advertisements to the Weather Channel represents raindrops as teardrops. Convenience and sloth are not excuses for scientific inaccuracy. Hal Harris, a chemistry professor at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, is a person after my own heart. If I wrote pithy summaries of books, they would hopefully be very similar to the distillations made by Hal Harris. Since 1995, Hal has been doing monthly reviews, mostly of new release books but occasionally of classics worth revisiting. His selection for September 2005 was “Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology” by Jacques Monod, Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. In part, Hal's review reads: “The current controversy over ‘Intelligent’ Design brought vividly to mind the 1971 book, ‘Chance and Necessity’ by Nobelist Jacques Monod. While I appreciate the arguments for evolution by people like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins, Monod's reasoning appeals to me even more as a molecular scientist. I read ‘Chance and Necessity’ when it was first published those thirty-some years ago, and it is a testament to the power of this book that it has stuck with me so strongly for so long. Monod looks at the biomolecular basis of genetics in search of evidence for any non-random processes, which would be required if some design were imposed on the processes of selection. He finds none. In fact, he can positively rule out the existence of such mechanisms. Modern biology tells us, according to Monod, ‘… it follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution; this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition — or the hope — that on this score our position is likely ever to be revised.’ His conclusions are precisely those that are anathema to traditional believers. In his words, ‘The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he has emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below; it is for him to choose.’ Find a copy this important book from your library or locate a used one.” The URL to locate these reviews is rather long but is my recommended starting point. The reviews are invariably lively. The books would nearly all be in my library if I had unlimited resources. If you love reading for personal extension, then this is an essential visit. James Baggot has been known to me for some years for his support work in setting questions and exercises published in Tom Devlin's textbook “Biochemistry with Clinical Correlations.” In collaboration with Sharon Dennis, he has produced an extensive series of tables including the one shown in Fig. 1. The series of tables is clearly catalogued in menus, and they summarize amino acid metabolism, bioenergetics, carbohydrate metabolism, lipid metabolism, and purine and pyrimidine metabolism. I have created a few tables of my own for tasks such as comparing pentose phosphate metabolism with glycolysis. With this resource to help, I will incorporate a few more tables into my teaching. For those who want to create their own tables, Baggot offers two rules; never have more than four items at the same level of subdivision and always give a table a descriptive title. It can be tedious to tell students that they have to study. William Anderson at the University of New Mexico teaches an introductory metabolism course and has a series of pages at this website to instruct students how to study for fun and good grades in biochemistry. The advice is much the same as I have given students for years. By referring students to this site, everyone can get on with the magic of metabolism. The series of pages is revealed by clicking on the arrow at the bottom of each page. Once you start, you will be engrossed by the images that each say a thousand words as they encapsulate ironies and paradoxes standing in the way of learning and understanding. Accompanying an image of a bewildering array of traffic lights is the text “Regulation, Regulation, Regulation: An overriding concept in biochemistry will be the concept of homeostasis. Continually ask yourself, ‘How is homeostasis maintained in this system?’. Unfortunately, when you begin studying biochemistry regulation can seem like an overwhelming and confusing topic. Biochemical regulation is very logical. In your study look for the logic in regulatory mechanisms rather than memorizing lists without a connection to normal physiology.” This has not been chosen as the best of the advice, so you should look up the site for the complete treatment.