In this post I’ll describe a computational method for splitting two sides of a cell biological structure. It’s a simple method that relies on principal component analysis, otherwise known as PCA. Like all things mathematical there are some great resources on the web, if you want to understand this operation in more detail (for example, this great […]
Sticky End
We have a new paper out! You can access it here. The work was mainly done by Cristina Gutiérrez Caballero, a post-doc in the lab. We had some help from Selena Burgess and Richard Bayliss at the University of Leicester, with whom we have an ongoing collaboration. The paper in a nutshell We found that TACC3 binds […]
Tips from the blog III – violin plots
Having recently got my head around violin plots, I thought I would explain what they are and why you might want to use them. There are several options when it comes to plotting summary data. I list them here in order of granularity, before describing violin plots and how to plot them in some detail. […]
Joining A Fanclub
When I started this blog, my plan was to write about interesting papers or at least blog about the ones from my lab. This post is a bit of both. I was recently asked to write a “Journal Club” piece for Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, which is now available online. It’s paywalled unfortunately. It’s […]
A Day In The Life II
I have been doing paper of the day (#potd) again in 2014. See my previous post about this. My “rules” for paper of the day are: Read one paper each working day. If I am away, or reviewing a paper for a journal or colleague, then I get a pass. Read it sufficiently to be able […]
Insane In The Brain
Back of the envelope calculations for this post. An old press release for a paper on endocytosis by Tom Kirchhausen contained this fascinating factoid: The equivalent of the entire brain, or a football field of membrane, is turned over every hour If this is true it is absolutely staggering. Let’s check it out. A synaptic […]
Half Right
I was talking to a speaker visiting our department recently. While discussing his postdoc work from years ago, he told me about the identification of the sperm factor that causes calcium oscillations in the egg at fertilisation. It was an interesting tale because the group who eventually identified the factor – now widely accepted as […]
My Favorite Things
I realised recently that I’ve maintained a consistent iTunes library for ~10 years. For most of that time I’ve been listening exclusively to iTunes, rather than to music in other formats. So the library is a useful source of information about my tastes in music. It should be possible to look at who are my favourite artists, what bands need […]
Belly Button Window
A bit of navel gazing for this post. Since moving the blog to wordpress.com in the summer, it recently accrued 5000 views. Time to analyse what people are reading… The most popular post on the blog (by a long way) is “Strange Things“, a post about the eLife impact factor (2824 views). The next most popular […]
What The World Is Waiting For
The transition for scientific journals from print to online has been slow and painful. And it is not yet complete. This week I got an RSS alert to a “new” paper in Oncogene. When I downloaded it, something was familiar… very familiar… I’d read it almost a year ago! Sure enough, the AOP (ahead of print […]