February 09, 2016 at 01:19AM

Today I Learned: 1) Pseudomonas aeroginosa, a common bacteria known for easily developing antibiotic resistance, can grow in diesel and jet fuel! What an awful way to lose a tank of gas. 2) Automatic watches. They're spring-powered watches that wind themselves from the motion of their bearer. I'll just leave you with these: http://ift.tt/20HcaiZ http://ift.tt/1Xf41Nq http://ift.tt/20HccaR http://ift.tt/1Xf41Ns Anders Knight is on a roll. 3) BglBricks (pronounced "bagel bricks"). If you know what the biobrick standard is, this paragraph is for you (otherwise, see this asterisk*). The BglBrick standard is a modification of the BioBrick standard that lets you put two protein-coding sequences together, and the scar left behind by the restricion site happens to be the codons for a serine-glycine linker, which is the standard flexible linker you put between two domains in a protein fusion. Ok, it's not that it "just happens" to be a serine-glycine linker, it was designed that way. Anyway, it's a cool part standard for making fusion proteins. Don't have a clue how well it works, but it's from Arkin and Dueber, so it can't be all bad. * The biobrick standard is a DNA parts standard. What is a DNA part, you might ask? A DNA part is a string of DNA that encodes something specific and (presumably) useful, like a temperature-sensitive promoter, or a sequence for a fluorescent green protein, or a binding site for a repressor. A part *standard* is usually a specification for what DNA flanks the part, almost always with specific restriction sites to make it easy to clone. The BioBrick standard, developed by Tom Knight for the iGEM synthetic biology competition, is one such standard -- it specifies two restriction sites on each side of the part, in a specific order. The cool thing about the BioBrick standard is that when you cut the pieces with the right parts and ligate them together, you get a *new BioBrick* part that's a composite of the original two, with the right restriction enzymes on either side and no restriction sites in the middle. Unfortunately, the standard BioBrick assembly protocol doesn't actually work very well (it's not clear to me why), so most iGEM teams use other cloning methods. You are now prepared to read the previous paragraph.