(no subject)

"A county judge struck down Iowa's decade-old gay marriage ban as unconstitutional Thursday and ordered local officials to process marriage licenses for six gay couples."

LKJDFOADLFKJEJLAKJD. HOYES. Score another one for the good guys.

And Iowa? Not exactly the most liberal state you could think of, so quite interesting. I'm going to be watching for the fallout for this (as the story only hit AP an hour ago).

Judge Robert Hanson? *glomps*

(no subject)

The Universtiy of Rochester has discovered the complete genome of a bacterial parasite inside the genome of the host species.

OHCOOL.

. . . To isolate the fly's genome from the parasite's, Clark fed the flies a simple antibiotic, killing the Wolbachia. To confirm the ananassae flies were indeed cured of the wolbachia, Clark tested a few samples of DNA for the presence of several Wolbachia genes.

To his dismay, he found them.

"For several months, I thought I was just failing," says Clark. "I kept administering antibiotics, but every single Wolbachia gene I tested for was still there. I started thinking maybe the strain had grown antibiotic resistance. After months of this I finally went back and looked at the tissue again, and there was no Wolbachia there at all."

Clark had cured the fly of the parasite, but a copy of the parasite's genome was still present in the fly's genome. Clark was able to see that Wolbachia genes were present on the second chromosome of the insect.