Two quotes for the week, the first being from Sean B. Carroll on the Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers podcast (HT: Panda’s Thumb):

I really can’t paint this in too rosy of a picture. We’ve been the destination for the rest of the world for education and for training and even without this controversy the rest of the world has been catching up in various ways. But now if you look at the climate in the United States, we’ve so handcuffed things like stem cell research with public officials making preposterous statements about evolutionary science. We have an administration that has denied the global warming data until I guess it probably just couldn’t resist it any longer and you have if you look at some of the agencies, I will point the finger at the FDA, you have scientific decisions being made by ideologues. Now, [if] that goes on for a number of years it’s demoralizing to the scientific community.

The Second comes from PZ Myers, who I too applaud:

The only appropriate response should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing of some teachers, many school board members, and vast numbers of sleazy, far-right politicians … I say, screw the polite words and careful rhetoric. It’s time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots.

Welcome to your weekly dose of cell and molecular biology. As always, I’ve selected all of the blogging commentary that I’ve seen, trying to keep the selection both topical and not mere reposting of press releases from jouranls and societies. The result, hopefully, is a zeitgeist of this week’s cyto-blogging:

• ScienceToLife:
  Scientists study On/Off switch for HIV
• Epigenetics News:
  Cell reviews epigenetics and chromatin organization
• Omics! Omics!:
  The Bio Economy
• The Daily Transcript:
  Dinner with the transcription crowd
• Sandwalk:
  Collagen
• Neurophilosophy:
  It’s neurotransmission, but not as we know it
• Biosingularity:
  Scientists develop new procedure to differentiate human embryonic stem cells
• Living the Scientific Life:
  Borealin localization in the cell

And my weekly ScienceDaily and Eurekalert Picks:

• Proteasome activator enhances survival of Huntington’s disease neuronal model cells
• Protein key to organ growth
• New imaging technique tracks traffic patterns of white blood cells
• Phospholipids in the cell membrane help regulate ion channels
• Making daughters different — How immune cells take divergent paths when fighting infections
• Researchers find the mechanism by which cells resist chemotherapy
• Sphingolipids with therapeutic ends
• Rare cell prevents rampant brain activity