For around 16 years, Floyd Romesberg’s group has been exploring un-natural alternatives (UBPs) to the Watson-Crick base pairs (C-G and A-T) that form part of the genetic code in DNA.

In my blogroll, I link to Tim Gowers’ blog. He is a very eminent mathematician, and so it is interesting to see what motivates him to write a blog about mathematics. This latest post goes a large way to explaining why. He starts by speculating about the features of some piece of research that might render it conventionally unpublishable, highlighting two reasons; (1) it is not original and (2) it does not lead anywhere conclusive.

Regular readers will know I am a great believer in the potential of Web2.0 tools to enable rapid aggregation of loose networks of collaborators to solve a particular problem and the possibilities of using this approach to do science better, faster, and more efficiently.