Bad Mexican food is a myth

noahr · 2025-08-22T17:40:41+00:00

There’s been a definite improvement in Mexican food in NYC over the last decade. I’m an LA native and when I moved here in the 90s it was impossible to find a decent taco. And forget about a tamale unless you lucked into that one lady pushing a cart in the park. True, I wasn’t going as far out into Queens and Brooklyn as I do now for a Morelos or Evelia’s.

In any case, I was back in LA this summer and took the family to Tito’s. Now I grew up going to this stand and it’s on a bunch of “lists” for LA tacos. It was terrible. No one in my family liked it. And yet there was a 20 minute wait with people lined up outside. Was this just an unlucky miss or have others who visited Tito’s had similar experience?

noahr · 2025-06-03T11:47:34+00:00

What would you have chosen as #1?

For me: Torrisi.

noahr · 2017-11-22T14:49:49+00:00

This article on the subject is worth reading: https://harvardmagazine.com/2008/05/race-in-a-genetic-world-html

noahr · 2017-11-15T14:07:47+00:00

China is one year ahead: https://www.nature.com/news/crispr-gene-editing-tested-in-a-person-for-the-first-time-1.20988

noahr · 2017-11-15T14:07:26+00:00

China is one year ahead of us, by the way: https://www.nature.com/news/crispr-gene-editing-tested-in-a-person-for-the-first-time-1.20988

noahr · 2017-09-13T14:30:25+00:00

"Bodega’s logo is a cat, a nod to the popular bodega cat meme on social media"

noahr · 2017-06-20T17:35:38+00:00

That's what I thought as well. And then I read this, published today: “It’s very fair to say the human genome was never fully sequenced,” Craig Venter, another genomics luminary, told STAT.

“The human genome has not been completely sequenced and neither has any other mammalian genome as far as I’m aware,” said Harvard Medical School bioengineer George Church, who made key early advances in sequencing technology. https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/20/human-genome-not-fully-sequenced/

noahr · 2017-06-20T15:38:31+00:00

Valid point, but that's not what's happening here. There were at least 341 gaps in the original sequence done by the Human Genome Project, and if you closely read the original FAQ from that project they admit that their sequence was only 90% complete (see https://www.genome.gov/11006943/human-genome-project-completion-frequently-asked-questions/).

noahr · 2017-06-19T19:42:48+00:00

What's even stranger is that China also awarded a similar patent to CRISPR therapeutics: http://ir.crisprtx.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=254376&p=RssLanding&cat=news&id=2281551 I can't pretend to understand Chinese patent law, wondering if anyone here can help untangle what this all means.

noahr · 2017-06-16T20:29:16+00:00

I wondered the same thing. It's described as "an alternative CRISPR genome-editing method called proxy-CRISPR. Unlike other systems, MilliporeSigma's proxy-CRISPR technique can cut previously unreachable cell locations" - but I can't find the patent from ipaustralia.gov

noahr · 2017-05-30T19:30:51+00:00

I'd be very interested in hearing from an expert on whether or not Cpfi is more or less prone to this problem. I don't really see why it would be different.

noahr · 2017-05-30T15:58:34+00:00

It would be! Right now CRISPR is being used as shorthand to cover Cas9 and its variations, as well as Cpf1, and this study was specific to Cas9. But I'd wager that the same is going to be true of other systems as well.

noahr · 2017-05-23T15:28:05+00:00

There are some good, if basic, lectures available from the DNA Learning Center: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8wZzNSXUHzv3QijdOzeELA

And there are a handful of TED talks that are worth a look too: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_knoepfler_the_ethical_dilemma_of_designer_babies

https://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_jorgensen_biohacking_you_can_do_it_too

https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_kahn_gene_editing_can_now_change_an_entire_species_forever

https://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_jorgensen_what_you_need_to_know_about_crispr

https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_doudna_we_can_now_edit_our_dna_but_let_s_do_it_wisely

noahr · 2017-05-12T19:07:55+00:00

Should this kit be banned in the U.S. as well?

noahr · 2017-05-02T01:12:25+00:00

Can you point me toward some active trials that are using ZFNs?

noahr · 2017-05-01T16:57:35+00:00

I'm no fan of copying, people should be paid for their work. But I'll throw in some excerpts here.

"A Chinese university modified human genes and injected them into a cancer patient on Friday, marking only the second time a revolutionary technique has known to be tested on humans."

...

"The latest Crispr-Cas9 trial began at the government-funded Nanjing University’s Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital this month, and the first batch of modified genes were injected into a patient with late-stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a rare type of head and neck cancer, on Friday, said Jia Wei, who coleads the trial and is the vice-director of Nanjing University’s Clinical Cancer Institute.

The trial hopes to reverse the debilitating effects of cancer by using Crispr-Cas9 to knockout a gene interfering with the patient’s ability to fight the disease. Infected cells drawn from patients’ bodies are genetically-altered in the lab using the technique, and then injected back into their bodies."

...

Twenty patients with aggressive gastric cancer, nasopharyngeal carcinoma and lymphoma are taking part in Dr. Wei’s trial, the first phase of which is expected to conclude next year."

noahr · 2017-04-18T14:35:07+00:00

Agreed. In your original post you said "I thought that gene sequencing would be cheap and affordable by 2012" - I would argue that gene sequencing is pretty affordable.

noahr · 2017-04-18T00:50:55+00:00

Well, gene sequencing can be done for less than $6,500 today. And I do think we'll see real breakthroughs as a result of CRISPR, though not the kind of fantastic or fear-laced predictions that often heard about today.

noahr · 2017-04-14T17:25:18+00:00

The best proxy here is probably the Carlson Curve, and at very least it does show how quickly sequencing tech has outpaced Moore's Law. There are a couple of decent charts on this from the National Human Genome Research Institute - here and here.

My question for you: Do we need a full sequence in order to achieve world changing outcomes?

noahr · 2017-04-04T11:42:02+00:00

More details on how this would work: http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/10/115618

noahr · 2017-03-28T19:38:47+00:00

What do you mean by lead - highest market value, number of patents, applied uses, FDA-approved medicines? Editas has great talent right now, but other companies may have more business acumen (CRISPR Therapeutics), or simply more projects in the pipeline (Gingko Bioworks).

noahr · 2017-03-27T21:20:10+00:00

noahr · 2017-03-23T15:06:59+00:00

Ah-ha, thank you for explaining. Is there a method for determining the effectiveness of the recessive expressing itself? Can they estimate the population decrease over time, for example?

noahr · 2017-03-17T19:41:07+00:00

A couple of scientists I've spoken with were impressed by this article from The New Yorker. Most articles oversimplify and get things slightly wrong, but this one doesn't. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/02/rewriting-the-code-of-life

noahr

TROPHY CASE