Genomics Blog

"As the Old Sing, So the Young Twitter"

That's the title of c1640 painting by Jacob Jordaens which he had borrowed from the title of a poem by his Dutch contemporary Jacob Cats. The painting depicts seven people, young and old, men and women, enjoying a bit of mindless enjoyment. Lots of food and drink on the table, a dog picking up scraps, and a couple of birds overseeing the action. The women seem to be singing, while a young man and a boy play the flute. In the 1600's twitter was generally associated with the sound of the flute or penny whistle. In 2010 Twitter has a whole new meaning but many people still tend to associate it with mindless enjoyment. There is definitely some mind numbingly bad posts on Twitter and the maxim of garbage in, garbage out, holds true.
It doesn't take long however for you to find the right people to follow, so you can eliminate people online for Jordaens' mindless enjoyment and find the ones who really do have something to say.
Genome Alberta is on Twitter as @mikesgene because as Communications Director for Genome Alberta I post the 'tweets' and respond to what people have to say. You'll find a little bit of me in many tweets ( I shared our end of May snowstorm with people who follow me ) , a little bit of Genome Centre business ( I've been promoting our upcoming information webinar on the Genome Canada competition ), a bit of biotech news ( we post stories from our GenOmics site ) , and some discussion about science communication in the 21st Century ( we are followed and follow many well known science journalists ).
The Silicon Alley Insider pegs the number of Twitter users under 24 at 30%. The flip side of that means that by far the majority of people tweeting their hearts out are over 24. Some people suggest the median age is 30. Accurate statistics can be hard to come by but it is probably not far off.
Genome Alberta is one of just over 10,000 Calgary users and we do our best to further the intelligent use of the tool and to promote interest in biotechnology in general while raising awareness of Genome Alberta specifically.
Every few weeks we bring you a few highlights from Twitter and here is this week's selection:

This is the 3^rd BIO event I have attended, and the 1^st where 2 pigs and a calf have attended as well. Not that they aren't welcome to attend - BIO is open to one and all - but the animals just don't seem to make the trip. Apart from some obvious logistical problems animals and biotech can be a touchy subject.
The calf looked like much like the cattle that roam around my own pasture every summer, but this was pretty special. It was a healthy looking prion protein-knockout cow produced by BioDak in South Dakota. In the next pen over were 2 genetically engineered young pigs from Revivicor. Genetically engineered animals can be used to produce antibodies for vaccine, bred to produce less methane in their waste, or in transplants.
Here is a quick explanation of the animal GE displays at BIO:

David Ayares, CEO of Revivicor	Eddie Hamilton, President of BioDak

 

Twitter. A chance to convey information in 140 characters or less.
No mean feat but you would be surprised what can be done either with tight writing, clever ideas, or links to solid content. Genome Alberta can be found tweeting away as @mikesgene .
In the meantime here are a few of the interesting bits we found winging their way through the twitterverse.