We started with an introduction of new members of the Chevruta, and moved on to a nice explanation on molecular recognition and biological pathway by Amir (Excellent review papers are availible to download from this post, thank you Amir!). We discussed computational tools to do sequence alignment:

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/msa/clustalo/

 

We then discussed RNA folding servers and their uses:

http://rna.tbi.univie.ac.at/cgi-bin/RNAWebSuite/RNAfold.cgi

http://rna.tbi.univie.ac.at/

 

 We went on to discuss the our understanding of human smell and recent papers discussing the effects of smell on human biochemistry and nuerobiology:

Noam sobel's group - tears as a chemosignal

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/226.figures-only

Noam sobel's group - altered responses to social chemosignals in autism spectrum disorder

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-017-0024-x

 

We also talked about taste and smell in linguistics, Bar gave us a basic lesson in understanding and researching lignuistiscs with several examples of papers and research interests:

http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/15699994;jsessionid=8dq2us9sl4lmd.x-jbep-live-01

 

We then discussed the intersting overlap between biology and liguistics in defining the pleasentess of smell.

We ended with a discussion about smell in its theological meaning, and our understanding of religious blessings in relation to biology and linguistics.

https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%A...

 

Thank you for joining this exciting discussion, it was very interesting and fun.

The next week will take place a week before the semseter passover break, I will update this page and by email to notify the exact date.