How Bacterial Battles Paved the Way for CRISPR Gene Editing In the microscopic world, a relentless battle has been raging for millennia, one that has inadvertently given rise to one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of our time: CRISPR gene editing technology. This discovery, stemming from the age-old war between bacteria and viruses, reshaped… Continue reading Unseen Conflict:
Category: Biology
Jennifer Doudna:
Rewriting the Code of Life with CRISPR-Cas9 Few discoveries in modern science have generated as much excitement and promise as CRISPR-Cas9, a revolutionary gene-editing system. Standing for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, CRISPR is a powerful tool that allows scientists to make precise changes to DNA, revolutionizing the field of biology. UC Berkeley biochemist… Continue reading Jennifer Doudna:
Ernest Everett Just
Great Underappreciated Black Biologist Ernest Everett Just was a pioneering African American biologist, academic, and science writer known for his work in the fields of cellular biology and marine biology. I learned about his life and contributions listening to a talk given by Mélina Mangal, author, school library teacher, and biographer of Ernest Everett Just.… Continue reading Ernest Everett Just
Future Work
Computational Biology A while back, I wrote a about how computational biology helps discover new medicines. Earlier, I chronicled the discoveries of Anika Chebrolu, a high school student well on her way to becoming a computational biologist. Since then I started wondering about this new hybrid career and what it offered. This post is an… Continue reading Future Work
What’s a Virus, Anyway?
During this Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve all been thinking more about viruses and, like Anika Chebrulo, how to stop them. Learning about Anika’s work and Covid-19 (Link to Worst Pandemic Ever?) made me realize I wanted to know more about viruses and how they worked. If you classify viruses as alive, then viruses are the most… Continue reading What’s a Virus, Anyway?
Fighting Opioid Addiction
Gitanjali Rao Invents a Medical Diagnostic Tool “One of our family friends became addicted to prescription opioids after a car accident,” says Gitanjali Rao, an award-winning inventor. The friend’s doctor had prescribed opioid painkillers to ease her suffering. As happens all too often, Gitanjali discovered, the friend mistakenly took too much of her prescription and… Continue reading Fighting Opioid Addiction
Myth of the Tongue Map
A persistent meme of misconception It’s not what you know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know that ain’t so.” Mark Twain The Problem How do we know what is so and what ain’t so? Sometimes obsolete or debunked ideas still persist and circulate widely. Many people today still believe the misconception that… Continue reading Myth of the Tongue Map
Supertaster Test
With flavors of chocolate and red fruits, this Barolo [red wine] has a strong backbone of tannins. from LoveToKnow.com Some people can see better than others, with vision like eagles. Some people can hear better, detecting subtle sounds as a dolphin hears the sounds of small fish swimming. And some people are extra sensitive to… Continue reading Supertaster Test
Citizen science: What is it? Why do people do it? And why you should, too!
You are all scientists!
A Matter of Taste?
How an explosion revealed a superpower “Well, it’s just a matter of taste,” you may say to a friend when disagreeing about the flavor of food. Now many scientific studies support this common experience: some people have a more acute sense of taste than others. We all live in different taste worlds. The wonderful and… Continue reading A Matter of Taste?