Biology Bytes
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Genome-Wide Effects of Down’s Syndrome
Normally, a person has 46 chromosomes total, or 23 pairs of chromosomes. If a person has three copies of one of the chromosomes (instead of two copies), it can lead to serious developmental complications. One possibility is trisomy 21, or three copies of chromosome 21, which causes Down’s syndrome. (Most trisomies are lethal during development, … Continue reading
What is a “Healthy” Gut Microbiome?
Which types of microbes are good to have in our guts — belonging to our gut microbiome — and which microbes shouldn’t be there for us to be healthy? It turns out that this is a very complicated question. Over the past couple of years, the gut microbiome has been found to be related to … Continue reading
Potentially Habitable Earth-Sized Planet Discovered
Just last week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced the discovery of the first Earth-sized planet we’ve found that may be habitable. Specifically, the planet is called Kepler-186f and it’s thought to be potentially habitable because it’s within the “habitable zone” of its solar system, or just the right distance from the star … Continue reading
Playing With Barbies May Dampen Girls’ Career Aspirations
Have you ever wondered how playing with certain dolls, or other toys, can affect a child’s future career choices? The researchers involved in a recent study on this subject did and they got some interesting results. Overall, they found that a girl who played with a Mrs. Potato Head doll thought she had a wider … Continue reading
A Parasitic Amoeba Kills Cells by Eating Them
Amoebas are fascinating single-celled organisms. They typically move about by having their internal fluid (their cytoplasm) flow around and they eat their food by surrounding and digesting it with their body, in a process called phagocytosis. Some amoeba are parasites, such as Entamoeba histolytica, which can infect people and cause a potentially fatal diarrheal disease … Continue reading
The Latest on the STAP Controversy
Back in late January, two papers were published in the prestigious journal Nature showing a completely novel and shockingly simply way to make stem cells – the approach used an acid bath. Since then, there’s been huge controversy surrounding the creation of these mouse stem cells, called STAP cells (for stimulus-triggered aquisition of pluripotency). This … Continue reading
Vegetarian Diet is Less Healthy than a Diet with Meat
If you’ve adopted a vegetarian diet solely for health reasons, you may want to reconsider the decision. In a recently published controversial study, vegetarians were found to be overall less healthy than people who have at least some meat in their diet. Specifically, even though the vegetarians had the average lowest BMI and drank less … Continue reading
Building Computer Circuits from Slime
It might sound like science fiction, but researchers are actually exploring how to make computer circuits using slime molds. Why slime molds? It turns out that while slime molds don’t have a brain or even a nervous system, they’re able to make chemical-based decisions, and this behavior can be utilized to make some basic circuit … Continue reading
Building a Genome: The First Synthetic Yeast Chromosome
When you were a kid, did you ever dream up fantastical creatures, like cats with wings or super-intelligent dogs that could speak? While we’re nowhere near making such animals, we’re definitely becoming increasingly better at genetically modifying the organisms around us. One amazing recent breakthrough is the creation of a synthetic yeast chromosome. This is … Continue reading