Imagine going to a surgeon to have a diseased or injured organ switched out for a fully functional, laboratory-grown replacement. This remains science fiction and not reality because researchers today struggle to organize ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 18, 2021
0
125
There is a sense in which the information encoded in a gene sequence can be represented by two bits per base pair location. The reality, however, is that this is far from a complete description. Although many academically ...
Insofar as variants for mitochondrial disease are supposed to be rare in the genome, don't think for even a minute that it can't happen to you. In fact, the closer one looks at the full mitonuclear genomes of normal folks, ...
Everybody loves Neandertals, those big-brained brutes we supposedly outcompeted and ultimately replaced using our sharp tongues and quick, delicate minds. But did we really, though? Is it mathematically possible that we could ...
The modern rise of gene drive research, accelerated by CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, has led to transformational waves rippling across science.
Plants & Animals
Dec 17, 2020
3
198
Some 9,000 years ago, corn as it is known today did not exist. Ancient peoples in southwestern Mexico encountered a wild grass called teosinte that offered ears smaller than a pinky finger with just a handful of stony kernels. ...
Biotechnology
Dec 14, 2020
11
7327
CRISPR-Cas9 makes it easy to knock out or tweak a single gene to determine its effect on an organism or cell, or even another gene. But what if you could perform several thousand experiments at once, using CRISPR to tweak ...
Biotechnology
Dec 10, 2020
0
112
By growing mouse stem cells in a special gel, a Berlin research team succeeded in producing structures similar to parts of an embryo. The trunk-like structures develop the precursors for neural, bone, cartilage and muscle ...
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 10, 2020
0
112
In order for tumors to successfully take hold and spread in the body, they typically must meet several developmental milestones. These include things like suppressing apoptosis, cultivating replication and angiogenesis, weaning ...
One of the most hotly contested issues in biology, or at least in mitochondrial biology, is determining which proteins can get into mitochondria. Having this kind of access essentially means a protein maintains a residence ...
