Viruses are not always loose, free-floating pieces of encapsulated DNA in the environment, unlike most kinds of bacteria. Instead, many of them spend their life cycle, as much as a virus can be said to have one, inside other organisms like the aforementioned bacteria or higher order creatures. And for the viruses in the family […]
Analyzing biological phenomena is often difficult to accomplish, even with modern technology. In many cases, for the actions of small biomolecules and other hard to see functioning parts of a cell, we can only take snapshots that tell us a moment in time. But that’s not all that helpful for understanding the actions of enzymes […]
Vitamin deficiencies plague practically every civilization in the world. Even in countries that are well-off, members of the population still have to watch their food intake and ensure that they are consuming an array of foods in order to meet their needs. Governments and food producers often supplement this by adding necessary vitamins into most […]
The diversity of life on Earth is staggering to attempt to comprehend in its entirety. And the species that we are already aware of likely are but a fraction of the true multitude still to discover. This is especially so for the most numerous group in the kingdoms of life: bacteria. A Lack of Gene […]
When dealing with bacteria in a lab setting, it is often a requirement to ensure that the risk of the bacteria escaping from containment is as minimized as possible. This is especially so if developing bacteria that produce a substance that one wouldn’t want to allow to get into the wild. Escape Risk and Non-Competitiveness […]
Viruses have a variety of tactics they employ in their attacks on bacteria, plants, and animals like us. Their ultimate goal is to hijack the systems of the cell and convert them into producing more of themselves. Some viruses simply reconfigure construction molecules to directly make viral parts, others insert their own viral genes into […]
Revelations on new types of CRISPR classes and proteins continue to be found with every new month of research. This isn’t a surprising fact, as CRISPR is a system that has been, possibly independently, developed among a vast swath of single celled life. There are different versions of such systems all over the place and […]
Biofilms are an ingenious evolutionary creation, but one that gives us humans a lot of trouble in fighting bacteria. Film Development Originally, there was no real need for bacteria to clump together in most situations, due to their free-floating water environment. But land surfaces (and debris in the waters) enabled them to form extracellular matrixes […]
The human immune system is usually a tireless worker that does its best to keep us protected from pathogen invasion. But even for all of its complexity, there are certain parts of it that fail hard when confronted. Enemy Identification When it comes to combating bacteria wishing to harm us, one of the first actions […]
Synthetic biology is complicated. When you’re building biological systems from the ground up, how could it not be? But the results are almost always something amazing, a real revolutionary accomplishment that wouldn’t be possible with any other field of science. The only other field that comes close is nanotechnology and mechanical systems are still somewhat […]
