When studying such complex topics as wholesale body replication and regeneration of limbs, it is a heady subject to tackle all at once. And it’s unlikely that beginning on something the size of mammals, using model organisms or not, is going to reveal anything at all without a basic understanding of how regeneration is supposed […]
The ability to make stem cells from other cell types has largely been a recent phenomenon. It took a huge amount of research and testing to get to that point and, even today, it requires a complex cocktail of chemicals to induce the needed genetic and epigenetic changes that revert a cell to its infancy. […]
Our nervous system directs most of our body’s mechanisms without us being away of it. Motor neurons are involved in moving parts of our body, sensory neurons give us each of our major secondary senses like our sense of pain or temperature, and interneurons connect all the other neurons together into a combined whole that […]
The horrors of nematodes may never cease, but they can teach us some surprising things, including a method of plant control that may completely alter our approach in dealing with the nematodes themselves. Infestation and Takeover The first step to explaining this new insight is to break down how the nematodes infect plants in the […]
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 […]
Stem cells were often thought of as the holy grail of biological discovery after they were uncovered by Ernest McCulloch and James Till in 1963. A method to produce cells that can form into any part of the body, potentially providing new organs and prevent horrible disorders like leukemia. Of course, things didn’t really turn […]
Perfectly mapping and even regrowing parts of a brain has long been something only considered to be a thing in science fiction. The technology has always seemed like it was centuries away from ever becoming a reality. But, day by day, researchers continue to develop new techniques and methods that push the boundaries of what […]