Learning about plant immune systems is one of the first steps toward finding ways to improve their defenses against pathogen attack. The difficulty is that, much like the immune system found in animals, the processes involved are highly complex and also completely different from other kingdoms of life. Finding out about the human immune system […]
The cellular processes of aging are complicated and varied. There are both genetic and mechanical components that all have an ultimate effect on a person as they age and reach the period of senescence. But it is not only humans and our medical community that are attempting to arrest this mechanism, the cells themselves also […]
There are a number of errors that can happen when an organism develops from an embryo to an adult. A single missing cell or a cell out of place can have catastrophic results for the matured individual. Even a slightly altered rate of cell division at such an early stage is more likely to cause […]
Gene editing itself has truly just been the start of the modern biotechnological revolution. As time has passed, the nuance of capability with tools like CRISPR has evolved to not only be more precise, but to also have additional options beyond just additions or deletions of genes. New versions have included things like inducing point […]
When it comes to gene editing technologies like CRISPR, the initial applications were focused around just that, the capability to edit and alter gene sequences. The main efforts after were to enhance the specificity of this activity and to improve further what could be changed. But in recent years we’ve begun to see an expansion […]
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 […]
Deadly disease pandemics are one of the most feared occurrences for public and global health researchers. They dread the day that such a disease manages to grip hold of a major population and then proceeds to spread internationally overnight. In all likelihood, such a disease will either be new or will be a known disease […]
Humans are not the only group of organisms we as a species have to be concerned about. In addition to the impact our direct actions have on the environment around us, there is also the natural interplay between pathogens and wild species that may be exacerbated by the global nature of human travel. That is […]
Drug resistant pathogens are an ongoing plague for the medical field and efforts to find original drugs and other solutions are slow going. The past few years, however, have seen some new scientific discoveries that might finally prove to be a more long-term option to help deal with such disease-causing offenders. These contemporary options though […]
