Research into sexual embryonic development and the forms of offspring progeneration has long been a source of study to determine yet another facet to early formation of the embryo. Mammals are a bit special when it comes to the topic of genetic development of the egg cell. All of our animal cousins among the reptiles, […]
When it comes to biological stresses on plants that reduce their ability to grow and stunts their development, high salt levels is one of the worst possibilities. A high salinity in the soil can interfere with a plant’s roots in being able to take up water through osmosis. At the same time, some sodium ions […]
When your body is in danger, your cells need to react fast to let everyone else know. If you stick your hand in a fire, your brain and your muscle cells have to be notified as soon as possible in order to force the subconscious pullback from the pain and damage, before you’ve even realized […]
When researching the effects medicine has on a living organism or when trying to track how a disease is contracted and spreads throughout the body or when just simply wanting to test an observation in nature within a controlled and reliable setting, the scientific community has the greatest thanks to offer to the model organisms. […]
The past five or so years has been a bit of a roller-coaster for any field that dabbles in genetics. The advancements the scientific community has made in such a short time frame are nothing less than extraordinary and things only seem to be accelerating from here on out. And the single piece of technology […]
As genetic sequencing technologies have become cheaper and more plentiful, scientists researching the history of life on Earth have found it that much easier to learn about the answers to the many mysteries that still lay unresolved. A major piece of the puzzle involves the emergence of plant life onto land and out of the […]
Interactions between hosts and their pathogens are numerous and come in so many forms that we continue to categorize them to this day. A unique example often seen in insects is the capability known as polyphenism, where two or more different phenotypes, or physical traits, can emerge from the same genome. This is commonly seen […]
Once upon a time, scientists thought genetics and genomes were fairly straightforward. A gene encodes a protein and that protein carries out the actions that cause physical, metabolic effects and even phenotypic effects visible to others. It was a direct and simple system, a functional way for something formed through natural selection to be built. […]
Occasionally, a scientific discovery can have such an effect that its immediate impact appears to be not all that worthwhile. But those with the ability to see what it might lead to can observe just what massive changes will result from it These kinds of findings end up rewriting fundamental sections of school textbooks and […]
Some pathogens are content to focus on their one host and live in their niche of evolutionary propagation. They go about their ongoing generational fight to one-up their host, just as their host works to outperform and prevent infection by the pathogen. Occasionally, one of these sorts of pathogens will branch off and appropriate one […]
