It is a simple fact of science that over evolutionary time, such as thousands or even millions of years, an organism’s diet can influence and alter its genetics to make it more adapted toward the food it eats. The Effects of Agriculture There is a natural assumption that the same is true for humans, as […]
The fight against Potyviruses is seemingly neverending in agriculture. Say Hello To Another Terrible Potyvirus As past discussions have shown, they are some of the most deadly plant viruses out there, causing huge swaths of crop death and harvest losses. Additionally, moving up a level to the family of Potyviridae shows that 30% of all […]
Ants are fascinating. As examples of highly social, structured, and often single-minded species, ants easily pique the interest of biologists and even scientists as a whole. Similar to bees, their colony structure exists as highly divergent from the rest of the multicellular life in the world. Most of it, at least. They can be viewed, […]
The Human Genome Project, a proposal to sequence the entirety of the human genome and all of its nucleotides, was completed in April of 2003. While there are still scientific debates on whether it properly completed all of the genome, there remains another part of the project that one can say for certain is not […]
CRISPR’s capabilities have been expanded once again, this time to be used to increase the amount of healthy fats in soybeans. Let’s skip right into the details for once without any backstory. To The Research! Researchers at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea have been working on their own variant of CRISPR […]
Is it ethical to conduct genetic modifications on humans? It’s one thing to discuss such modifications to be done on adults that are requesting it, but what about with infants or fetuses? That’s where the conversation becomes much more complicated. The Other Concerns Most people would likely agree that modification of defective genes that would […]
Proteins make up everything living that matters. Okay, sure, DNA actually makes up everything, but DNA just exists to transcribe and make proteins. It’s the proteins that actually get the work done. All the tiny cellular work that eventually causes macroscopic bodily changes. So, give proteins a little thank you every once in a while. […]
Among all the plant diseases and pests that those in agriculture face, it is often the viral-based conditions that prove the most troubling and difficult to manage. Unlike weed or insect-based attacks that can be combated with various types of pesticides or direct action, viruses have no explicit counter when working in agriculture. Vaccines for […]
Welcome to Miniposts, a series of articles based on posts made to the Bioscription Facebook page. Due to their often lengthy nature, it was decided that reposting them to the main site was appropriate. Please go here to view the original post. A severe limitation on studying human cellular diseases is being able to investigate […]
Welcome to Miniposts, a series of articles based on posts made to the Bioscription Facebook page. Due to their often lengthy nature, it was decided that reposting them to the main site was appropriate. Please go here to view the original post. How common is transgenic gene transfer between organisms in the wild? Depending on […]
