Developmental biology can be a wild field to study. Through looking into the fundamental genes controlling body structure and the formation of the body as a whole, strange and bizarre effects can be discovered from the smallest of changes. One of the most famous being the creation of fruit flies that grow a pair of […]
Sometimes doctors are able to accomplish the most miraculous of surgeries using top of the line technology. Treatments with an incredibly low chance of success and with a high risk of death. Successes that likely will not be possible to do again in the near future, even with other patients with the same condition. That […]
Drought continues to be a primary driver of famine and crop loss around the world, with the accompanied water shortages not only affecting food production, but also drinking water availability. It is predicted that, by 2025, over two and a half billion people will be facing those sort of water shortages, especially as the effects […]
Specificity and efficiency in targeting is one of the hallmark aims of any CRISPR system. The ability to edit a genome is useless without the capability to target a particular sequence and reliably alter it. Thus, work has been perpetually ongoing in the hunt to find better CRISPR systems or to even design one from […]
Decoding the impact of genetic manipulation is a convoluted task. When it comes to investigating multi-layered diseases like Parkinson’s, it is fully expected that a whole host of genes in sequence or applied in simultaneity are used to promote onset of the disease. The process of figuring out which genes are involved or, conversely, which […]
Being one of the earliest focused upon diseases for CRISPR to treat other than retinitis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy has seen a lot of scientific effort be put into finding a cure or at least a palliative treatment to restore some amount of strength. Previous attempts have involved various types of viral vectors to help remove […]
The field of embryology continues to be one with more mysteries than answers. Since it is difficult in many countries around the world to work directly with human embryos, animal models are often the best we can do. To a certain extent, stem cells allow us to at least observe the earliest stages of multicellular […]
Neurodegenerative disease research has long been focused on understanding the underlying genes and molecules involved in the breakdown of mental function. But it is a multi-faceted process, involving some of the most complicated cell types in the human body. The main focal point has been on determining how the diseases progress and what can be […]
The specificity found within the mechanisms of the CRISPR system can be both a boon and a bane. Thanks to things like the PAM sequence, CRISPR-Cas9 has found itself as a useful tool to accurately target desired gene sequences at an unparalleled level. No other gene editing technology can really come close to matching the […]
As things change, they ultimately stay the same. Or perhaps a better metaphor is that we always end up circling back to the beginning, retracing our own footsteps. That seems to be the case today, though not in a bad way. The Early Bloom One of the very first original biotech experiments back in the […]
