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Pharmacogenomics: Genetics As Personalized Medicine

With the great strides and advances in medicine that have been brought to the stage in the past several decades and especially in the past ten years, there has been a shift in focus and perspective in the pharmacological community. Previously, the task had been to develop medicines to treat conditions big and small or, […]

Voile blanchâtre champignon aquatique, bactéries Bois de la Citadelle, Lille, décembre 08

Mycotechnology: The Study of Fungi-Derived Drugs Using Biotechnology

We think about them in a ton of different ways. Fungi can be a delicacy in food or they can be a deadly poison. They are beneficial mutualists with plants or harmful parasitic pests. But there is one more feature of theirs that has become more and more prominent in recent decades with the emergence […]

Heat affected crop during a green drought

Drought Tolerance: Recent Efforts in Biotechnology

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 […]

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

Ethnobotany: A Primer On The Intersection Of Culture and Nature

Ethnobotany is one of those fields that encompasses more than just itself. It is larger than the sum of its parts. Connected to the wider field of ethnobiology, it relates to all of its other sister fields, like ethnoentomology, ethnozoology, and ethnomycology. And discussing just those misses out on the various other culture specific fields […]

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Digital Biology and Bio-Digitization: A Historical Overview

Describing what digital biology entails has never been an easy task. At times it has been considered a twin to synthetic biology and at others a subset of biodata fields. Its true nature is so broad that even considering it to be a single field may end up proving fallacious in the future and it […]

Five weed mix

The Mechanics of Plant and Weed Mimicry: An Overview

Plant mimicry has always been a rather select field, both in nature and in scientific study, though not necessarily uncommon in the former. This selectivity is due to the fact that it serves no direct benefit in the battle between different plants for sunlight or other sorts of land superiority. Instead, before humans, mimicry of […]

Golden Rice

Vitamin Biofortification: Using Biotechnology To Improve Nutrition

Vitamin deficiencies plague practically every civilization in the world. Even in countries that are well-off, members of the population still have to watch their food intake and ensure that they are consuming an array of foods in order to meet their needs. Governments and food producers often supplement this by adding necessary vitamins into most […]

Mycena inclinata, Clustered Bonnet, UK

Fungi Parasitism: The Ins And Outs Of Biotechnology and Biocontrol

The modern world has a multitude of issues it is facing, most of which filter through and incorporate agriculture in some fashion. Whether speaking of climate change, overpopulation, deforestation, or any number of other topics, the food supply and how we produce it is involved. For a significant chunk of the countries in the world, […]

Soybean fields at Applethorpe Farm

Temperature Tolerance: Recent Efforts In Biotechnology

Temperature is something we worry about in our lives all the time. What temperature is it outside so you know what to wear and what are the conditions going to be in coming days or weeks. Farmers have to worry about this as well, as excessive periods of heat or cold snaps can prove damaging […]

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CRISPR: An In-Depth Primer On All Its Varieties

A Historical Viewpoint The Explosion Onto The Public Stage For those focused on how history will favor the uncovering of CRISPR and the miraculous developments that have and will spawn from it, the first thing to note is that the idea and research into the technology started several years prior to its explosion into the […]