Dugesia_japonica

Bioelectricity In Regrown Worm Heads Teaches Body Part Regeneration

A long-term goal of medicine in the big picture has been developing the field of regenerative medicine in order to work toward growing replacement organs for patients. This process has been decades in the making and, even today, can be finicky at best. Regrowing Everything Though researchers and doctors have begun succeeding more and more […]

Schistosoma 20041-300

Controlling Schistosomiasis Parasites By Learning How To Kill Snails

There are far more dangerous and lethal diseases out there than one usually thinks about. Gruesome conditions brought on by bacteria, viruses, and, often the most directly disgusting of all, parasitic organisms. Neglected Tropical Diseases: Schistosomiasis Schistosomiasis is one of these and is listed as a neglected tropical disease (NTD), a category of diseases that […]

Utricularia gibba3

Carnivorous, Flowering Bladderwort Reveals Depths of Gene Duplication

Genetics can get weird. Especially so in plants, which are more conducive to hybridization and duplications of their entire genome. Polyploidy, as such a duplication is called, is often rampant across ancestral lineages of plants and makes species classification taxing, to say the least. The Flowers and the Carnivores The flowering plants, also known as […]

A fly's first breath 1

Why Don’t Damaging Mutations Kill Off Humanity And Complex Life?

How is humanity still alive? How is most complex life still going in the first place? Biologically speaking, the number of genetic mutations we have with every generation that results in a negative effect should have wiped us all out. Simple Processes Natural selection as a random process and the error rate in our own […]

Cellular-virus-wallpaper

Resurrecting Ancient Proteins To Fight Back Against Modern Viruses

Viruses have a variety of tactics they employ in their attacks on bacteria, plants, and animals like us. Their ultimate goal is to hijack the systems of the cell and convert them into producing more of themselves. Some viruses simply reconfigure construction molecules to directly make viral parts, others insert their own viral genes into […]

Zika-virus-3D

A New Class of CRISPR Detailed and Its Variants Discovered

Revelations on new types of CRISPR classes and proteins continue to be found with every new month of research. This isn’t a surprising fact, as CRISPR is a system that has been, possibly independently, developed among a vast swath of single celled life. There are different versions of such systems all over the place and […]

Camellia sinensis-IMG 3444

Investigating The Tea Genome And How To Make More Flavorful Tea

Even more so than coffee, tea is the most popular drink in the world, barring alcohol itself. Its history stretches back thousands of years and across dozens of cultures. The caffeine within and the multiple health benefits from regular consumption have helped continue its popularity to this day. But that popularity includes an ever increasing […]

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 […]

Nematoda Gadus Morhua Fish MArket Atlantic Canada

Parasitic Worms Use Toxic Venom To Liquefy Insects

Parasitic worms seem to be a topic being covered here more often as of late, but that’s likely because they are just as involved in every aspect of our lives as bacteria are. Understanding how these worms function can bring new insights into human health, agriculture, and more. In one of our prior articles, we […]

Dictyostelium discoideum 43

Bacteria-Eating Amoeba Effective Against Antibiotic-Resistant Biofilms

Biofilms are an ingenious evolutionary creation, but one that gives us humans a lot of trouble in fighting bacteria. Film Development Originally, there was no real need for bacteria to clump together in most situations, due to their free-floating water environment. But land surfaces (and debris in the waters) enabled them to form extracellular matrixes […]