Some of the trickier medical problems to deal with are those that are developmental in nature, as these disorders can arise through complicated menageries of genes and regulatory systems to create the negative outcome. And even if the culprit is just a single mutation on a specific gene, it often remains difficult to isolate, identify, […]
Gene editing has progressed in leaps and bounds in the past few years, particularly through the expansive use of CRISPR and the dozens of variant tools made from it that have spawned. But, at the same time, many of those tools focus on fixing individual problems or limitations in the original CRISPR systems and they […]
There is an ongoing food crisis that is becoming more severe every year, even if many don’t openly see it in more developed parts of the world. Global actions have improved overall food security for many impoverished and subsistence farming regions, but the larger looming crisis has not been diminished. With limited agricultural space on […]
The creation of transgenic plants and the use of gene modification technologies has been a marvel for agriculture and medicine, with the former seeing the ability to massively increase resistances to stress and higher production and yield possibilities. But, at the same time, even this sort of technology is slow and requires multiple generations of […]
The medical field can often perform miracles, using medicines and surgeries to bring people back from the brink of death. Diseases can be cured, but there are limits to what can be fixed. If someone loses a limb, then while the wound left behind may heal, the limb itself won’t magically return. The ability to […]
Basic research has always had the tendency to contain surprising revelations on how the world functions. Whether in physics, chemistry, or biology. And in the case of biological studies, it is one of the reasons why model organisms are so important, as a reflection of all other organisms similar to them and as a way […]
The importance of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is likely understated in science. It was discussed only rarely in the past and, despite its current popularity and resurgence in relevance today, it continues to retain further secrets within the natural world that we have yet to uncover. We now openly know and have showcased over the […]
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. […]
Disease research has a lot of safeguards built in, requirements that must be reached before proper human treatment can be started. While it is true that sometimes these conditions are far more onerous than is fair or essential, they do in a general sense help pave the road for effective human medicine. That is why […]
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. […]
