From the start of things, science has always relied on the organisms that can be made to be a representation of more complex systems. They were a model for either humans themselves or to show in their own simplicity how life builds up to larger formations of cells and processes. That has long been the […]
The worldwide migration of insect pests has only become more of a concern as plants, animals, and materials have begun being shipped or flown to places around the globe. Ways to control these pests through providing resistance to plants or by killing off the insects directly has proven effective, but only to a point. Many […]
There are a number of errors that can happen when an organism develops from an embryo to an adult. A single missing cell or a cell out of place can have catastrophic results for the matured individual. Even a slightly altered rate of cell division at such an early stage is more likely to cause […]
The ability to make stem cells from other cell types has largely been a recent phenomenon. It took a huge amount of research and testing to get to that point and, even today, it requires a complex cocktail of chemicals to induce the needed genetic and epigenetic changes that revert a cell to its infancy. […]
Cloning has long been a topic fraught with controversy and vocalized concern about where the technology would lead. While we still grapple with these ideas to this very day, the science itself continues to move forward toward a better understanding of how cloning works and what repercussions biologically it might have. Or might not have, […]
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 […]
The horrors of nematodes may never cease, but they can teach us some surprising things, including a method of plant control that may completely alter our approach in dealing with the nematodes themselves. Infestation and Takeover The first step to explaining this new insight is to break down how the nematodes infect plants in the […]
Stem cells were often thought of as the holy grail of biological discovery after they were uncovered by Ernest McCulloch and James Till in 1963. A method to produce cells that can form into any part of the body, potentially providing new organs and prevent horrible disorders like leukemia. Of course, things didn’t really turn […]
Cloning is a difficult process. Even with modern technologies, the best we can do is generate matching organs from a person’s stem cells, but this itself is still tricky to accomplish. Actually cloning a whole organism? We’re nowhere near where we need to be. The Troubles of Cloning The main problem inherent in this process […]
