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. […]
As genetic technologies continue to advance, scientists around the world maintain their pursuit of higher research endeavors and what they are individually focused on. Tied to this is the need for ever more sequencing and production of genes, of loci, of entire genomes. We have better sequencing machinery now, after all, they may as well […]
Occasionally, a scientific discovery can have such an effect that its immediate impact appears to be not all that worthwhile. But those with the ability to see what it might lead to can observe just what massive changes will result from it These kinds of findings end up rewriting fundamental sections of school textbooks and […]
As food and agriculture have expanded through global cooperation and innovation, this has coincided with a greater ease in developing high-selling products such as sugar. The downside of this new capacity is that many food products have begun to use at least a small amount of sugar to improve taste of those same foods and […]
Some pathogens are content to focus on their one host and live in their niche of evolutionary propagation. They go about their ongoing generational fight to one-up their host, just as their host works to outperform and prevent infection by the pathogen. Occasionally, one of these sorts of pathogens will branch off and appropriate one […]
Tracking plant pathogens is no simple matter. Due to their possible environmental hidey holes being in the soil, the air, other plants, or the host plants themselves lying dormant, any and every possibility must be accounted for. And the triggers that begin active pathogenicity and harm to the plant is connected to a convoluted system […]
Biology, chemistry, and physics often overlap in topics they cover, necessitating collaborations across fields for this or that experiment. There are crossover fields that fall more on one side or the other, often depending on the particular technologies used in that field. But there is rarely a more intertwined field of study than that which […]
