Archive: Apr 2015

Genome editing, or using biological tools to edit the hereditary information of a cell, has been a controversial subject since the age of gene therapy. It’s proponents tout the potential to rid an organism of genes that could lead to incurable, nasty…

Presented by Shay Neufeld Opiates, the class of molecules that includes morphine, heroin, and codeine, are arguably the most addicting drugs known to exist. This class of drugs has single-handedly started wars, forced international laws, and to this day…

Today’s image comes from this week’s Spring Seminar speaker, Shay Neufeld. This is a part of the brain called the striatum – a nucleus important for the learning and execution of coordinated, voluntary behaviors. Labelled in green are…

Two weeks ago, the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, returned after two years of extensive upgrades. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is part of particle physics, a branch that examines the tiny particles that constitute…

Neurons (shown above) are progressively degraded in Alzheimer’s Disease. [Image: neurons/Mike Seyfang under CC-BY licence] Recent findings from Duke University have implicated overactive immune cells as a potential cause of Alzheimer’s disease…

by Joseph Timpona We often think of viruses as foreign invaders– microscopic agents intent on making us sick before spreading to the next victim.  However, some viruses become enduring guests by hitchhiking a permanent ride in our genomes. In fact,…

by Grigori Guitchounts figures by Brian Chow For decades, we have known that specialized neurons in the hippocampus of rodents called place cells reflect the animals’ location in space. Meanwhile, studies have also implicated the hippocampus in…

Invasive micropapillary carcinoma of the breast, courtesy of Ed Uthman, Wikimedia CommonsA study shows that when a certain protein called Timp is lacking, there is an increase in the number of stem cells of the mammary gland (an organ in the breast),…

Scanning electron micrograph of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (brown) surrounded by cellular debris.Credit: Credit: NIAID/NIH (NIAID Flickr’s photostream) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons A 1000-year-old Anglo-Saxon recipe for…

A 5000x magnification view of diatoms, a type of tiny algae. (Credit: from Jim Mikulak (The English Wikipedia) via Wikimedia Commons.) Scientists at Zhejiang University have recently published an improved method for removing arsenic from drinking water,…