Archive: Jan 2018

by Fernanda Ferreira figures by Brad Wierbowski Every day 140 Americans die from an opioid overdose. To confront the crisis, not only must opioid addiction treatment become more readily available, but new and improved forms of treatment must also be…

Two bears and a mountain lion suffered extreme burns to their paws during the California wildfires in December. Treating the animals with the traditional procedures was proving difficult, so vets turned to an experimental treatment: fish skin bandages.…

The closest ancestors of modern-day humans (Homo sapiens) and other subspecies of the genus Homo are thought to have originated in Eastern Africa around 2.85 million years ago. Archaeologists interested in the link between the earliest members of the…

by Anqi Zhang figures by Daniel Utter What do you think of the idea of inserting a long metal wire into your brain? That’s what doctors have done to ease the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease over the past 20 years. Sound scary? A new technique called…

The discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 is one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in recent memory. This technology, first discovered in microbes, enables the cleaving of DNA in order to remove or replace existing genes. For a crash course into the history of…

It may be hard to believe, but this sea of shiny, donut-shaped colonies are Pseudomonas aeruginosa colonies. These Pseudomonas colonies have a genetic mutation that causes many of the bacteria’s genes to be shut off. The donut-shape of these colonies may…

Many diseases are caused by genetic mutations. Small mutations can cause certain cancers, some cases of blindness, influence heart disease, and many other pathologies. A new and powerful technology called CRISPR-Cas9 aims to correct for these genetic…

No one likes to be in crowded spaces, so when colonies reach a critical cell density, cells within the colony begin to lyse, dramatically changing the architecture of the colony. The colony on the left is a wild-type colony, while the colony on the right…

Black holes are fascinating objects to study because we can use them to learn more about about astronomy, cosmology, and gravity. Black holes are super-massive and super-dense objects in the universe. Because of these properties, they produce strong…

by Allison Baker figures by Lillian Horin The Arctic apple is the juiciest newcomer to produce aisles. It has the special ability to resist browning after being cut (Figure 1), which protects its flavor and nutritional value. Browning also contributes to…