Category Archives: Biology

Recent discovery of a food allergy candidate gene on chromosome 5q22.1

By mdunn | Published: March 9, 2010
Allergies are a broad category of disorders that all have one common trait, immune reactions to normally non-harmful substances. They are chronic diseases (ranked 5th on the list among chronic diseases in the US) that can dramatically degrade the lifestyle of those affected depending on the degree of severity. About 55% of the population has an [...]
Also posted in Cell Biology, Genetics, Microbiology | Leave a comment

Mitochondria, Efficient Energy Production with Dangerous Side Effects?

By mdunn | Published: March 5, 2010
Scientists from Harvard Teaching Medical Hospital have discovered that Mitochondria respond to trauma by creating patient inflammation and a response not unlike bacterial infection. Best known as the energy producing powerhouses of the cell (being home of the Citric Acid Cycle and oxidative phosphorylation), Mitochondria have long been recognized as ancient symbiots – not originally [...]
Also posted in Cell Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Health & Medicine | 2 Comments

Alternate “life” styles: scientists predict the possibility of a Shadow Biosphere

By cyoungbull | Published: February 6, 2010
The possibility of strange forms of alien life seems to have just got a whole lot closer to home.  Astrobiologists from Arizona State University, Florida, UC Boulder, NASA, Harvard and Australia have recently theorized about a “shadow biosphere” – a biosphere within a biosphere where alternative biochemistry may be thriving in a way that we haven’t yet [...]
Also posted in Astrobiology | Tagged | 10 Comments

Nature’s Exciting Expectations for the New Year

By jyaron | Published: January 8, 2010
It seems that Nature magazine has high hopes (and don’t we all) for research progress in 2010. Among goals such as glimpsing the origins of the universe and other Earth-like planets, the biological topics expected to make big impacts are: Stopping/preventing species loss globally Synthetic genome from pioneers such as Craig Venter A surge in the number of [...]
Also posted in Cell Biology, Ecology and Environmental Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Lists | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Most Cited Articles Roundup 2009: H1N1 Flu Virus

By jyaron | Published: January 5, 2010
Similar to the previous post about the Most Cited Articles of 2009, I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the other big topics of this past year and what research done this past year was considered most impacting by the research community. For the next few weeks I will be posting [...]
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Evidence for Environmental and Epigenetic Cause of Autism

By jyaron | Published: January 2, 2010
A study published a few months ago in the journal NeuroToxicology investigates the non-random variation in prevalence of autism. The study has shown that the highest frequency of autism occurs in areas of the study location (Minnesota) with increased amounts of pollution in the environment, such as mercury and pesticides. The study concludes there is [...]
Also posted in AntiScience, Genetics | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Top 10 Most Cited Biology Articles of 2009

By jyaron | Published: January 2, 2010
With a new year ahead of us and tons of exciting research to be done it’s time to be a little retrospective about all that the scientific community has accomplished this last year. The following are the top 10 most cited biology articles published in 2009 as recorded in the ISI Web of Knowledge: Human Induced [...]
Also posted in Lists | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Transgenic, Green Monkeys Provide Possibility of Primate Model Organisms

By jyaron | Published: January 2, 2010
This story is a few months old, but I was reading through the Nature homepage and came across their selected Images of the Year slideshow. Many of these images have to do with various space-related or physics themes, but of particular interest to me when browsing through the images was a gorgeous image of fluorescent [...]
Also posted in Genetics, Health & Medicine, Zoology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

More Proof That Smoking Leads to Small-Cell Lung Cancer

By jyaron | Published: December 23, 2009
In a Nature article published earlier this week, UK and US researchers have provided more proof that smoking has a direct effect on the development of small-cell lung cancer. This study describes 22,910 somatic mutations characterized by massively parallel sequencing technology (including 134 in highly important exon coding regions) in the small-cell lung cancer cell [...]
Also posted in Cell Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Health & Medicine | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

RNA Interference Technology Will Improve Pharmaceutical Production

By jyaron | Published: November 22, 2009
RNA interference, or RNAi, has become a novel and useful tool for silencing gene expression in both cells and organisms as well as in developing therapies for diseases. A new study out of Taiwan has recently been published outlining how RNAi technology can be used to vastly increase the quantity and quality of recombinant protein [...]
Also posted in Cell Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Health & Medicine, Proteomics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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