Category: Biology
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3D Anatomy
There are so many ways to visualize complex data AND understand it at the same time. However, this has been done for many years for complex data using diagrams.A typical place this has done many times has been anatomy. These diagrams present the views from different viewpoints and these then create the understanding of the…
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Synthetic biology dyes
A synthetic biology company called Huue is going forward to create dye’s from bacteria. The cool part is that they are taking machinery that is in plants and introducing them into bacteria.An advantage is that you could manipulate and then come up with new dyes. The dye Huue has started with is called Indigo and…
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Now see molecules
Try moving molecules now! Isn’t this beautiful? It shows the structure of the mechanosensitive Piezo1 channel with display from NIH system – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/icn3d/full.html
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Synthetic biology – fungus
The word fungus does not conjure up pleasant memories to most. This has negative implications though mushrooms are a group of mycelial aggregates too. They form an important degradation pathway in nature and are important for recycling much of the heavy plant material. Fungus has not been a major part of producing anything relevant but…
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Provivi
Now that is an interesting company. An ability to control pests without killing them. https://provivi.com/en/the-science The company generates a pheromone that confuses the pests so that it cannot find its mate and that way is not able to reproduce. So it eventually dies and does not multiply. The unique thing about the company is the…
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L-theanine
It is surprising how much chemistry goes into understanding basic biology. Considering a simple cup of tea. There have been many studies showing the important bioactive compounds in tea. Catechins are polyphenols that got significant attention for their anti-oxidant activities. Then there is caffeine. But another component L-theanine has not been discussed much. L-theanine is…
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Wonderful biological tools
There are so many tools available these days for biologists. It is such a dream…For example, to show which protein interacts with others, it is possible to just plug-in a protein name and find all the other proteins using “String”.In this example the search was for proteins interacting with Tau (Microtubule associated protein – MTAP)…
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Synthetic biology
The term is more complex than the function! Synthetic biology implies control of biological circuits through a control mechanism. Wikipedia calls it “redesign of existing biological systems for useful purposes”. This combines biology and engineering and the differentiator between yeast based beer making might be the control systems that are built in the system by…
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Biology games
There have been many games that have been developed to enhance the understanding of biology and not many of them are good. However, when they work well – like this example from the Nobel prize foundation that is illustrated below – they illustrate the concept well. One wonders how many of these games illustrate all…
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Open Source Laboratory Equipment
One thing that irks most laboratories is the cost of running a lab. Research laboratories are run in a non-profit mode with most of their money coming from Government grants or other sources of funds. Their motive is not profit and the primarily goal is to educate, discover and if possible invent. That requires…