Category: Biology

There has been a superb paper in Frontiers in Zoology, that describes the landing patterns of birds. The paper writer is also an amazing feat of data collection. The team of Hynek Bruda noted landings of nearly 14 species of birds and observed nearly 15,000 birds. They noticed that the birds always landed in the…

It has always been argued that breakdown in homeostasis is the real cause of disease. This point is amply illustrated by the recent PNAS article that correlated the miniscule amounts of copper in the mice diet with A-beta clearance and would have an implication for Alzheimer’s disease. In this case, the presence of copper affected…

Much of biological science and technologies are trying to cure disease. However, there are a large group of people who do not want to be cured. There are several instances and examples where they have objected vehemently about not doing things that would cure their ailment. What ailment ? Deafness. Deafness has been cured to…

Plants communicate with each other. That much is known. However, what is not known is how plants communicate using symbiosis. Dr Johnson has reported new work in Ecology letters that shows that plants use symbiotic fungi to enable communication. Communication also causes interesting secretion by plants when infected by aphids. These secretions that are volatile…

It is amazing how much thought and science goes into producing food substances that we take for granted. The real wasabi owes its fiery nature to a volatile chemical called allyl isothiocyanate that binds to specific receptor in humans called TRPA1 – (Transient receptor potential) that is activated by heat in some instances. This allyl…

Translational Medicine had a paper by Dr Dormitzer from Novartis and Dr Venter of creating a flu vaccine in just about 4 days and 4 hours, as opposed to months and weeks that it used to take previously. They used the sequence supplied by Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and transfecting it into tissue culture…

Biology is complex. The cell or the organism has to respond to a wide variety of external stimuli and respond. The stimuli aggregation and response obviously happen at the brain and neuron level but also at the cellular level. Dr Drew Andy of Standford University has created biological transistors based upon biological transcription that happens…

10,000 Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers” reported studies that it takes about 10,000 hours for any person to become an expert based on studies conducted in various laboratories. This is a big number. Consider an 8 hour day with a 40 hour week specializing in only one area. With 50 weeks that equates to…

Dr Claudia Gravekamp from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is exploring the treatment of cancer with bacteria after she observed that the bacteria, Listeria monocytogenes, seemed to be concentrating near the area of tumor. Tumor targeting of drugs or radiation is a very big issue. Currently, there are several drugs that attack cancer cells…

It always is amazing to think about the forces that are required to push water up the really tall trees. The forces involved are enormous and it is amazing that natural phenomenon without massive pumps and large amounts of energy are not involved! The video below seeks to understand the forces that make water move…