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…

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…

  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…

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…