Exposing graduate students and post-docs to science writing
Imagine a future in which we can edit genes like a sentence in Microsoft Word. We could highlight, delete, and correct a section of a gene known to cause disease, virtually eliminating the devastating genetic illnesses that cost the world billions of dollars and countless…
Earwax stickiness. Neanderthal ancestry. Caffeine metabolism. Tasting soap when you eat cilantro. Direct-to-consumer genotyping companies like 23andme boast this kind of information in exchange for a tube of your finest spit and a chunk of change about equivalent to a week’s worth of groceries. In…
Hurricane Florence was devastating to much of the Carolinas. The flooding that ensued destroyed not only homes and livelihoods, but greatly affected animal agriculture. The effects of Florence resulted in the deaths of millions of animals and caused massive overflows or “overtopping” of animal waste,…
When most people think about “Finding Nemo,” they likely think about Nemo, the adventurous young clownfish who got caught up in a fishy situation (no pun intended) and ended up in a dentist’s fish tank. Or, they might remember Marlin, the overprotective father. However, what…
If you wanted to get a genetically modified organism (GMO) through the regulatory process, you can expect to dish out about $35.1 million and wait at least five and a half years. This doesn’t even include the money and time it takes to discover and develop…
“Listen. Understand. The Terminator is out there. It can’t be reasoned with, it can’t be bargained with… it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear…and it will absolutely not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.” In the movie “The Terminator”, the Terminator’s one job was…
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an amazing endeavor to map the full human genome, and so intense an effort that it required an international collaborative research team. One of the ultimate goals of this project was to shed light on human diseases and find…
Cloned primates are here! Over three decades have passed since the birth of Dolly, the sheep, scientists have now tackled cloning mammals that are even closer to us on the evolutionary tree: macaque monkeys. What does this mean for a society that witnesses dramatic changes day…
Let’s start at the very beginning. When a mammalian egg is successfully fertilized by a single sperm, the result is a single cell called a zygote. A zygote has the potential to grow into a full-bodied organism. It is mind-boggling that this single cell, containing…
Our bodies are marvels of precise control, synchronization and design. Every one of our cells has the same genetic sequence, but we have many different types of cells – heart, muscle, lung, skin. Amazingly, our body has a mechanism to determine which cell is which…