Ready for this (royal) jelly: A personal report of succumbing to epigenetic hype
How hard is it to remodel your epigenome? Here’s a report of my attempt to do so using inspiration from honey bees.
Tag: Genetics
What Determines Our Complexity?
What makes humans more complex than plants or bacteria? Surprisingly, it’s not how much DNA we have, but rather how much of our DNA doesn’t encode for protein – known as the non-coding genome.
Yeast in science: from glass to flask
We eat (or drink) them all the time, but what about in the lab? For scientists, yeast has been an invaluable tool for making biological discoveries.
Your Guide to the CRISPR Babies
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…
Why Pharmaceutical Companies Care About Your Saliva
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…
In the Wake of Hurricane Florence: How Genetic Tools Can Prevent Ecosystem Damage
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,…
Getting to the Heart of the Matter: “Fish are friends, not food”
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…
CRISPR-edited Plants and Regulation
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…
The Terminator of the Genome
“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…
Epigenetics: The Software of the DNA Hardware
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…