Illustration by Ushanandini Mohanraj Nearly 3.5 billion years ago, our planet had extreme temperatures and was predominantly covered with water. The hostile environment was devoid of oxygen and high in… Read More »Strange looking viruses and their super hosts – The archaea
emmi olkkonen has a MSc in genetics and molecular biosciences from the University of Helsinki, currently committed to the exciting task of analyzing Saimaa ringed seal genome data at the… Read More »Why and how do we get anxious?
Even though this appears to be a typical scene from a zombie movie, this, in reality, represents a scene from real life two years ago,
Plants are fascinating in countless ways—think about the magnificent giant trees in the forest ? or the beautiful roses in your grandma’s garden — plants are beautiful but also very important. Read my top five reasons for why you should appreciate the plants around you today.
Patient 3, 18 years old, was crippled from birth with a disease known as retinal dystrophy. There was no known effective treatment that could help improve his condition, until recently when his doctor suggested an experimental surgery. They were going to remove some of the jelly-like liquid from his eye and inject a salty suspension under the retina. This suspension contained more than a billion particles of a genetically modified adeno-associated virus.
The brain is the most important organ in our body. You may panic now and want to ask, ‘what should I do to protect my brain?’. Do not worry. Your body keeps something up in its sleeve. A specific vascular structure termed the blood-brain barrier (BBB) is formed in the central nervous system (CNS) to protect our brain.
From the depths of the cell soma, a humble mRNA makes its journey to fulfil its destiny. Riding on a Transporting Granule, the valiant CaMKII mRNA makes the perilous travel to the far end of the neurone.
In today’s blog, I briefly touch on two papers discussing mitochondria and the influence their shape has on biochemistry. And briefly touch on my super-simplified understanding of the mito.
Do you sometimes wonder why scientists bother to study the development of fruit flies? Or why they care about how the cave fish has lost its eyes? Unfortunately, the relevance of research is not always apparent from the beginning. Sometimes it needs years, or even decades to understand the significance of certain findings! Here I want to tell the story of heat shock proteins – one out of many examples of how a study initially dismissed as irrelevant turned out to be a groundbreaking finding.
