Therapeutic pollution: a different kettle of fish
When chemicals spill out into the world around us, we need to know what consequences they will have. In general, an opinion of “what doesn’t harm is fine” holds – both for ecotoxicological tests,...
Category: Life Sciences
Henrietta Lacks: An Ordinary Woman with an Extraordinary Story
Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1st 1920, the ninth child in a poor black family of tobacco farmers in Virginia, USA. At the age of 30, Henrietta developed extremely aggressive cervical cancer. During...
Magpies Don’t Favour Shiny Objects
Magpies like to steal shiny, metallic objects to make their nests, right? That’s how the age-old story goes. Rossini even penned an opera on the subject. The birds, part of the crow family, are...
The Righteous Drug Smugglers
Of all the challenges facing the pharmaceutical treatment of brain diseases, the most fundamental is also one of the most difficult: getting drugs into the brain. Our brain comes with its own bouncer, the...
Gene Expression Analysis by Single Cell RNA-Seq
Analysis of gene expression is important in diagnostics as well as in understanding biological processes. The gene expression profile of cells assesses the extent to which genes are active (or not). Gene expression varies...
The Book of Life – Rewritten?
All life we know shares one common feature: DNA. From bacteria to humans, our genetic code is written in the same 4 chemical “letters”, the nucleotides Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Guanine (G) and Cytosine...
Defusing the neurology time bomb- A new gene therapy for Parkinson’s Disease
Parkinson’s Disease (PD) – familiar to many because of the philanthropic efforts of the Michael J Fox Foundation – is a pernicious neurological disease that affects 1% of people over 60 . The financial...
Tasty Science- Mystery Menu Dinner Party
The dinner took place in the basement of the Stravaigin restaurant, which is known for its innovative and high quality menu. Inspiration for the dinner came from the observation that nowadays, in times of...
