Genetics & Molecular Biology

Today, if you like playing with electricity, you can hop over to Amazon and buy the Extreme Snap Circuits set and put together transistors, switches, lamps, motors, resistors, and capacitors to build…

Some regions of our genomes are under permanent lockdown because they are hazardous to our health - or at least the health of our future offspring. These secured regions include large swaths of…

A team of researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Engineering in Medicine (MGH-CEM) has found the first evidence of cell-to-cell communication by amino acids, the building…

Behind every major scientific effort is a story. Beadle and Tatum's story is one of persistence. They began with a hypothesis: each gene causes the production of a single enzyme, and that enzyme…

Some fun with microscopes and fluorescent proteins: in the image below, you can watch what brewer's yeast does with its DNA as it reproduces itself. This is the microbe that ferments your beer and…

"Are you confused by all the talk about DNA and genes? We can help," claims the University of Utah. There is now no excuse for not knowing what stem cells do, what messenger RNA is, why SNPs are…

Mechanically, walking is a complicated feat.  We take for granted that a carefree cascade of one-footed falls adds up to steady rapid locomotion. Replicating a dynamically stable foot-over-foot…

Prions first made their notorious media debut in the mid-1980’s when British cattle contracted Mad Cow disease. As a result, over 150 people in Europe were infected and died from the human form known…

Insects such as honeybees and bumble bees are predictable in the way they move among flowers, typically moving directly from one flower to an adjacent cluster of flowers in the same row of plants.…

We’re all aware of the severe genetic and unpleasant physical consequences that result from reproducing with a closely related relative.  Aside from unfortunate aesthetics, inbreeding can also…