PhD student biochemistry and biophysics. Texas A&M University
You might be thinking right now, what is that? And that was my first reaction when I first saw a naked mole rat. Even though it may not be nice looking (I had some lab partners that thought it was cute…) it is an extremely interesting animal. These creatures they rarely get cancer and they…
Several weeks ago it was published in Nature Biotechnology a really scary article “evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education” . This article should be used as a wake up call for all graduate students and professor in academia. Going to grad school, either for a masters or a PhD, is not easy,…
Legend says that coffee was discovered by a ethiopian shepard in the 9th century after his goats behaved “funny” after eating coffee beans. Nowadays, 2.25 billions of coffee cups are drunk daily. It is the second most drunk drink in the world, behind tea and before beer. Around 85% of adult population drinks coffee. However,…
There is strong evidence that gene editing is already here and is almost ready to start being used in humans. As mentioned in previous posts, CRISPR/Cas9 has already being used on embryos. However, there are some drawbacks that definitely scare people away. This is where David Liu comes into play. He was a professor at…
In order to understand what is the effect of long exposure on space, NASA decided to do the following experiment; Study the pass on time on two identical organisms, sending one to space and keeping one on earth. The model organism for this experiment were two twin brothers; Scott and Mark Kelly. Due to the…
Human embryos have been edited by using CRISPR/ Cas9 technology. This is the first time that this genome editing technology have been used in humans, and definitely is the beginning of a new era in medicine. CRISPR is a high efficient genome editing tool, that can target almost anywhere within the genome. However, there had…
How many times do you run with problems of memory space in your electronic devices? Every week I need to upload my pictures of my phone to the cloud or otherwise I will run out of space to do anything. It is clear that humanity has a big problem with data storage. However, there is…
This is my interview about telomeres and telomarase at “Visitor of the week” Link to the interview
Telomeres are DNA repeats at the end of the chromosomes. Their function is similar to such of an aglet; if the aglet gets damaged, the whole shoe lace loses its integrity. The same is the case for telomeres, when the telomere gets progressively shorter, the genetic material is in danger. To understand telomeres, we first…
When you go to the supermarket these days, you find yourself selecting foods that have been genetically modified to look greener, taste better and last longer. These are GMO foods, and in my opinion is something we need as a society. Imagine one year for some reason, there is a slight decrease in rain water,…