Category archives: Genetics

Transcriptional noise seems to correlate with more closed chromatin environments.

Transcriptional noise seems to correlate with more closed chromatin environments.

GeneticsMolecular biology

By Daniel Moreno Andrés

I still remember the order and control exhibited by the chemistry of life that they explained to me in the early years of college. For me, the regulation of gene expression was the supreme paradigm of organization. The promoters, those regulatory sequences preceding genes, were unmistakable ports where plenty of proteins (transcription factors and polymerases) […]

Quantum Physics + Genetic Engineering = Enhanced Energy Transport

Quantum Physics + Genetic Engineering = Enhanced Energy Transport

BiologyGeneticsQuantum physics

By Daniel Manzano

A hot topic of research nowadays is the energy transfer in quantum systems. One important reason for this interest is the famous 2007 experiment that suggests quantum effects in the dynamics of the photosynthetic complex FMO, from the green sulfur bacteria . This complex plays a crucial role in natural photosynthesis transferring an excitation from […]

Did the first Americans come from Bilbao?

Did the first Americans come from Bilbao?

AnthropologyArchaeologyGeneticsHistory

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

As everybody knows, the people from Bilbao are born wherever they want. And, according to one of the most captivating conjectures in contemporary archaeology, this might have been so in a totally unexpected way even from many millennia ago. The conjecture I am referring to is the ‘Solutrean hypothesis’ about the first human population of […]

Ancient DNA Calling Out for “De-Extinction”  — How far can or should we go?

Ancient DNA Calling Out for “De-Extinction” — How far can or should we go?

BiologyBiotechnologyEthicsEvolutionGenetics

By F. Javier Carmona

Ever since the 1993 film based on Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park was released, the thought of reviving extinct species using molecular biology techniques has been on the forefront of the collective imaginary. The idea seemed pretty simple: reading the genetic code of fossilized animals would provide the instruction manual to bring them back to […]

Genetic engineering of insect-free plants

Genetic engineering of insect-free plants

BiotechnologyGeneticsPlant biology

By Daniel Marino

Plants are sessile organisms, which means they can´t move around. Of course, they have some types of movements like turning towards the sun but the place where the seed germinates the plant will stay during their entire life cycle. Obviously, this fact has important consequences on how plants respond upon variations of their surrounding environment […]

Targeting melanoma: dynamic rewiring of signaling pathways contributes to drug resistance in tumors

Targeting melanoma: dynamic rewiring of signaling pathways contributes to drug resistance in tumors

BiomedicineGeneticsMedicine

By Miguel Vizoso

The scientific community, in their different fields and specialties, has made tremendous progress regarding human health and how we deal with all the maladies affecting mankind. Particularly in cancer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book entitled “The Emperor of All Maladies” summarizes in a marvelous way this notion. However, I am convinced that our struggle against cancer […]

Single-Cell Barcoding: Another way to understand the behaviour of a cell population

Single-Cell Barcoding: Another way to understand the behaviour of a cell population

BiologyGenetics

By Daniel Moreno Andrés

Since the cells were discovered with the advent of the microscope in the late seventeenth century, scientists have tried hard to find out what is going on into them. An avalanche of techniques and technologies emerged over the course of decades slowly discovering important molecular features of the cellular world to our knowledge and our […]