If there should be one rule that could apply to all fields of biological knowledge, it could be that they get more and more complex as we deepen into their study. Regarding genetics, the landscape has become not only more complex but also much more dynamic than initially thought. The old-fashioned concept of genes as […]
Life is sustained by chemical reactions, and the countless reactions that take place in the cells of living organisms that are responsible for every biological process are known as energetic metabolism. Among the others, the brain stands as the most energy-consuming organ, accounting for up to 20 % of the body’s total haul while representing […]
The way we approach pain therapies doesn’t differ from the ones taken for other diseases. The aim is to look for molecular targets, which can be suitable for chemical intervention thoroughly assessing both efficacy and safety profiles for the drug, issues that are addressed throughout various stages of clinical trials. In the specific case of […]
In the 1930s Clive McCay, a biochemist working in Ithaca, New York, made an interesting observation: rats that were kept on a low calorie diet lived longer than rats that had unrestrained access to food. In the next years this seemingly counterintuitive observation was extended to virtually all animals, including worms, flies and other rodents […]
Biochemistry • Biology • Materials • Molecular biology • Neuroscience
Some jellyfish species are beautifully fluorescent in the dark ocean, emitting light from different parts of their bodies in a process that is thought to help them to warn off predators. The molecular biology behind this process of glowing is possible thanks to one of the most famous proteins in molecular biology, the green fluorescent […]
Biochemistry • Biomedicine • Molecular biology • Neurobiology
Natural selection has been sculpturing living organisms for millions of years, enabling them to get adapted to an ever-changing environment. Gradually, certain traits are selected over others based on the advantage they confer to the population. Natural selection is not a random process and it relies on genetic variation. Random mutations serve as the substrate […]
Biochemistry • Biomedicine • Molecular biology • Neurobiology
Nowadays we are more aware than ever about the relevance of eating a balanced and assorted diet. However, in the more industrialized countries obesity has become almost epidemic, and it is a condition that lies at the base of many different health issues, being the cardiovascular complications probably the most obvious. But also immunological and […]
Since the emergence of the microscope in the early seventeenth century, many claimed its invention, but many more have tried to improve it. Many problems have been resolved on the way, allowing us to poke directly with our own eyes about the heart of the living or inert matter as far as optical physics allows […]
One of the most surprising and fascinating facts about scientific research is that one never truly knows which directions investigations may take. Along the way that goes from gathering data, to the path that links our initial question and the answer we pursue, we find numerous, intriguing and unexpected little ramifications and hideous sideways that […]
In the previous article of this series starred by ribonucleic acids, we found out about how an RNA molecule is able to regulate complex cascades of molecular events as critical as to decide the fate of a whole cell lineage. But RNA is also capable of other intriguing functions, and one of the most recently […]