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Attack of the Killer Organoids!!!!
When I was a kid in the Eighties, it would not have been too much of a stretch to imagine myself waiting in line to watch “Attack of the Killer Organoids.” I mean, I have vivid memories of movies where tomatoes roll around town wiping people out (which, by the way, is terrifying for a small Italian kid surrounded by tomatoes). So, who’s to say an organoid movie wouldn’t be a cult hit?
Mr. Owl ate my metal worm
Mr. Owl ate my metal worm. Edit DNA and tide. Nadia, Aidan. Yo Dad, oy! Racecar. Bob.
Why am I doing this? Nope, I’m not having a stroke, but trying my hand at palindromes (it’s harder than it looks!). Palindromes are words, phrases and even sentences that read the same backward and forward. The same goes for DNA nucleotide sequences and those palindromes have been shown to be quite useful for editing our genome.
CAR-T Like a Rock Star
Ever wonder how your immune system will take out invading pathogens and cells infected with said pathogens with precision and purpose, but don’t seem to do anything to an invading cancer cell? Me too. Luckily for a lot of people out there, folks much smarter than this blogger asked that question, had some grand ideas, and ushered us into the era of immunotherapy: Using one’s own immune system to combat disease, and in this case, cancer. Specifically blood cancers.
I Heart Gemini’s Medical Devices
Yep. You read that right. Gemini has medical devices. Who knew? Well, they did and you might have even used them and if you haven’t you may want to consider them. Allow me to explain:
You down with GGT?
Hello everyone. Welcome back to my blog. It’s been a while but I’m here again, ready to throw out a bit of knowledge to help you get the most out of your cells, and in this case, maybe even help you avoid getting ripped off. So what better way to do that than to talk about Gamma-Glutamyltransferase? I know. I have goosebumps, too.
Ugly Critters Make Beautiful Cell Lines
I know there are a lot of you Xenopus folks out there, so here’s your shout-out. You’ve withstood the test of time and the advent of new model systems competing for your affection and you stayed true to the frog. You shall be rewarded for it! Kinda. If my saying”this stuff is cool!” can be construed as an award then you, my friends, have just won it. But I do not share that love for the frog that gave you the cells. Blech. Anyways, here goes….
No News is Good News. Unless You’re a Blogger. Then Life Kinda Sucks
I’ve been waiting for an in-your-face, monumental news article or discovery to write about this week, and suffice it to say, the world has let me down. So now I am up to my own devices to share some thoughts on cell biology with you, dear scientist and I hope I do not let you down.
RUN!!! The GMO’s Have Escaped! It’s Pandemonium
I can’t help but conjure up images of Bill Murray in that famous Saturday Night Live Skit: “Everybody get outta here, there’s a lobster loose!” That’s what you might expect, given what certain focus and “advocate” groups who claim to be experts, tell you about genetically modified food.Left to their own devices, they’d work hard to convince all of us that these “Frankenfoods” will someday take over the world and keep us humans in little glass aquariums.I have a very dear Facebook friend who frequently posts links and comments about various companies and farms who use and sell GMO’s to us fo
Mycoplasma: The Only 4 Letter Word I Don’t Enjoy Shouting
Picture this, dear scientist: You just got your reviews back from Nature. After sitting on it for 6 months, the editors send your work back to you with great news: You’re going to have your first Nature paper!
Of course, after you do the prescribed sets of experiments your esteem peers outlined for you.
Fish cells. Sashimi in a dish. If I had only known…
Welcome back, dear scientist. Today I am having sushi for lunch and it made me think about an often overlooked set of cell types that some biologists can be using to make their lives a little easier. Fish cells. Even though fish are easier to keep than mammals, they still have more problems and take longer to generate results than cells in culture. Today we’ll snoop around the world of fish cell culture.
Wolf and Quimby first isolated and maintained cells from a fish yet to be identified. Here’s a link:
Trouble With Tribbles.
“Tribbles” is the name of a gene found in Drosophila. It’s also found in humans. Defects in the Tribble gene in humans results in a particularly aggressive form of leukemia, acute myelogenous leukemia (AML).
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…
Tiggywinkle. Prospero. Decapentaplegia. Mothers Against Decapentaplegia. Lunatic Fringe. One-Eyed Pinhead. Sonic Hedgehog. Half-Baked. Tribbles…….I could go on: Echidna. Dumpy. Half-Pint. Fushi Terazu. I’m Not Dead Yet.….The list is extensive.
A story with a moral (sort of).
Once upon a time, there was a budding scientist, a Master’s student in a small but efficient stem cell lab. He just graduated with honors, majoring in Biology. Four years of hard work, sweat, and tears….all for that little piece of paper that told his parents that their money was well spent.
Adult Stem Cells: Potent Stuff!
Why all this fuss over embryonic stem cells when we have perfectly good adult stem cells in our bodies?
I think that’s a great question. Many researchers asked the same one. The short answer is “potency.” Potency in stem cell terms refers to the ability of a specific stem cell to make different mature cell types. The going theory (and I really haven’t seen much in the literature to change my mind) is that the older a person is, the less potent their stem cells are. Here’s a quick breakdown of stem cell potency, from super potent to “not-so-much”:
ES cells: Where do they come from? Part Two.
As we learned last week, ES cells come from the blastocyst stage embryo. We also touched on three ways to obtain ES cells. But I stopped short of describing the actual donated tissue used to make them. So this week, we’ll briefly describe where these precious little cells come from.
ES cells. Where do they come from? Part One.
Disclaimer: This is not a religious blog, but a scientific one (kinda). That said, the facts presented below are not intended to ruffle any feathers, but to simply outline the biological aspects of a population of stem cells. What I present below is the result of decades of rigorous scientific research, medical knowledge, and peer review. It has been repeated many times over by researchers all over the world, and validated to be deemed correct, and the baseline for much of the science behind the field of regenerative medicine.
Stem Cells Tutorial
It’s summer time so I have some time off from teaching and I’m beginning to feel the “academic itch.” So, I thought it might be a good idea to review the ideas, promises, and issues with stem cell biology. While a lot of the controversy has taken a back seat to other issues, they are still present and I will use this month to present my take on the whole thing. Now although I am far from unbiased, as a scientist I am bound by ethics and my desire to educate (not brainwash), to present a fair and balanced blogpost: So here goes nothing…
Albumin: Fun Facts to know and Tell
Hello again, dear reader. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m struggling to fill a whole month’s worth of blogs with “Albumin” as my topic. I entertained the idea of spending a whole blog on Green BSA. Until I realized that “Greenish cast” is widely used as a description of the purified powder. While I can appreciate the value of a short blog, anything that can be misconstrued as a twitter tweet just wouldn’t cut it with my blog executive board. So, I decided to take this last week to showcase the stuff I found on the world wide web, about our favorite protein, albumin.
Fraction V and Cohn (Or is it Cone?)
OK folks, today we power through our “Month of Albumin” with a history lesson. I like these because when I do these, I usually learn something new and entertaining. For example, I had no idea that Alexander Fleming was a slob. Next to learning that Einstein failed algebra the first time, that news on Fleming stands as definitive proof that I can still procure that Nobel Prize that the committee seems to keep away from my meaty little paws. So. What juicy tidbits will we learn today? I have no idea. I haven’t written it yet.
Bovine Serum Albumin
So last week, we started our month of albumin celebration with a short blog about human serum albumin. This week, we’ll do the same for a more common lab goodie, bovine serum albumin (BSA). Admittedly, I’m having a bit of trouble coming up with blog-worthy tidbits and information on albumin so if you just bear with me, you may just find some witty banter hidden in there somewhere!