Fixing the Nicks (and loops, and breaks...)
Our DNA is what defines us: as a species and as individuals. Maintaining DNA is something your body absolutely needs to do as a first step to keeping everything else in line. As many of us are aware,...
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Infectious Aromas
If you learned anything from grade eight health class it should have been sweat stinks. Well, not the sweat really, but the bacteria that thrive on it. The truth is, all bacteria stink, or...
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Feed a Fever, Fatten a Heart Attack?
“A diet low in saturated fats,” is a phrase we most often associate with a healthy, heart-happy lifestyle. If your dad came home from the hospital after a heart attack, a cheeseburger likely wouldn’t...
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Eat Your Heart Out Noah: Ants on the High Seas
What do you get when you mix a colony of fire ants, a pool of water and biological engineers? Science! More specifically, you get ant behavior that starts to blur the lines between animal psychology...
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Real Guinea Pigs don't Giggle
Reading the titles of the scientific articles published in any given week ultimately leaves me with one take-home message: scientists will study anything. Case in point: right now the Humour Research...
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The Hors D’Oeuvres at Westminster A-Bee
As many a six-year-old aspiring princess will tell you, there are many roads to royalty. One can, for example, marry a prince (aka the Kate Middleton route), overthrow an existing monarch...
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Why the Minotaur Needed Slime Mold
Photo Credit janthornhill.comThere’s just something about mazes. From PacMan to the hedge-labyrinths of yester-year, a good maze tantalizes the human mind. In fact, the combined esthetics and mental...
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The Real "Scrubbing Bubbles" are Green and Slimy
If you asked most people about their favourite use for algae they might have some trouble coming up with a reply. Although my own preference is to have it wrapped around a tasty California roll, those...
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The Best Laid Plans are Bound to Grow your Rye
Photo Credit inhabitat.comThere are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and the amazing ability of natural selection to produce surprising results. From clownfish making a home in the tentacles of...
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I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconut (Genetics)
If the venerable gentlemen of Monty Python have taught me anything, it’s that there is a lot you can do with coconuts. While making horse-clomping sounds and ad-hock bikinis spring to mind, researchers...
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Did Dinosaurs use Celsius or Fahrenheit?
Photo Credit en.wikinoticia.comAs humans there are three ways we’re used to having our temperature taken: under the tongue, in our ears, and the “other” way. Regardless of our personal preferences, we...
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Glowing Green Mushrooms Seem Pretty Magical to Me…
If you ask me (or any mycologist) the term “magic mushrooms” isn’t nearly specific enough to describe the psychedelic variety usually implied. The truth of the matter is that lots of...
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Dude looks like a Lady
If anyone can tell us how far we’ve come from Victorian views of sexuality, it’s the makers of women’s undergarments. As we’ve shed our voluminous petticoats and embraced the “man bag,” we’ve also...
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Is that a Fruitloop in your Backpack?
As any six-year-old can tell you, toucans are named Sam, speak English, and push mini fruit doughnuts like they’re going out of style. As any ornithologist can tell you, toucans are jungle birds...
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It’s a Molecule, it’s a Chemist, it’s Super Enzyme!
Photo credit whatsthesmatter@blogspot.comEnzymes 101: The Introduction It’s amazing how many things our bodies can accomplish without us ever realizing that it’s happening. This is...
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DNA Repair just doesn’t give me the same Buzz
Ask any graduate student and they might tell you caffeine is a lifeline. Ask a health enthusiast and they might tell you it’s a poison. Ask a physician and between sips they might advise you that it’s...
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How'd he DO that? Real Chemical Magicians
Enzymes 101: Peaking into the black box The term “enzyme” has a pretty specific meaning to people who define themselves by such terms as “enzymologists” (go figure). To most people, however,...
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Moonlighting Enzymes: Supporting Keg Parties Everywhere
Our lab is situated in close proximity to a high concentration of fraternity houses, and as the fall term commences the warm autumn atmosphere reeks of fresh loose-leaf, cheap beer, and hang-over...
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Every Bug for Themselves! How Changing Enzymes Create Resistant Infections
Sooner or later pretty much everyone is going to have to take a course of antibiotics. Whether it’s a bacterial chest infection, strep throat, or a cut finger that gets out of hand, a bottle of “twice...
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Animals on Steroids – Steroids on Oxygen?
In today’s society, the word “steroid” conjures up images of hulking body-builders and sheepish forfeitures of Olympic medals. What most people don’t realize is that steroids actually play a role in...
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