Question of the Day: Liquid Mechanics Involving Protein Powder

WHY DOESN'T THIS EVER MIX WELL IN WATER?!?! Headache01 asks "Why doesn't powder mixed into drinks (like whey protein powders or cocoa) dissolve very well? It clumps into balls that are wet on the outside but remain dry on the inside. How can I make my whey mix better?" Well, given that proteins, and especially mixture of proteins, are amphiphilic (meaning the molecule...

Read More

Flow Cytometry In A Nutshell

FACS was used in the trial treatments of leukemia last Saturday's post.Fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis, or FACS, uses a flow cytometer to separate individual cells in a heterogenous suspension based on epitope type. Fluorochrome-labeled antibodies are added to the cell sample. The antibodies bind to specific epitopes on or within the cell. The fluidics system...

Read More

New Cure for Leukemia?

Leukemia is the cancer of white blood cells.The Penn scientists targeted chroniclymphocytic leukemia (CLL) by hacking a harmless version of the HIV virus to hack T cells in order to kill cancer cells. In previous studies, the cancer-killing cells died out quickly after infusion, but in this study, the genetically engineered cells multiplied a thousand-fold and were sustained...

Read More

No Science Sunday: GMSoccerPicks

Best Soccer News and Write Ups. Ever.GMSoccerPicks is a must-read blog for you soccer fans out there. He's got some real insight as an avid soccer fan, and his commentaries should not be missed. The blog is updated daily, so if you're into soccer, bookmark it!You can also join the hundreds of people following @gmsoccerpicks on Twitter and get soccer news as it happens, or...

Read More

Enumerating Bacteria In Lab

Serial dilutions allow us to do viable cell counts or total cell counts.Serial dilution and plating can determine the amount of viable cells in a culture. Serial dilutions allow a discrete number of colonies of bacteria to grow, whereas concentrated cultures may contain billions of bacteria per milliliter. In serial dilutions, smaller dilutions are repeated in succession,...

Read More

Evolution and G6PD Deficiency

Evolution takes place over thousands of years, when I asked about evolution, I was looking for an answer that had the same scope. I wasn't not talking about the past few decades, but the past few thousand years. So while some made very valid comments on botox and the nebulous cultural standards of beauty, the answer I liked best looked at the bigger picture and had some specific examples to support his thoughts.M Fawlful made a good point about many genetic diseases becoming apparent later in life. These inherited diseases have no effect on the...

Read More

Question of the Day

Why hasn't evolution gotten rid of the ugly and genetically dysfunctional individuals? It's survival of the fittest, right? For the past hundred thousands of years, wouldn't ugliness and genetic diseases be slowly weeded out?M Fawlful won the 8 GB SD card. Congratulations!...

Read More

Huntington's Disease Explained Simply

Cells in our body (except sperm cells and eggs) have two copies of every gene, one copy from your father, and the other from your mother. Genes are like blueprints or instruction manuals that tell the cell how to make proteins, the building blocks of the cell. Thus, genes and the proteins they encode for determine everything about the cell: how it grows, what it looks like,...

Read More

No Science Sunday: Wine Edition

It's Sunday, the day of rest! I like to relax on Sundays and read books with big bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos and a few glasses of good wine.Got a date or going to a fancy dinner? Looking to spend 9 or 10 bucks on the best bottle of wine to enjoy with your company? Go for a wine made in Portugal as a general rule of thumb. Given Portugal has the lowest wages in EU, they're pump...

Read More

Regulation of Morphology of Corn Smut, Ustilago maydis

Basidiomycota, in contrast to other fungi such as Ascomycota, produce basidia that yield four sexual spores called basidiospores. U. maydis is part of this phylum. Its mating-type is determined by a tetrapolar system with two unrelated loci, a and b. There are two idiomorphs for the a locus, a1 and a2. Haploid U. maydis cells have either the 4.5kb a1 locus with genes mfa1, pra1, and rfa2, or the 8kb a2 locus with genes mfa2, pra2, lga2, and rga2. mfa1 and mfa2 encode pheromone precursors, pra1 and pra2 genes encode pheromone receptors for the a2...

Read More

Ethics

I designed two new banners. Let me know which one you prefer. Click to enlarge both of them.Yesterday, I asked whether you would kill an innocent girl to cure the world of HIV/AIDS, ultimately saving millions of lives. Given that HIV and AIDS kills 6,500 people every day, leaving millions of children as orphans in Africa alone, is the killing of one innocent person justified?I...

Read More

Question of the Day: Anti-HIV Antibody Edition

CN3D 4.3. Click to enlarge.Jmol. Click to enlarge.The first is modeled by the researchers, using the CN3 program. There's more colors available and the graphics look better. The one on the bottom is the same anti-HIV antibody in the Jmol program that I meddled with a little bit (ID: 3RPI).This antibody mimics CD4 binding, locking onto to the spikes of HIV-1 so HIV-1 can't...

Read More

Mesothelioma and Asbestos

First, the mesothelium. It's a frictionless monolayer lining that covers the internal organs. The luminal side has lots of microvilli that told fluids and proteins to allow intracoeolmic movement. It also helps leukocytes and other cells of the immune system to travel about in the fluid.Mesothelium cells, with connective tissues.How exactly does asbestos cause cancer? Well,...

Read More

Genetic Engineering and Gene Therapy

Our genes play a role in a lot of things: our chances of getting cancer or diabetes, about how tall we will get, our looks, how long we live, whether or not we get genetic disorders like Huntington's Disease, how fat we get. Gene therapy and genetic engineering has the potential to change all of that. In the movie Gattaca, people are genetically engineered to be physically...

Read More

The Wiedemann-Franz Law and Electron's Independent Spin and Charge

In 1853, Wiedermann and Franz found that elemental metals conducted electricity and heat at roughly the same ratios at the same temperature. This is because electricity moves through electrons, and heat uses electron's charge and spin to move through a metal. "For the past 150-plus years, the Wiedemann-Franz law has proved to be remarkably robust, the ratio varying...

Read More

Perianal Sweat... Why You Should Use Deodorant

She looks hot! Very warm, indeed!Eccrine sweat glands are found only in primates and reach their greatest development in humans. They are distributed all over the body, producing sweat for cooling. When we are warm, the hypothalamus tells the eccrine glands to start cooling us off as the sweat evaporates.Apocrine sweat glands are larger and are limited to axilla (armpits)...

Read More

TTAG In-Depth Article on Extremophilic Bacteria

Extremophilic bacteria thrive in extreme conditions. Bacteria in deep sea vents have to withstand high heat and/or high pressure conditions. They must have adapted to their extreme environment by having specific genes that encode more resilient proteins or have special metabolic pathways. What many researchers have done is analyze the genome of extremophilic bacteria, then...

Read More

Question of the Day: Do you believe in evolution?

Tell me if you believe in evolution, and why or why not! If not, what do you believe ...

Read More