International Women’s Day 2021: Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier
Happy International Women’s Day! Today I want to share two of my scientific heroes – Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who won the 2020 Nobel prize in Chemistry for their work developing a revolutionary new genetic engineering tool called CRISPR, which is set to change the world. Often referred to as “genetic scissors”, CRISPR allows…
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What is Life? | Biodoodle book club
A beautiful, eloquently written tour of biology by Nobel prize-winning cell biologist Sir Paul Nurse. Paul’s life-long fascination with biology shines through the book as he takes us on a journey through the inner workings of life, and we meet the great minds who have uncovered its mysteries. On our journey, we gaze at cells…
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Growing ‘Neanderthal mini-brains’ in the lab
Did the Neanderthals think like us? What could we learn if we could gain a glimpse into our extinct evolutionary cousins’ brains? Soft tissues like the brain don’t fossilise, so we can’t study ancient brains as easily as skeletons. We need a way to recreate what a Neanderthal brain might have looked like. This week,…
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The power of immune cell hugs
Harnessing the power of tiny cell-sized hugs to heal muscles! An immune cell called a macrophage releases a special ‘cuddle chemical’ that helps the stem cells in muscles to heal muscle damage, according to new results this week. Scientists are now investigating whether we could use this chemical in new treatments for people with muscle…
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D is for Drosophila
A whopping six Nobel prizes have been won for research on fruit flies. But what makes these humble little bugs so special? Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, has been the superstar of genetic research for over a century. These alien-seeming creatures share more in common with humans than you might think. Around 75% of…
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C is for CRISPR
Genetic engineering of living humans sounds like science fiction, but CRISPR could soon make this idea a reality. This super precise gene-chopping machine, which was stolen from the immune system of bacteria, has the potential to treat hundreds of different genetic diseases. CRISPR has two main parts: DNA-cutting scissors and a navigation system that tells…
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