The Controller of Hippos and Yorkies
How does an organ know when to stop growing? It may sound like a riddle, but it’s a serious biological question with the potential for grave consequences. During development, an organism grows from a...
View ArticleAn Experiment that Freezes Time
Many of the most interesting processes in nature are so fast, they can make “a blink of an eye” look like a millennium. Cellular proteins undergo elaborate transformations in as little as a picosecond...
View ArticleComplexity and the Language of Proteins
All of the animal life on Earth, including human beings, can be traced back to a unicellular ancestor somewhat similar to the modern-day protozoa. In one sense, the hundreds of millions of years of...
View ArticleTime Travel in a Test Tube
In books and movies, time travel is typically fraught with negative consequences. Any attempt to change the past — say, stopping the JFK assassination, or taking your mom to the Enchantment Under the...
View ArticleYear in Review: UChicago Research 2011
As another year comes to a close we’d like to look back at the fascinating research breakthroughs and inspiring patient stories from 2011. ScienceLife ran 168 posts this year, and while we wish we...
View ArticleThe Two Faces of microRNA
By Rob Mitchum Among the most hyped cancer therapies for the future, microRNA looms large. While much smaller than the RNA produced by protein-coding genes, these tiny transcripts play an important...
View ArticleDoubling the Dictionary of Protein Modification
A cell is full of language. There’s the four-letter code of DNA, the slightly different four-letter dialect of RNA, and the three-letter words that direct the construction of proteins, which are built...
View ArticleLabBook July 6, 2012
Welcome to LabBook, our weekly roundup of University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences research news from around campus and the world wide web. Each Friday, LabBook will recap the week on...
View ArticleLabBook June 1, 2012
Welcome to LabBook, our new weekly roundup of University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences research news from around campus and the world wide web. Each Friday, LabBook will recap the week...
View ArticleHacking the Brain’s Security System
by Rob Mitchum The brain is a privileged organ, afforded protections denied to all the other organs of the body. Though the circulatory system functions much the same way above and below the neck,...
View ArticleFrom Beehives to Prostate Cancer Treatment
by Rob Mitchum A common feature of pharmacies and organic grocery stores is the aisle of natural remedies, featuring bottle upon bottle of herbs, extracts, and oils that promise a wide range of...
View ArticleBrucella and the Fake Self-Destruct
By Rob Mitchum Brucella abortus is a particularly pesky pathogen. Frequently infecting cattle in many countries around the world, the bacterium causes the most common zoonotic infection, usually...
View ArticleLight-Guided Biology #2: Infared Excitement
The rise of optogenetics — where flashes of light can manipulate brain activity and behavior — have excited scientists looking for more precise ways of manipulating cells and their components in the...
View ArticleLight-Guided Biology #1: TULIP Mania
The rise of optogenetics — where flashes of light can manipulate brain activity and rat behavior — have excited scientists looking for more precise ways of manipulating cells and their components in...
View ArticleAlan Turing’s Underrated Biology
By Rob Mitchum Alan Turing is best known as the father of the modern computer, a skillful World War II codebreaker, and a pioneer in the study of artificial intelligence. But in the last years before...
View ArticleThe Risky Value of Imperfection
By Rob Mitchum Cells, like people, are not perfect. If a cell’s primary responsibility is to produce proteins, then it makes a remarkable amount of mistakes in that job, with some studies estimating...
View ArticleMitochondria and Cancer: The Trigger Becomes the Treatment
By John Easton Once considered the cause of cancer, a tiny organelle known as the “powerhouse of the cell” may soon spawn a new treatment. In 1955, Otto Warburg, recipient of the 1931 Nobel Prize for...
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