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Mitochondria 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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The 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...
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Light-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...
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Brucella 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...
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From 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...
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The 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...
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Time 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...
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Complexity 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...
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An 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...
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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...
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