Category Archives: Biochemistry

Education Film 38b: Zika Virus and You

The Zika-spreading mosquito Aedes aegypti takes a bloodmeal.
The Zika-spreading mosquito Aedes aegypti takes a bloodmeal. Photo courtesy CDC.

Zika virus is spreading through a hemisphere with plenty of mosquito habitat and no immunity to the disease, and summer is on its way. But what really chills the blood and drives our dread of what was once considered “dengue’s wimpy cousin” is the virus’s horrifying, yet unproven, link to infant microcephaly.

And so, even as epidemiologists struggle to contain and understand the problem, the news swarms with disturbing images and calls for wiping out the offending mosquito vectors. Clearly, if we’re going to get through this, we need to do our homework. Why not start with my article, in which I cut through the buzz to explore …

How Zika Virus Works

Eureka! I Have Lost It!

The original keyboard cats.

Left to our own devices and allowed to live without constant fear of death by hunger or violence, we devise some pretty startling stuff.

Sure, some of our better efforts don’t outlast our calamities, or go obsolete before their time or simply never get their chance to shine because no one yet recognizes the need for them. But you can’t keep a good idea down forever, as I explore in this list of …

10 Times Humanity Found the Answer (and Then Forgot)

Blood Will Tell: A Blood Spatter Analysis Update

Eduard Piotrowski of Poland’s University of Krakow published the first major blood spatter study in 1895, but its impact was limited to a few inventive European sleuths like German chemist Paul Jeserich and French forensic scientist Victor Balthazard. The American legal system did not adopt spatter analysis as evidence until the landmark case of State of Ohio v. Samuel Sheppard, and the field did not truly take off until the 1970s, after forensics expert Herbert MacDonell published his influential Flight Characteristics of Human Blood and Stain Patterns.

Blood spatter analysis has undergone major refinements in methods and language since then, including a recent and growing shift toward incorporating computers. I discuss several of these shifts in my 2015 update of Shanna Freeman’s 2007 article:

How Bloodstain Pattern Analysis Works

Press Release: Open SESAME: Proteins Link Cell Metabolism to Genetics, Offer Possible Cancer Target

Researchers have found a new link between a cell’s basic life functions and its genetic operations. The connection involves a protein complex named SESAME, which uses enzymes responsible for glycolysis to activate proteins that regulate genetic material. Glycolysis is the first stage of cellular metabolism, the chain of biochemical reactions by which cells break down food, build proteins and amino acids, and produce energy.

Although their research involved yeast, the authors say the link may hold true in humans. If a SESAME equivalent in humans is found, it could offer insight to enable novel approaches for cancer risk prediction and treatment. Read my full press release at Stowers Institute for Medical Research:

Protein complex links cellular metabolism to gene expression, offers potential therapeutic target

Press Release: New Imaging Method Reveals Cellular Secrets

Sacharomyces cerevisiae cells. Image courtesy Wikipedia Photo/Masur.
Sacharomyces cerevisiae cells. Image courtesy Wikipedia Photo/Masur.

Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and the University of Colorado Boulder have combined two optical systems to get around the natural limits of optical microscopes, which usually cannot see objects smaller than the wavelengths of light. Using this method, the team found that spindle pole bodies in yeast — tiny, tube-shaped structures essential to cell division — duplicate and form some structures at different times than once thought.

(This is one of a series of press releases I am writing for Stowers. They are a bit more technical than my usual articles, but each includes a more widely accessible summary at the end. I hope you’ll check them out!)

Innovative Imaging Technique Reveals New Cellular Secrets