Category: Biology
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The Hallmarks of Cancer: Growth Factors and Cell Signaling
This article originally appeared on Know The Cosmos. I will be re-posting excerpts here for Australian Science with added commentary over the coming weeks! “The Hallmarks of Cancer” are ten anti-cancer defense mechanisms that are hardwired into our cells, that must be breached by a cell on the path towards cancer. The First Hallmark of…
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The Ten Hallmarks of Cancer
This series of articles originally appeared on Know The Cosmos. I will be reposting the articles here for AusSci with added commentary over the coming weeks! In 2002, Robert Weinberg and Douglas Hanahan published a review article in the journal Cell titled “The Hallmarks of Cancer”. It was a seminal paper in every sense of the word; downloaded 20,000…
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Red bacteria as astronaut food
Like something out of Stanley Kubrick’s famed 2001: A Space Odyssey her name is Melissa. Melissa was the first of her kind. Melissa will be there when the first of us touches down on Mars. She will feed and nurture us as we begin our exploration towards the stars. MELiSSA — or Micro-Ecological Life Support…
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The language of biofilms
Every once in awhile, communities form. Collections of similar or diverse things come together, and in unison strive for a common goal. It is the same for mice, men, and bacteria. Humans do it and build nations. Bacteria do it and build biofilms. Dental plaque, the slimy coating on pipes and tanks, algal mats on…
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What Animals Will Go Extinct During Our Lifetime?
I spent the other day meandering through some of the exhibits on display at the American Museum of Natural History. I checked out the Global Kitchen, Butterflies, and Whales exhibits and the planetarium Journey to the Stars show. Between the whales and the planetarium, I had this thought: What animals will we see extinct during…
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The parasitic warfare perpetrated by ladybirds
There is a scientific term that causes fear and alarm to those that study biodiversity. More fear and alarm than the term climate change. Biotic homogenisation — introducing a new exotic species to an area that was, until now, without admixture. Worldwide there is an increase in introduced exotic species and the potential of these…
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The beat the mosquito’s heart didn’t skip
It pulsed continuously without stopping. Then it repeated, as it had done many times before. Then, without delay, almost without skipping a beat, it changed direction. The action was as old as man himself, yet this time, completely and uniquely different — the perfect heartbeat. The perfect mosquito heartbeat. An interesting quirk of nature is…
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Combating the rise of the superbugs: The health and scientific challenges of antibiotic resistance
It’s hard to imagine the world prior to antibiotics, a world where even a deep laceration could frequently spell significant illness or even death due to infection. Thankfully, since the discovery of penicillin in 1929 by Alexander Fleming, we now have a range of potent antibiotics to treat many of the various types of bacterial…
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Invasion of the Asian tiger mosquito
Sometime during that glorious decade known as the 1980s, a shipment landed in Houston, Texas. A shipment carrying more than its cargo. The point of origin was Japan. The shipment was used tires. The payload was Asian tiger mosquitoes. Within years of landing in Texas the tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, rapidly displaced resident populations of…
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Rare echidna species not so extinct after all?
Speaking as a European, Australia has something of a reputation for having some rather unusual wildlife. Easily the most unusual are the small handful of monotreme species – the echidnas, and the duck-billed platypus. The only species of egg-laying mammals in the world today, these little creatures may once have been quite widespread. Now, however,…
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The bacteria that live inside hurricanes
Seven miles above the Earth’s surface, where the weather is born, lies the troposphere – the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Up there, where the clouds dance around, are bacteria that can make it rain, and are important for the formation of clouds. The atmospheric microbiome is a concept and field of study that is…
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The animal link to sleeping sickness
As with many parasites, the nuisance they bring is partly compensated for by new insights they provoke. The African trypanosome is perhaps unique among all of the diseases of developing worlds. The diseases of sleeping sickness, inflicted on man and cattle alike, perhaps drove early man ‘out of Africa’ — in an attempt to avoid…
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Citizen Science
Citizen Scientists An interesting report released last week from the UK Environmental Observation Framework reveals the benefit of citizen scientists to governmental environmental organisations. The Nerc Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the Natural History Museum in London, reviewed 234 projects – ranging from small surveys to large-scale programmes. The results found the involvement of volunteers offers “high…
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Does my science look big in this? The astrobiology edition
During the 20th century a powerful new idea gradually entered our consciousness and culture: cosmic evolution. We are all par of a huge narrative: a cosmos billions of years old and billions of light years in extent. It is this idea that caught my attention this month via the proceedings of the Sao Paulo Advanced…