Tag: "dna"
Drive by Science is OK Too
The author feeling cheekyLast Monday I finally took my show out on the road. At The Tech Museum I run hands on genetics programs for visitors. On Monday, we took them to Overfelt High School in San Jose. And the students had a blast*. They got to take home 4X6 glossy pictures of their cheek [...]
Post on May 27, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
Chromosome Fusion: Chance or Design?
Human and chimpanzee chromosomes are very similar. Note that human chromosome 2 is very similar to a fusion of two chimpanzee chromosomes. For the last few weeks I have been corresponding with someone about intelligent design (ID). More specifically, we have been chatting about why humans have 46 chromosomes and most of the great apes [...]
Post on May 12, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
Fish and SNPs: What fish are teaching us about human skin color
These fish can tell us a lot about ourselves. Species often end up a different color when their environment changes. And humans are no exception. When people moved out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago, they were dark-skinned. Now when we look around Northern Europe or parts of Asia, we see much lighter [...]
Post on Apr 28, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
Hug-a-helix: celebrate DNA Day, April 25th
DNA magnified 850,000 times through a scanning electron microscope DNA day is coming up on Friday April 25th. This annual celebration of genetics and genomics was set up in 2003 to commemorate the sequencing of the human genome and the 50th anniversary of the solving of the structure of DNA.DNA day was thought of as [...]
Post on Apr 14, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
Producer's Notes - Doggie DNA
There is a lot we don't know about our DNA and how it works. While there seems to be news every week about genetics, scientists are still in the early stages of finding out what effect our genes have on us (check out this post from another QUEST blogger, Dr. Barry Starr). That's what the [...]
Post on Apr 11, 2008 by Lauren Sommer
DNA and Love
Last night, I watched a reality dating show with a seemingly wacky way of finding true love. The male searching for love sniffed the armpits of potential females. He either turned away in disgust or became quite aroused by the wafts of underarm aroma. What is so comical is that a new dating service relies [...]
Post on Mar 05, 2008 by Cat
Tracing the Travels of the Human Race
We are all Africans in our DNA. We all originally came from Africa. At least that is what a couple of new studies have claimed. Now this isn't breaking news. Other studies have looked at people's DNA and proposed the "Out of Africa" hypothesis. What is different with these studies is how many people they [...]
Post on Mar 03, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
Using life as a tool
Companies like GenoCAD allow users to piece together their own designer DNA. “Synthetic biology” seems like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it? I mean, if it’s biological, it’s natural, right? And if it’s natural, then it’s not synthetic. Sure. Except that modern science has sorta blurred all those nice convenient boundaries. Nothing has demonstrated this [...]
Post on Feb 04, 2008 by Robin Marks
How to get away with murder
ABC, Yahoo! and others ran a story about a woman who had a liver transplant whose blood type ended up changing. I love stories like this. Not because of the change itself. Most likely, stem cells traveled from the new liver to the patient’s bone marrow. There, the stem cells set up shop and gave [...]
Post on Feb 04, 2008 by Dr. Barry Starr
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