Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/DNA packaging

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …molecules themselves break down into a surprisingly small number of building blocks. The proteins that make up all of the living things on this planet and ensure their appropriate structure and smooth function consist of only 20 different kinds of building blocks. Nucleic acids, specifically DNA, are even more basic: only four different kinds of molecules provide the materials to build the countless different genetic codes that translate into all…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • Headlights and beads on a string

    …has evolved to keep DNA both compact and easily accessible. To fully appreciate this, one must consider the scale of this molecular machinery. If placed end-to-end, the DNA found in a single human cell would be approximately 2 meters (6.6 feet) in length. Now imagine having to package the DNA into a compartment within the cell, called the nucleus, that is so small it can only be visualized with the aid of a microscope. Put another way, this is e…

    Authored by on November 9, 2012

  • Depressing genes

    Can depression be a matter of genetic fate? by Siobhan Mitchell          [This post is the latest installment in our I Am Mental Illness series.] What if you could know if you were fated to be depressed? With the rise of personal genotyping services such as 23andme, almost can find out what their psychiatric ‘fate’ will be, but what do you do with this information once you have it? When I first considered testing myself for depressio…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

  • HPV and cervical cancer don’t care what month it is

    …is that even if your daughter avoids all sexual contact until, say, her wedding night, she can still contract HPV from her partner. As we noted above, it happens to be  the most common sexually transmitted infection. About 20 million Americans have an HPV infection, and 6 million people become newly infected every year. Half of the people who are ever sexually active pick up an HPV infection in a lifetime. That means your daughter, even if she…

    Authored by on February 1, 2012

  • What’s on your wishlist?

    …board for that iPad or iPhone? Look no further than the Cube Laser Digital Keyboard ($180) . What about other great gadgets? The DOTKLOK (from $150) is an open-source and hackable digital clock. It also consumes 2W for power! Runners and cyclists who love their gadgets may like the Garmin Forerunner 610 GPS watch ($320). Track your workouts, train like a pro, and analyze all the data this watch feeds to you for the height of fitnes…

    Authored by on November 23, 2012

  • Geektastic gift-giving ideas from Double X Science!

    …3 Make science cuter than ever. The Chemistry Cat Meme Pin, Etsy, $1 Buy these in bulk and hand them out to all your friends.  Chemistry and cats = a winning combo in our book. Art Cell Division 20 – Original Watercolor Painting, Etsy, $125 Artologica translates science into beauty with this brightly colored interpretation of cell division. Even the non-scientist will appreciate this. Deep Sea…

    Authored by on December 6, 2011

  • No gene is an island: What do scientists mean when they talk about environment and genes?

    Nope. This island does not represent your genes. (Source) When you read news stories about what affects a developing human in the womb or how cancer or obesity arises, you probably also see references to genes and environment. Some articles may focus on genes versus environment, or mention that something is “mostly” genetic or that the “environment” contributes to a disorder or trait in some way. What some people…

    Authored by on May 7, 2012

  • After Newtown missteps, journalists get guidelines

    …almost twice as likely to say that they don’t want to live or work near a person with mental illness if they read an article about a person with mental illness involved in a mass shooting, according to a study published March 20 in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Interestingly, this tendency is the same even if the article avoids any mention of mental illness. This may be because this link between violence and mental illness is deeply engrain…

    Authored by on March 27, 2013

  • Are your children always on your mind? They may be IN your mind

    …7;s a post for another time). As you probably know, most women don’t carry a Y chromosome in their own cells (but some do; another post for another time). In this study, researchers examined postmortem brain tissue from 26 women who had no detectable neurological disease and 33 women who’d had Alzheimer’s disease; the women’s ages at death ranged from 32 to 101. They found that almost two thirds (37) of all of the women te…

    Authored by on September 26, 2012

  • Anorexia nervosa, neurobiology, and family-based treatment

    sume eating. If they were still alive. Bruch’s observations dictated eating-disorders treatments for decades, treatments that led to spectacularly ineffective results. Only about 35% of people with anorexia recovered; another 20% died, of starvation or suicide; and the rest lived with some level of chronic illness for the rest of their lives. Not a great track record, overall, and especially devastating for women, who suffer from anorexia at a ra…

    Authored by on August 10, 2012

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