Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

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  • Towards better drug development, fewer side effects?

    …thinks she’s counting CD4 T cells, she may actually be counting some macrophages. That overlap leads to all sorts of experimental optimization issues. An exceptionally talented flow cytometrist can assemble panels of perhaps 12 or so dyes, but it might take months to get everything just right. That’s where the mass cytometry comes in. Commercialized by DVS Sciences, mass cytometry is essentially the love-chid of flow cytometry and mass sp…

    Authored by on September 24, 2012

  • Elephant mimics Korean, delighting Arrested Development fans

    An Asian elephant snacks on watermelon.Photo via Wikimedia Commons.Photo credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos Arrested Development fans who like elephants, this is your story. An elephant named Koshik can mimic about seven words of Korean, and one of those words is “annyong,” or “hello.” It’s not unheard of for elephants to mimic sounds, but Koshik, who makes his Korean sounds by putting his trunk in his mouth, is…

    Authored by on November 2, 2012

  • He found out he has ovaries*

    …port about the man was published in the Hong Kong Medical Journal, which you can read in its entirety here [PDF]. The man, who was born in Vietnam, had a history of medical issues, including having stopped growing when he was 10, which resulted in his being just under 4 feet, 6 inches (1.37 m) tall. He was an orphan who, according to the case study, had a “micropenis” (just what it sounds like) and a condition called hypospadias, in w…

    Authored by on June 6, 2013

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

    …e X Extra: A triglyceride can have up to three different fatty acids attached to it. Canola oil, for example, consists primarily of oleic acid, linoleic acid, and linolenic acid, all of which are unsaturated fatty acids with 18 carbons in their chains. Why do we take in fat anyway? Fat is a necessary nutrient for everything from our nervous systems to our circulatory health. It also, under appropriate conditions, is an excellent way to store up…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • What is a beating embryonic heart?

    It’s pretty much the same in any vertebrate. by Emily Willingham     The governor of North Dakota recently signed a law making abortions illegal if a heartbeat is detectable in the embryo. Perhaps the emphasis on this beating organ isn’t a surprise. The heart carries strong emotional connotations, hence its use in anti-abortion campaigns. It connotes love. It symbolizes compassion, as in “have a heart.” It symbolizes heal…

    Authored by on April 3, 2013

  • Creating viruses to create the vaccines?

    …world had to wait several months for the right virus to be isolated for use in a vaccine. In March, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report indicating that H1N1 vaccination prevented 700,000 to 1,500,000 cases. But the report authors note that more illnesses and deaths could have been prevented if the vaccine had been available earlier. In spite of being a public health threat, the influenza virus holds a major adv…

    Authored by on May 20, 2013

  • Xplainer: How do you date a pregnancy?

    …and 22. Pregnancy is often detected after the first missed period. This graphic is intentionally simple, removing all the hormones and other fun stuff (Ed: which you can find here). You’ll note that it says approximately day 14 and day 28. In textbooks, we often see that women have 28-day cycles and everything has a nice schedule. However, women are not textbooks and sometimes have shorter or longer cycles and/or have ovulation at slightly diffe…

    Authored by on October 3, 2012

  • Old ovaries, new eggs? Hatching a debate

    …adling puts it: “You have a much better chance of actually helping someone with infertility if you know what the real biology is. Right now, we’re a ways from really understanding the full biology, but we’re making progress.” 1 Direct quote from the third edition of “Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach”, one published by Pearson Education in 2004 and used in medical school classes.  [Image credit: front page and thumbnail oocyte image, publi…

    Authored by on May 15, 2013

  • The Bright Crystal

    …he molecular structures of drug targets to design molecules that “fit” them like a lock to a key. The technique most often used to solve those molecular structures is x-ray crystallography. With this approach, which turned 100 years old in November, a high-powered beam of x-rays is shot at a crystal of protein molecules. The x-rays collide with the crystal’s atoms, scattering at specific angles. Working backwards from that information, researc…

    Authored by on December 5, 2012

  • The path from science to alarmism: How science gets twisted before it gets to you

    …ajority of what they’re looking at has never been demonstrated to have any kind of relationship to autism, not even a correlation. Problem #1 is the unnecessary autism name-checking. Problem #2 is much worse, it’s the list of 10 chemicals they suggest for future study. The list itself isn’t a bad idea, I guess. They’re suggesting places for potential research, which certainly needs to be done. But it does reek a little bit of the kind of thing ma…

    Authored by on May 4, 2012

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