Have you ever had difficulty describing where something is in relation to others? When scientists discuss where things are on a person or other animal, they also need words to compare. Two such words are DISTAL and PROXIMAL. Distal means … Read More
The most common product of a genetic instruction is the protein. Proteins are workhorses of the cell, helping reactions to occur and transporting things from one place to another. The building blocks of proteins are AMINO ACIDS. Amino acids are … Read More
Your codebook of DNA holds all the instructions needed to make your cells function. Each unit of instruction comes in the form of a GENE, a sequence of DNA that encodes for a trait. A given location (also called a … Read More
With few exceptions, each of us has about 3 billion bases in our DNA on 46 chromosomes (and 2 sex chromosomes). If you stretched out that DNA, it would be 2m long! How can something so long it fit into … Read More
At the very core of making living things work is DNA, which stands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid. DNA is just a molecule, made up of different parts held together in a ladder-like structure. We call this structure a double helix. DNA holds … Read More
Would you believe it if I told you that you and I, the ground we walk on, the sun, and everything else is made of the same things? We are all composed of atoms. Atoms are the smallest thing that … Read More
I recently shared what my day as a PhD student is like on Twitter. From fixing error messages to eating “grown-up” lunches, I think you’ll find that the grad school life is a bit different from what you might think. … Read More
