You’ve probably come across the name Kary Mullis recently, via social media. He’s best remembered for his invention (along with a team of other researchers) of the Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR for short (and for many biology students was probably immortalised in their memories via this earworm of an advertisement¹). This turned out to […]
Continue readingI never thought I’d need to write that title for a post. We’re continuing to hear of new measles cases in New Zealand, most recently in this Stuff story about 4 new cases in Auckland (with the possibility that up to 1600 people may have been exposed). One of those ill with the disease is a […]
Continue readingIn one of my classes we talk a bit about cloning, in the context of discussing various biotech techniques and their applications. Sometimes someone asks if I'd clone my dog (or my husband!) after they'd died, & my response is always to say 'no'. Not because I don't love them both (husband much more than […]
Continue readingAs I left the office this afternoon I said to my colleagues, ‘I’ll be in a bit later tomorrow, I have an interview with a vampire.’ At which they all laughed, because they know this means I’m off to my regular appointment at the NZ Blood Service centre, over by the hospital.
Continue readingOne of the 2007 Scholarship exam questions sort of links to an earlier post I wrote, on xenotransplantation. It says Human disorders are increasingly being diagnosed and treated using biotechnological applications such as: • Genetic testing, including testing of adults through to pre-birth diagnosis (for example: pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PIGD) of embryos, amniocentesis or chorionic […]
Continue readingI’m just catching up with my reading material & ERV has an interesting post up about noroviruses (aka Norwalk virus – you’ll see why it’s called that when you read her post). One of the things she talks about is just how researchers originally got their gloves on the virus & demonstrated that it was […]
Continue readingI began thinking about this post when I read a National Geographic article about the possibility of cloning a woolly mammoth. (The print version of the magazine is always good reading, & the on-line version has heaps of extra stuff.) But, just because this now seems to be on the verge of being possible, does […]
Continue readingThis time, the daughter tells me, she’s doing a project on a ‘current issue’ – & she’s selected stem cells. Current, controversial, contentious – & extremely interesting. But again, I’m not an expert (although my colleague Bjorn Oback, at AgResearch, is doing some very interesting work in that area & in fact received a Kudos award […]
Continue readingA question in the 2007 Scholarship exam asked you to discuss the impact of various forms of genetic testing on the human gene pool. One of those techniques was pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PIGD: testing very early embryos for the genetic markers linked to a variety of conditions (or, where known, for the genes themselves). Now […]
Continue readingI’ve just stumbled across a provocative – & thought-provoking – essay by Richard Dawkins. It caught my attention because I’m occasionally asked if there’s ever been a chimp-human hybrid. (The answer, so far, is ‘no’ – well, not since the two species diverged around 6 million years ago.) To Dawkins, the creation of such a […]
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