This has been a quite a week for my family. We sold our house of 18 years and will be moving into the heart of the city of Toronto in the next two months. As a “Baby Boomer” this is a downsizing exercise and an opportunity for renewal. It is also giving us the ability to r

Heard of DRACO? It stands for Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer. Back in August of 2011 I read a news office release from MIT’s Lincoln Lab, describing a new technology that could someday cure the common cold, influenza and other viral-derived illnesses. At the

This week’s headlines look at the latest controversy around synthetic life, and a whole bunch of energy stories including: a new oil sands technology that promises to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a new energy technology that uses water, electricity and biomass t

When I opened my email this morning one of those sites that offers you daily deals was selling a $29 DNA Kit from ConnectMyDNA. Regular value of the kit is $89.95. The science behind ConnectMyDNA tests 13 genetic markers which appear in your own Gene Ring(TM), a graphical representati

When we think of nanoparticles we often think of carbon nanotubes. But the truth is the world of nanomaterials encompasses everything from metals to lipids and polymers. And biomedical researchers are using DNA and RNA to build nanoparticles aimed at genes that are responsible for can

Synthetic Genetic Polymers Capable of Heredity and Evolution is the title of a journal article appearing in the April 2012 issue of  Science. The researchers reported the findings of a project in which they created synthetic DNA, called XNA. The X stands for “Xeno,” a term

Scientists from Russia and South Korea are hell-bent on recreating the Woolly Mammoth, an animal that has been extinct for more than 10,000 years. The North-Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic in Russia and South Korea’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation are combini

In our last blog we introduced telomeres, the genetic information that slowly vanishes from chromosomes each time cells divide. Researchers who study aging see a correlation between those vanishing telomeres and growing older. But I am getting ahead of myself. Before we can talk about

“Hello Dolly,” not the musical but the sheep. Seen below, Dolly was the first adult mammal cloning success using sheep. Her journey from the petri dish to birth began as a cell taken from a mammary gland of a 6-year old female donor. The technique included putting the cell

By mapping the human genome in its entirety we are entering a new biomedical world using computational biology.  To understand the complexity associated with this new world we need to understand DNA. DNA – Deoxyribonucleic Acid Since the mid-19th century we have known that withi