We all know what life is, yet if you were asked to provide a comprehensive definition of life, you may find yourself struggling. Maybe the most simplistic definition you can blurb out is: something that

If you live in the US you can probably read about this issue almost daily. Basically Trump believes that buying cheap goods from China hurts US economy. He thinks that China is "stealing" jobs since they

It's been a while since my last post. I realized I only use this account to post about science, but I may start writing about other things too since I don't always have enough time to craft a scientific

In my last post I tried to give you an overview of different aging theories that are either un-true or that just partially explain this phenomenon.  However, by the time I wanted to discuss some of

Something that sets us apart from other species is the ability of making things up. You may wonder: how imagining and talking about things that don’t exist can be an advantage? Yet, our abstract thought

We are surrounded by pathogens, we even host billions of bacteria, yet instead of living in constant sickness, most of us can conduct normal lives. This is because of our immune system. Our body developed

I know that it would be cool to have a universal cure for all diseases, but unfortunately, that will remain a fantasy. In this post I am going to talk about something real: Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Much more than macrophages Much effort today is devoted in directing cell fate towards therapeutically useful phenotypes. The more we learn about it and the more we realize that sometime our body can already

I was reading this recent post by @therealwolf and I found an interesting discussion in the comments section triggered by @smooth where it was brought up the need for more effective marketing strategies

BMP-2, too much of a good thing? Like everybody else, scientists and clinicians hold opinions, and in some cases, they are not seeking the objective truth but a reaffirmation of their own beliefs. This

About T-Cells Every time our organism is exposed to a substance (I’ll refer to it as antigen) that originates either from our body (self) or that is foreign, our immune system has to assess if it should

Stopping these bloodsuckers This post was inspired by a sleepless night. These bastards sneaked in my house last night and they kept whispering in my ears, biting and sucking my blood the whole night,

Why you may want to go to the SteemStem/Utopian meetup in Italy Gosh I’m totally biased about this but in this post I will try explain why you would want to go to the SteemStem/Utopian meetup that will

Interesting facts about Ginseng If you have been following my blog for a while you probably know that, among other things, I also have an interest in plants. I see them as the nature’s laboratory, where

In one of my previous posts I discussed the potential of using mRNA instead of plasmid DNA for gene therapy applications. Here, I wanted to discuss in greater detail what are the hurdles of such approach

Stinging cancer A few weeks ago I wrote about how a mutation in bats enables them to withstand viral infections. The protein in question is called “stimulator of interferon genes” or STING and it’s responsible

In its thousands faces, evolution has granted some creatures the ability to perform deadly actions while defying death in ingenious ways. There are such interesting cases that people even decided to base

Stress, endocrine activity and the promise of prolonged youth In science we still have several questions that remain unanswered: how was the universe created? What is dark matter? Why do we need to sleep?

The city life of bumblebees A recent report from the United Nations found that more than half of the world population today resides in urban areas (United Nations, 2014). While this makes perfect sense

RNA-based therapeutics could revive hopes to see gene therapy in the clinic Cells make proteins. Figuratively speaking, these macromolecules are the gearwheel that enable the cellular machinery to work.