Dangerous Liaisons: Hermaphrodite Edition
Following on the heels of my Fruit Fly Sexy Time post, this paper caught my eye. The researchers used an electron microscope to look at the ‘love-dart’ of a species of land snail. The...
Category: General Science
Fruit Fly Sexy Time
This is one of the most awesome papers I have read in a while. It looks at the mating habits of male fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, and questions the molecular mechanism behind why male...
The Blue Wave of Death
This is a really amazing bit of research into what happens to a dying worm. Researchers have discovered a burst of intense blue fluorescence, visible under UV light, that propagates through the worm in...
Screening and Skepticism
If you could undergo a simple screening test for a disease, chances are you would; after all, the mantra “early diagnosis saves lives” has been endlessly drilled into our heads through doctors, friends, advertisements,...
Gut Microbiome Splits a Species
This is some fascinating research, published in the latest issue of the journal Science. Ed Yong has a great writeup about it, but unfortunately the original paper is behind a paywall. It demonstrates that...
Quorum Sensing and Virulence
Following on the heels of my recent post on Bacterial Biofilms, I wanted to write about quorum sensing next. This is a fascinating topic, and understanding how it works helps explain how a bacterium...
