Latest research
Action for Brain Injury Week
By Lauren Hoskin, intern at the Society of Biology This week, 13th-19th May, a campaign is being launched to highlight the hidden aspects of brain injury and help with the correct diagnosis of these potentially terminal conditions. The campaign is part of Action for Brain Injury (ABI) week, organised by Headway. Brain injury is an … Continue reading
Blood flow to tumours – new drugs and detection
Joanna Brunker, a PhD student at University College London and biological sciences & biomedical sciences gold medal winner at last night’s SET for Britain awards, describes her research into a new method for measuring blood flow which has the potential to improve our understanding and treatment of tumours. Tumours develop a chaotic system of blood … Continue reading
What makes HIV so dangerous?
By Jessica Davenport, Society of Biology The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been in the news a lot over the past couple of weeks; from the functional cure of the two-year old child born with HIV, to the announcement that nanoparticles carrying bee venom can destroy HIV. But why is HIV so difficult for our … Continue reading
Lung-on-a-chip
In the news this week has been an interesting approach to replicating human disease in a ‘lung-on-a-chip’ device. The lung-on-a-chip, which is about the size of a USB stick, contains hollow channels lined with living human cells. Applying a vacuum to two channels along the side of the chip allows it to recreate the way … Continue reading
Testing for horse D-N-eigh
by Zoë Martin, Society of Biology In light of the horsemeat scandal I was interested in understanding a bit more about how we determine what species are actually populating the products on supermarket shelves. Testing facility websites reveal that the food industry mainly relies on two techniques to detect horse meat in beef: the protein-based … Continue reading
Four-stranded DNA seen in human cells
By Jess Devonport, Marketing and Communications Officer at the Society of Biology 2013 is the 60th anniversary of Watson and Crick’s famous paper describing the helical structure of DNA. The Society of Biology plans to celebrate this landmark discovery with a series of genetics themed events and activities, called Genetics: where have we come from … Continue reading
Varroa – the trigger to the viral downfall of the honeybee?
Richard Wooding, a recent biological sciences graduate, studied Varroa for his dissertation What do many consider to be one of the key drivers of the planet’s concerning honeybee losses? Perhaps Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that feeds on the haemolymph (basically the blood) of the honeybee. It is now found across honeybee populations globally, with … Continue reading
How does Chris Packham’s garden grow?
Since the completion of the human genome project, DNA sequencing has become much faster and cheaper, opening up exciting possibilities for medicine and our understanding of human biology. But it goes far further than that, as is demonstrated by this video, first shown at the Biology Week launch event in Parliament held in partnership with … Continue reading
bTB or not bTB? How to control it is still the question
Guest post by Catherine O’Connor, Epidemiologist for the Health Protection Services, discussing the badger cull As an epidemiologist, my job is to understand the how, what, when, where and whys of disease transmission. Though we now possess much fancier tools than those used by the father of epidemiology, John Snow (he of the Broad Street … Continue reading
Bumblebees’ gruesome parasites
Guest blog by Sive Finlay, a PhD student from Trinity College Dublin who recently won Best Biology Student at the 2012 SET awards for her undergraduate project Bee populations are in severe decline, an alarming and worrying trend when you consider their vital importance as commercial and ecological pollinators. Research and media attention often focuses … Continue reading