Come chat with Professor Matthew Harris and learn about how your body shapes and ages the way it does, and the funky fish that make this research possible! Food and drinks will be provided, first come first served, so come hungry and full of questions! WHEN: Tuesday, June 25th, 6:30-8:00 PM WHERE: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler Street, Somerville WHO: You! Continue reading [June 25th] SBTP Presents “How Does Your Evolution Shape You?”
Losing a tail on human’s evolutionary branch may have been caused by a rare kind of mutation resulting from parasitic, self-replicating DNA. Continue reading Researchers discover a unique mutation involved in how humans lost their tails
by Olubusola Olukoyafigures by Corena Loeb Our ability to take in information from the world around us, make inferences, and execute appropriate reactions is generated by our brains. The brain, which weighs about 1.5 kilograms in the average adult, takes up 20% of our body’s energy expenditure to power a network of roughly 86 billion cells. Ongoing research in the field of neuroscience utilizes various … Continue reading What it Takes to Make a Brain: Cellular diversity in cortical development
Researchers have grown a miniature brain that also develops eye-like structures. Continue reading Development in a Dish: Scientists Grow a Combined Brain and Eye Organoid
by Samantha Roylefigures by Allie Elchert Have you ever thought about how a single cell can grow into a living, breathing, human? The extraordinary complexity of our thinking brains, wiggling fingers and beating hearts emerges from a single celled zygote, formed from the fusion of egg and sperm. Many of us have heard of DNA, the molecule that contains the instructions for life, but have … Continue reading Gene Regulatory Networks: From DNA to development
Bacteria in our gut may be responsible for degrading toxins that would otherwise contribute to altered neuron function in autism. Continue reading People with Autism are Missing Certain Bacteria
While siblings play copycat to annoy each other, babies actually enjoy it. Researchers from Lund University have found that when mirroring a baby’s actions and emotions, the baby will smile and engage for longer. Continue reading Want to get on a baby’s good side? Act like one.
As states have begun to legalize marijuana, its use has been more openly discussed. While the effects of other commonly used drugs, such as alcohol, have been studied extensively, the effects of marijuana – especially on developing babies during pregnancy – have been much less studied and less widely publicized. This relative silence from the scientific community has affected the public’s opinion on the safety … Continue reading How Marijuana Exposure Affects Developing Babies’ Brains
Human stem cells are specialized cells that can be harvested from the body and engineered to turn into various tissues and organs. Perhaps the greatest potential use of stem cells is the generation of new tissues for organ transplants. Unfortunately, scientists have long struggled to find skeletal stem cells that can reliably turn into bone, cartilage, and supportive tissues of the skeleton. In a study … Continue reading Make No Bones About It: Human skeletal stem cells discovered for first time
In a clutch of eggs, some zebrafish are the runts of the litter and may appear younger because of their diminutive size. This is the case for the two zebrafish above. The two are in fact 5-day old siblings. At this stage of development, the zebrafish larvae have hatched from their transparent eggs and have begun feeding on tiny single celled organisms called paramecium. As … Continue reading Big Brother