A real family, struggling with a history of breast cancer provides the back story for this compelling lesson on genetic testing in the Bio-ITEST Genetic Testing curriculum strand. We recently updated lesson 5 for students using Molecule World. This video shows how we used the Molecule World iPad app to ...
Something interesting happened in 2014. The total number of databases that Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) tracks dropped by three databases! What happened? Did people quit making databases? No. This year, the "dead" databases (links no longer valid) outnumber the new ones. To celebrate Digital World Biology's release of Molecule World ...
Pull a spaghetti noodle out of a box of pasta and take a look. It's long and stiff. Try to bend it and it breaks. But fresh pasta is pliable. It can fold just like cooked noodles. When students first look at an amino acid sequence, a long string of ...
This video shows how we used the Molecule World iPad app to make an image of a folded insulin peptide. Protein folding brings the amino acid at the beginning of the protein chain near the amino acid at the other end.
Sometimes when you go digging through the databases, you find unexpected things. When I was researching the previous posts on insulin structure and insulin evolution, I found something curious indeed. Human insulin, colored by rainbow. Image from the Molecule World iPad app by Digital World Biology. I wanted to find ...
People of a certain age may remember a series of really funny commercials featuring Euell Gibbonsand his famous question about whether you've ever eaten a pine tree. " Some parts are edible" said Euell.
Perhaps some parts are, but other pine tree products aren't so nourishing.
In my last post, I wrote about insulin and interesting features of the insulin structure. Some of the things I learned were really surprising. For example, I was surprised to learn how similar pig and human insulin are. I hadn't considered this before, but this made me ...
On pinene and inhibiting enzymes. People of a certain age may remember a series of really funny commercials featuring Euell Gibbons and his famous question about whether you've ever eaten a pine tree. " Some parts are edible" said Euell. Perhaps some parts are, but other pine tree products aren't ...
In my last post, I wrote about insulin and interesting features of the insulin structure. Some of the things I learned were really surprising. For example, I was surprised to learn how similar pig and human insulin are. I hadn't considered this before, but this made me wonder about the ...
Sucrose Molecules of sucrose tore apart in their bellies letting glucose course free in their veins. Luckily for us, a system evolved long ago to capture that glucose and minimize it's potential for damage. Removing sugar from the blood and sequestering it in liver, fat, and muscle cells, minimizes the ...
In 1925, dog sledders raced through the frozen Alaskan bush to bring antiserum to the isolated village of Nome. The antiserum arrived in time, saved the lives of many villagers from the horrors of diphtheria, and inspired the Iditarod, a famous race in celebration of the dog sledders' heroic feat. West Africa could use a similar effort today.
Scale, proportion, and quantity belong to one of the cross cutting concepts in the next generation science standards (NGSS). According to Volume 2 of the NGSS, "in engineering, no structure could be conceived much less constructed without the engineer's precise sense of scale." The authors go on to note that ...
In 1925, dogsledders raced through the frozen Alaskan bush to bring antiserum to the isolated village of Nome. The antiserum arrived in time, saved the lives of many villagers from the horrors of diphtheria, and inspired the Iditarod, a famous race in celebration of the dog sledders' heroic feat. West ...
What’s the first you think about when you see a spider? Running away? Danger? Fairies? Spiderman? Do you wonder if spider silk is really strong enough to stop a train, like they showed in Spiderman 2? Whatever your thoughts, you’re probably not thinking about 3D printing in space. Yet, the ...
Living in Seattle fosters a certain pessimism when it comes to large companies. Boeing has always been a poster child for employment uncertainty, regularly hiring large numbers of people and just as regularly, laying them off. Now, we have Microsoft and Amgen joining the club, with Microsoft layoffs impacting an ...
by Sandra Porter Teachers attending the Amgen Biotech Experience workshops at Shoreline Community College get hands-on practice with both sides of the lab - wet and dry! Dr. Dina Kovarik from Digital World Biology has been busily engaged this summer in the Amgen Biotech Experience (ABE) program at Shoreline Community ...
Science and its interpretation is wonderful. Today I saw a post on Twitter from @LAbizar, referencing an @GEN, post that stated 8.2% of Human DNA is Functional with a link to a GEN article: "Surprise: Only 8.2% of Human DNA Is Functional." The GEN writeup cited a PLoS Genetics article ...
A few weeks back, we published a review about the development and role of the human reference genome. A key point of the reference genome is that it is not a single sequence. Instead it is an assembly of consensus sequences that are designed to deal with variation in the ...
