Understanding Stem Cells
Stem cells. We have all heard this term thrown around in pro life campaigns, pro medical research ads, and even at time amongst friends and amongst family. It is often used in conjunction with discussion of embryo’s etc. First a differentiation between the two major types of stem cells in mammals must be made. Adult stem cells vs Embryonic stem cells. Adult Stem cells are in fact cells that are found in all living organisms that possess the ability to divide and differentiate into many but not all types of cells. This in fact happens in the human body constantly and is why are bodies are able to replenish all the cells that make it up constantly. Read the rest of this entry
Confirmed Results showing that ADD/ADHD is a Genetic disorder
Researchers at Cardif University have found that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is in fact a genetic disorder. Children who had ADHD significantly showed, duplicated, missing or even overlapping segments of their DNA compared to children who did not have ADHD. The overlapping segments of DNA are of particular interest because these are commonly found in patients who exhibit neurological diseases such as autism as well as schizophrenia. Read the rest of this entry
Updates: Two New Faces (Welcome Zac Apte to The Alchemists Corner)
Big update today to the site. Have completely changed the formatting. You’ll find some new features (like a simple RSS feed button at the top, and featured images) as well as a new author. Welcome Zac Apte as an author for The Alchemists Corner. We’ll be seeing some interesting posts from Zac on a bi-weekly basis so keep a look out. Zac is a PhD Candidate in BioPhysics at UCSF as well as an entrepreneur in the biotechnology industry. Also Alchemy’s email is not up and running yet. Stay tuned for updates regarding this and as usual please feel free to leave comments and questions.
Nate
Pain Killers from Snails? What next?
From the neuroethological perspective, pain exists to protect an individual from an undesirable situation that might result in an adverse bioeconomical outcome such as death or serious injury. However in the case of chronic pain, which often exists as the bi-product of diseases such as severe diabetes, infection, nerve damage or permanent cellular damage, there seems to be little physiological benefit (Reichling et al. 2011). Patients who suffer from chronic pain thus are often faced with a lifetime of intense debilitating painful sensation which add unnecessary stress to their body systems and which in turn prevent them from functioning in their society with any level of acceptable normalcy (Baron et al. 2010). Due to the intensity of the discomfort and the large population of patients who suffer from chronic pain, a large portion of the efforts of those in the medical and scientific community as well as financial investment have gone into specifically understanding and discovering methods for the treatment and relief of this type of pain. Read the rest of this entry
