Superheroes may be fiction, but is there a future for superfoods?

Now, those of you familiar with my favourite quote from the 2000 film “Miss Congeniality” will surely remember how Cheryl misinterprets this question. The thing is I would too. My perfect date would be fresh with a soft and chewy texture. In my case, I refer to the fruit. But not only do dates […]

Life in the lab as a present-day Victorian

This summer I went back in time, literally, although only by ~8 hours, as I jetted off to Victoria, BC in the South-West of Canada to spend 10 weeks working in Dr John Burke’s lab at the University of Victoria. The lab focuses on understanding the regulation of proteins involved in lipid signalling and use […]

Could memory editing become mainstream?

Do you remember, the 21st night of September? Do you remember the lyrics? Or would you want to forget ever hearing this song? (I hope the latter isn’t the case). Well, the science of memories continues to be of great interest and has played major roles in a variety of pop culture, whether through memory […]

“Mean Girls” meets Biochemistry – which protein ‘clique’ are you?

If I learnt anything from watching the 2004 film “Mean Girls”, it is that where you sit in the cafeteria is crucial. Okay, whilst not entirely true, the film explains how at high school, everyone fits into different cliques and these dictate the group of people you sit with at lunch; you have your Freshman, […]

Are you looking for NSAA and/or A level Biology/Chemistry tuition?

Memorising facts for exams these days is not enough anymore. Exam techniques including, pulling out the key points from a question, structuring your answers and the dreaded “thinking outside of the box”, are instead being tested. This added stress can become unbearable, but there are strategies and steps that can be taken to circumvent this. […]

Darwin’s cousin – the man who made a beauty map of Britain

Many of you are probably familiar with the tree of life that Charles Darwin used when explaining his theory of evolution, but maybe not so much with his own family tree. It would not at all be surprising to see that Darwin had cousins but neither would it to see that one was Francis Galton. […]

Centrosomes, not centromeres, and error-correcting kinetochores

Not only is this title a painful reminder of a mistake I made in my exam this year, but simply wrong since centromeres will still be included in discussion! So, just to clarify, centrosomes are the organelles from which microtubules (MTs)* arise from, whilst centromeres are regions on chromosomes that attach to MTs via the […]