Author: Taylor Goldsmith
It’s been on the news and has probably crossed your Facebook timeline under the guise of a couple different names. The terms genetic engineering and genome editing have been tossed around many times in the past in regard to cloning and GMOs (link), but if you see these terms in the media today they are most likely referring to one particular thing- CRISPR. Doing a quick Google search of CRISPR pulls approximately 200,000 results, with some search headings going as far as to call it “a game-changing genetic engineering technique”.
Read MoreAuthor: Nancy Shie, B.Sc.
A staggering half of the Canadian population will develop cancer at some point in their lives. This year, in 2017, over 200 000 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in Canada, and about 80 000 people died from cancer-related illness. Cancer is a word heard more and more frequently with our growing lifespan, thanks to 21st-century healthcare, but cancer itself isn’t a disease that we can wholly cure with our technology just yet.
Read MoreAuthor: Danielle Grant
Lupus is a disease with notable pop culture recognition thanks to the American television series “House, M.D.” where it is often suggested as a probable illness plaguing the show’s patients until the suggestion is typically shut down because “it’s never lupus”. When a friend of mine was diagnosed with lupus she recalls phoning a loved one only to be met with a joke utilizing the same House tagline, “but it’s never lupus”. An ill-timed joke aside, this highlights a frustration for many lupus patients, not many Canadians are aware of what lupus actually is. October is lupus awareness month, offering the opportunity to start a dialogue about this autoimmune disease often called The Disease with a Thousand Faces.
Read MoreAuthor: Carly Pontifex
What are GMOs? Are they really safe for my family to eat? Unless you have formal training in biological sciences, these are questions that might have kept you up at night. Are scientists playing God? Do they know what they’re doing? How do they know that there won’t be some terrible unintended consequences to their inscrutable science experiments? Maybe it’s our fault, the scientists, for not making it clear to you what is fact and what is fiction, and we can’t blame you. In this world of misinformation, it’s hard to know the difference between fiction and reality. Here I am, a concerned scientist, and I want to help you understand GMOs. As a disclaimer, this article was written with absolutely no conflicts of interests to report. I have never been contacted by any GMO corporation, nor have I been swayed to write this article by the agricultural industry. I just want you to know the truth.
Read MoreAuthor: Vienna M Doenni, M. Sc.
Before the rabies vaccine was invented people were so scared of the horrible disease progression that they would end their own lives upon getting bit by a rabies-infected animal. Here we will discuss how can one get infected with the virus, who is at risk and what the rabies virus will do to an infected person or pet.
Read MoreAuthor: Charmaine Szalay
The gut-brain relationship seemingly associated with autism may even begin before birth. Children with autism may not only be affected by what they eat, but also by what their mothers have eaten during gestation. In one rodent study, researchers compared the offspring of obese mothers, who consumed a high fat diet likened to those primarily related to human consumption of fast food, to healthy controls. The obese mothers gave birth to pups that displayed behavioural deficits, much akin to autism, and a different microbiota profile. The gut flora of the pups was less diverse and was lacking one bacterium known as Lactobacillus (L.) reuteri, which produces oxytocin. Oxytocin is an important chemical for promoting sociability. Normal offspring’s gut had nine times more L. reuteri. Interestingly, when mice that lacked L. reuteri were repopulated with the bacteria, sociability was detectably improved, in addition to an increase in oxytocin producing cells.
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