Monthly Archives: December 2018

Who doesn’t like to sing out loud “It’s the ciiiiiiircle, the ciiiiircle of life”? I did, until I realized that this song implies that we’re all going to die at some point. As a microbiologist, the next logical thought for me is that when I die, fungi and bacteria within the soil will decompose me and everything else around me into nutrients and carbon dioxide. At this point any passionate singing is interrupted. Scientists care about the circle of life because it makes life possible. Without decomposers like fungi and bacteria, everything would decompose so slowly that most organisms living on the surface of our planet wouldn’t have enough nutrients to live the way they do. There is evidence that life as we know it wouldn’t survive beyond a few months without anaerobic bacteria and fungi that break down dead organisms in environments with no oxygen (anaerobic). In addition, microbial…

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Prof. Mukund Sharma senior paleontologist and astrobiologist from Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (Lucknow, India) is renowned for his immense contribution in the field of Precambrian Palaeobiology in India. He has extensively worked on the Archaeans of the Dharwar Craton, the Proterozoic basins of peninsular India i.e., the Cuddapah, Kaladgi, Vindhyan, Chhattisgarh and, Marwar Supergroups, Kurnool, Bhima, and Indravati Groups. He has reported syngenetic fossil cyanobacteria from >2600 Ma Neoarchaean Iron Formation of Karnataka. His studies on 1600 Ma old Vindhyan Supergroup demonstrated that Grypanai spiralis considered to be a eukaryotic fossil is actually a coiled long sheath of prokaryotic cyanobacteria. Chuaria-Tawuia which were once considered as an independent life form for more than a century were shown by him as representing two stages of life cycles of the same organism. From Neoproterozoic Bhima Group, he reported multicellular organisms which show they evolved ca 720 Ma, much earlier than Ediacaran…

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You go to any pharmacy, grocery store, or almost any other type of store, and are bombarded with vitamins and supplements lining the shelves. But are they actually beneficial? For example, Vitamin D has been prescribed to help treat and prevent bone density loss, but can it be used for other diseases and disorders as well? Preliminary research has shown that vitamin D might be able to help prevent cancer and heart disease as well, but this research has not been done rigorously, so scientists can’t say for sure. Therefore, researchers from all across the United States established the Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial to try and see if high doses of vitamin D can help prevent cancer and heart disease. This trial included 25,871 men over 50 years old and women over 55 years old throughout the United States. These men and women were randomized into 4 different groups,…

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Cancer remains one of the major public health challenges facing society today. Despite advances in cancer treatments, the WHO estimates that the disease will cause a staggering 9.6 million deaths in 2018 making it the second leading cause of death worldwide. Sadly, cancer rates will likely increase in the near future due to the aging global population and high rates of unhealthy lifestyle choices such as smoking and obesity. Managing these increasing cancer rates into the future, will require the development of better and more effective cancer treatments. However, discovering new cancer drugs is a very costly and time-consuming process. Scientists usually start with a library of chemicals consisting of thousands of different drug molecules. These drug molecules are then individually tested against cancer cells that are grown in the laboratory to see if they contain any potent anticancer activity. Promising candidate molecules that kill these cancer cells then undergo…

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