Reading about Dr. Mullis’ discovery of PCR is something that makes the process of scientific discovery as a whole more accessible. For pretty much my whole academic career, I was taught and believed that scientific discoveries come from lab work and research. While that is completely true, hearing about how Dr. Mullis’ got the core… Continue reading Writing Exercise #5
Writing Exercise #4
(1) Dumitru Macarisin, Ishani Sheth, Minji Hur, Anna Wooten, Hee Jin Kwon, Zhujun Gao, Antonio De Jesus, Wayne Jurick II and Yi Chen’s publication in Nature entitled “Survival of outbreak, food, and environmental strains of Listeria monocytogenes on whole apples as affected by cultivar and wax coating” asserts how outbreaks of L. monocytogenes were associated… Continue reading Writing Exercise #4
Writing Exercise #3
Peer review is a staple of the scientific field, that in theory is an unbiased way to have members of the scientific community decide if new research is worth publishing. Anytime a scientist (or team of them) submits a paper to a journal, it goes through the process of peer review, a process that consists… Continue reading Writing Exercise #3
Writing Exercise #2
CRISPR isn’t just something you might see on a license plate, it’s a scientific technique combined with the machinery that bacteria use as their immune system. In a similar manner to how our own immune system will remember past viral infections to prevent reinfection, bacteria will remember previous bacteriophage infections by incorporating part of the… Continue reading Writing Exercise #2
Writing Exercise #1
Bacterial cloning is something that I’ve heard of in a few different classes before, but it has been treated with the attitude of “you’ll learn that later”, so I don’t really know much about it. Cloning using bacterial vectors is a great way to conduct science though, because bacteria reproduce asexually, rapidly, and there really… Continue reading Writing Exercise #1