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In a creative stroke inspired by Hollywood wizardry, scientists from Harvard Medical School and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have designed a simple way to observe how bacteria move as they become impervious to drugs. The experiments, described in the Sept. 9 issue of Science, are thought to provide the first large-scale glimpse of the maneuvers of bacteria as they encounter increasingly higher doses of antibiotics and adapt to survive - and thrive - in them.

Chemist Daniel Nocera of Harvard University and his team joined forces with synthetic biologist Pamela Silver of Harvard Medical School and her team to craft a kind of living battery, which they call a bionic leaf for its melding of biology and technology. The device uses solar electricity from a photovoltaic panel to power the chemistry that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen.

With its famous opening scene at a Harvard graduation, this classic of education research brings into sharp focus the dilemma facing all educators: Why don't even the brightest students truly grasp basic science concepts? This award-winning program traces the problem through interviews with Harvard graduates and their professors, as well as with a bright ninth-grader who has some confused ideas about the orbits of the planets.

More than 400 scientists, bioethicists, and historians from 20 countries on 6 continents have gathered this week in Washington, DC, for the Human Gene Editing Summit. The attendees are a veritable who's who of genome editing: Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, Emmanuelle Charpentier of Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, and Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard-the three discoverers of the CRISPR-Cas9 system's utility in gene editing-plus dozens of other big names in genome science. Cal Tech's David Baltimore along with the heads of the four national societies hosting the meeting (US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Medicine, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the U.K.'s Royal Society) provided opening remarks on Tuesday (December 1). And as I sat stage right in the NAS auditorium, I noticed the unmistakable rear profile of Harvard Medical School's George Church three rows in front of me. Church was scheduled to speak at a session later that afternoon about the application of CRISPR and other new precision gene editing techniques to the human germline-a hot-button topic since April, when a Chinese group published it had successfully modified the genomes of human embryos, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said it would not fund such research. Then in September, the U.S./U.K.-based Hinxton Group, an international consortium of scientists, policy experts, and bioethicists, said it supported the use of genetic editing in human embryos for limited applications in research and medicine.  

This interrupted case study tells the story of Michael, a Harvard law graduate with a stressful job and a seemingly heavy drinking problem. Students are provided with background information, medical history, and lab results in order to guide them towards determining what is wrong with Michael. This study highlights cirrhosis and the effects of alcohol abuse on the liver. Before beginning the case study, students should have a background in the physiological role of the liver and the breakdown of hemoglobin. Students are asked to use the information provided for them in the case study to gather more information about liver cells and their functions, alcohol, and alcoholic liver damage. Ultimately, using multiple blood tests, the Maddrey's discriminant function (DF) score, and results from a magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), they will diagnose Michael with alcoholic cirrhosis. This case was developed for use in a non-majors physiology course, but could easily be used for a majors class.

Could it be that Alzheimer's disease stems from the toxic remnants of the brain's attempt to fight off infection? Provocative new research by a team of investigators at Harvard leads to this startling hypothesis, which could explain the origins of plaque, the mysterious hard little balls that pockmark the brains of people with Alzheimer's.

The fates of ice age human groups in Europe were closely linked to climate change, according to an unprecedented study of the genomes of 51 individuals who lived between 45,000 years ago (when modern humans arrived in Europe) and 7,000 years ago. "We see multiple, huge movements of people displacing previous ones," David Reich of the Harvard Medical School said. "During this first four-fifths of modern human history in Europe, history is just as complicated as it is during the last fifth that we know so much more about." 

In this interactive activity adapted from the HHMI Outreach Program at Harvard University, learn about the ways in which stem cells can be used to treat and help cure diseases in humans. The activity explains what stem cells are and how they're produced, and provides details on their existing or potential therapeutic role in diseases related to the pancreas, liver, lungs, and bone marrow.

Millions of people suffer from asthma, a frightening disease that makes you feel like you're drowning. Using both mouse and human cells - and a humanized mouse to show how human type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) work in the body, researchers at Janssen Research and Development, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School are figuring out ILC2's role in asthma. Their findings have important implications in the quest for effective asthma therapies!

"The Inner Life of a Cell, an 3 animation created in NewTek LightWave 3D and Adobe After Effects for Harvard biology students. The animation illustrates unseen molecular mechanisms and the ones they trigger, specifically how white blood cells sense and respond to their surroundings and external stimuli."

What is the recipe for life? If you were to build a cell from scratch, what ingredients would you need? And what kind of environment would you need to cook inanimate matter into a living cell? These are the questions that occupy biochemist Jack Szostak, as he imagines the dynamic world where life was born.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the most genetically diverse region in the world." The rates of susceptibility and not only whether or not someone becomes ill, but also whether or not they live or die, or even display symptoms, varies widely. The genetics of both this deadly strain of Ebola itself, and of the populations living in the affected areas, are at the forefront of the efforts by Dr. Moses as she works with Dr.Pardis Sabeti at Harvard to provide samples for genome sequencing.

Because we want to understand what genes are required for blood vessel development, Courtney Griffin studies certain enzymes that help turn genes on and off. These enzymes are specifically involved in relaxing DNA that is normally tightly coiled up in our cells. Dr. Griffin is now an Assistant Member in the Cardiovascular Biology Research Program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation after receiving her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph. D. from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine

Germ theory states that specific microscopic organisms are the cause of specific diseases. The theory was developed, proved, and popularized in Europe and North America between about 1850 and 1920. Because its implications were so different from the centuries-old humoral theory, germ theory revolutionized the theory and practice of medicine and the understanding of disease. It was, however, compatible with existing ideas about health, especially those associated with 19th-century hygiene and sanitation.

As the prevalence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) continues to rise, there has been an increasing public interest for information concerning the safety of these products. Concerns generally focus on how the GMO may affect the environment or how it may affect the consumer. One specific concern is the possibility for GMOs to negatively affect human health. This could result from differences in nutritional content, allergic response, or undesired side effects such as toxicity, organ damage, or gene transfer.

brief animations vividly illustrating cells and cellular processes

Student scientist journal

Well, it didn't happen only to you. It is often surprising how difficult it can be to find concrete biological numbers, even for properties that have been measured numerous times. To help solve this for one and all, BioNumbers (the database of key numbers in molecular biology) was created. Along with the numbers, you'll find the relevant references to the original literature, useful comments, and related numbers.

Reference page cellular facts: cell size, lenth, division, concentration, energy, diffusion, genomic information, and mutation rates.

Online animation and simulations for biotech.