People of a certain age may remember a series of really funny commercials featuring Euell Gibbonsand his famous question about whether you've ever eaten a pine tree. " Some parts are edible" said Euell.
Perhaps some parts are, but other pine tree products aren't so nourishing.
Imagine a simple hike in a grassy part of South America. You hear a rattle and feel a quick stab of pain as fangs sink into your leg. Toxins in the snake venom travel through your blood vessels and penetrate your skin. If the snake is a South American rattlesnake ...
A few years ago, when the iPhone first came out, I fell in love with an app called "Molecules." It was easy to use, the images were lovely, and I thought manipulating molecules by touch could help solve some of the problems my students had with using Cn3D. I was ...
Two protein structures from an avian influenza virus are shown below. One form of the protein makes influenza virus resistant to Oseltamivir (Tamiflu®) Don't worry, these proteins aren't from H5N1, but they do come from a related influenza virus that also infects birds. One protein structure is from a strain ...
In my last post, I wrote about insulin and interesting features of the insulin structure. Some of the things I learned were really surprising. For example, I was surprised to learn how similar pig and human insulin are. I hadn't considered this before, but this made me ...
Although, I certainly didn't believe it. Truly in nature, it can be described as nonpareil. With all the years that I've heard (or taught) that all DNA is antiparallel, it was hard to believe my own eyes when I saw this structure. Yet here is, on the screen, parallel DNA ...
Digital World Biology is happy this summer to be partnering with Shoreline Community College and NWABR to help students attending their summer camps, Project Biotech and Camp BIOmed, explore 3D structures of proteins, DNA, chemicals and other substances, in Molecule World.
Molecule World is a 3D molecular structure viewer for iPhone, iPad and Mac. This guide covers the free viewer and the Pro authoring tools: selections, scenes, model sets and collections. Version 5.0 Contents Using this guide 1. Molecule World 2. Free and Pro 3. iPhone 4. iPad and Mac 5 ...
A molecular viewer for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Open a structure from a file or fetch one by name, then explore it in 3D with multiple display styles, color schemes, and selection filters. Version 4.6 Contents 1. Getting a structure on screen 2. Moving around in 3D 3. Display styles ...
" By night all cats are gray" - Miguel Cervantes in Don Quixote I've always liked Siamese cats. Students do, too. "Why Siamese cats wear masks" is always a favorite story in genetics class. So, when I opened my January copy of The Science Teacher, I was thrilled to see ...
We feel interesting and sometimes painful sensations when capsaicin, from chilis, and the allyl isothiocyantes from wasabi,bind to receptors in our mouths. In this article, we look at the structures that communicate information to the cell. How do they tell the cell that capsaicin or wasabi compounds are bound?
When my parents were young, summer made cities a scary place for young families. My mother tells me children were often sent away from their homes to relatives in the country, if possible, and swimming pools were definitely off limits. The disease they feared, poliomyelitis, and the havoc it wrecked ...
Instead of enjoying a sunny summer day today, or partying with SciBlings in New York, I'm staring out my window watching the rain. Inspiration hit! What about searching for August? Folks, meet the HFQ protein from E. coli. I found this lovely molecule by doing a multi-database search at the ...
On Sept. 30th, I'm going to be co-presenting a Bio-Link webinar on Genome Engineering with CRISPR-Cas9 with Dr. Thomas Tubon from Madison College. If you're interested, Register here. Since my part will be to help our audience understand the basics of this system, I prepared a short tutorial with Molecule ...
Sucrose Molecules of sucrose tore apart in their bellies letting glucose course free in their veins. Luckily for us, a system evolved long ago to capture that glucose and minimize it's potential for damage. Removing sugar from the blood and sequestering it in liver, fat, and muscle cells, minimizes the ...
