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A blog about molecules and minds and everything in between

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I am a postgraduate student of neuroscience at UCL. Contact me


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Molecular Biology:

The fluorescent flashing shuttles of the enchanted loom

In his 1941 book Man on His Nature, the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington described the brain as "an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern." Little could he have known that within 50 years...

Prion protein infection mechanism identified

The transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), which include variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans, "Mad Cow" Disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep, are progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorders characterized by the accumulation within nerve cells of an abnormally folded and insoluble...

Neuronal light switches

The September issue of Scientific American contains an excellent and lengthy article about a state-of-the-art technique called optogenetics, by molecular physiologist Gero Miesenböck, who has been instrumental in its development. As its name suggests, optogenetics is a combination of optics...

Cannibalism & the shaking death: A new form of the disease & a possible epidemic

National Library of Medicine / Hot Medical NewsThis silent film clip shows several victims of a disease called kuru. They are - or rather were - members of the South Fore, a tribe of approximately 8,000 people who inhabit the...

The eye tells the brain when to plasticize

The classic Nobel Prize-winning studies of David Hubel and Torsten Weisel showed how the proper maturation of the developing visual cortex is critically dependent upon visual information received from the eyes. In what would today be considered highly unethical experiments,...

Detailed 3D image of Alzheimer's pathology

This three-dimensional reconstruction of an amyloid fibril (found at Discover) was created by Nikolaus Grigorieff and his colleagues at Brandeis University, by computer processing of a transmission electron cryomicroscopy image. It is the most detailed image yet of the abnormally...

Synapse proteomics & brain evolution

When it comes to human brain evolution, it is often said that size matters. The human cerebral cortex is much larger than that of other primates, and therefore its expansion must have been a vital feature of human evolution. Researchers...

Gene Genie 33

Logo by Ricardo at My Biotech Life Welcome to the 33rd edition of Gene Genie, the blog carnival devoted to genes and genetic diseases.In this edition, there is a strong emphasis on cancer. There's also a focus on leukodystrophy, and...

Rabid brain circuits

Whilst preparing for the comprehension exam - which I sat yesterday, and which went well - I referred to this piece I wrote in March last year, about a genetic method which employs a modified rabies virus for labelling all...

The cytoskeleton: A target for memory-enhancing drugs

What with the current debate about the use of "smart" drugs by academics, I thought it pertinent to republish this old piece from January of last year, about a bacterial toxin which has been shown to enhance fear conditioning and...

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