Blogging for Biophysics!

Just a quick announcement:

The next couple posts are going to be cross-published on the Biophysical Society blog as part of their national meeting. I get to write about exciting, often unpublished biophysics research while I attend the conference. Exciting! You can visit the BPS blog here, or just continue reading on this site. Enjoy!

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Chemically combating chemical combat

As we have witnessed all too recently, chemical warfare is a very tangible concern for many people of the world. The latest large scale attack occurred in Syria only a few months ago with the use of Sarin gas. The news from Syria makes it all the more urgent that scientists find ways to combat the use of chemical weapons. A group of engineers at UC San Diego have done just that using a new kind of structure called “micromachines”. Many chemical weapon agents used in warfare belong to a class of chemicals broadly labeled “organophosphates”. This label is given to molecules that have a generically organic part and a phosphate part. Here is the molecule sarin, with its organic and phosphate parts highlighted: Nerve gasses like sarin are dangerous because of the way the molecules interact with our nervous system. This interaction is highly dependent on the shape, or conformation of the molecule. That is, if we could somehow break up the atoms in the sarin molecule, they w

Winter is here

Frigid temperatures in Arkansas this weekend have inspired an icy topic. If you’ve ever wondered why your lettuce wilts when it accidentally freezes in the refrigerator, or your basil dies after the first frost then this post is for you. Contrary to what I believed and maybe what some of you do to, plant cells themselves rarely freeze. The water in between cells freezes much more readily than the cells themselves; this is the start of the plant’s problems. Dehydration is the most common culprit for cell death at cold temperatures. It seems counter intuitive that dehydration would occur as a result of freezing water , but it makes sense when you begin to think like a plant cell. All living cells exist in a state of equilibrium with their surroundings. Ions, gases, small molecules and water are constantly moving around the plant, going in and out of cells as needed. The concentrations of these species inside and outside of the cell are carefully regulated by the plant. S

Thrills and Chills -- and Dopaminergic Spills?

Scenario: You’re listening to one of your favorite pieces. Suddenly some cue in the music makes your heart feel like it might beat out of your chest and your skin start to tingle. Within seconds your arm hairs are standing straight up, a wave of chills runs down your spine and you are covered in goose bumps. The first time this happened to me I think I was about 12 singing along to a hymn from the pew of my church. I thought for sure what I was feeling was the Holy Spirit coursing through my veins! Not to write off any divine experience my 12-year old self was having, but it turns out that there were some other things going on – mostly in my brain. It’s been known for a while now that lots of human behavior is reinforced by activity in our brains that makes us feel good. For the most part these feelings of pleasure are meant to encourage us to keep doing things that tend to help our species survive, i.e. having sex or eating delicious food (although highly addictive dr

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