The emerging field of genomic medicine offers an opportunity for biology and anatomy teachers to bring the topics of DNA, genetics, molecular processes, and evolution together into one experience. Through the genomic medicine paradigm, students see the unbroken connection between small biological topics such as mutations and their potential…

Gene therapy has fascinated clinicians, scientists, and patients since decades ago because of its potential to treat a disease at the genetic level. This can be achieved in many ways, including replacing a disease-causing gene with a healthy copy. Gene therapy must overcome complex tissue and cellular barriers to introduce genetic modifications…

Interpreting how people accord meaning to life situations is an old challenge in sociology. Emphasis has been given to values shared within social groups; other sociologists have stressed the discursive or communicative dimensions of society. This paper seeks an alternative interpretation by combining sociological inquiry and insights from…

Genotyping real alleles in real people is an excellent way to connect abstract genetics concepts to human variation in the classroom; however, these activities can inadvertently promote misconceptions of the power of genetics to determine individual and group traits. By analyzing our own and others' experiences of genotyping activities in the…

DNA-functionalized gold nanoparticles (DNA-AuNPs) have become a popular science theme since their invention in 1990s. They impact our daily lives by playing key roles in rapidly identifying and quantifying important analytes, and are a well-suited chemistry course content for beginners of chemical research. While the salt-aging method represents…

The complexity of RNA cannot be fully expressed with the canonical A, C, G, and U alphabet. To date, over 170 distinct chemical modifications to RNA have been discovered in living systems. RNA modifications can profoundly impact the cellular outcomes of messenger RNAs (mRNAs), transfer and ribosomal RNAs, and noncoding RNAs. Additionally, aberrant…

Water is one of the most common molecules in the universe. Water is polarized, but it has many states besides the normal tetrahedron depicted in standard biology texts. Water is also the most ubiquitous molecule on Earth, the universal solvent. It is the internal and external habitat of cells. Ecologically, water is contiguous with life and the…

Many theories support the idea that children's literacy learning develops as they learn to make meaning through interactions with others. These assertions are premised on the understanding that childhood literacy serves various social purposes and that these literacies are learned through participating in social contexts. In this position paper,…

Autism is heterogeneous at many levels, including clinical symptoms and etiology. A key strategy in studying heterogeneous conditions is having large enough sample sizes to stratify into smaller groups that are more homogeneous. SPARK and Simons Searchlight are large and growing research cohorts of individuals with autism in the United States and…

This essay offers a rationale for deploying ecofeminist science fiction stories as object-oriented thought experiments in science and environmental education, with particular reference to developments in genetics and evolutionary biology, and their implications for human (and more-than-human) reproduction and kinship in the period following the…

Progress in precision medicine is being achieved through the design of clinical trials that use genetic biomarkers to guide stratification of patients and assignation to treatment or control groups. Genetic analysis of biomarkers is, therefore, essential to complete their objectives, and this involves the study of biological samples from donor…

The past fifteen years has seen a dramatic improvement in our understanding of hearing and hearing loss. Scientists have worked to identify dozens of genes involved in hearing loss and elucidate the complex molecular machinery responsible for hearing. At the same time, there have been rapid advances in clinical diagnostic tools including imaging…

Despite widespread misunderstandings, B.F. Skinner did not ignore creativity. The present article first integrates Skinner's writings with some current research in creativity that focuses on the role of near associations in creative innovations. Next, Skinner's writings are integrated with the role of the unconscious in creativity, including some…

Students often have no exposure to the incredible amount of genomic and proteomic data that is freely and easily accessible online. Becoming familiar with these resources, and seeing how they could be applied to a specific research question, is a prerequisite for students to apply them to their own scientific development. Many students have to…

This short paper presents an educational approach to teaching three popular methods for encoding DNA sequences: one-hot encoding, binary encoding, and integer encoding. Aimed at bioinformatics and computational biology students, our learning intervention focuses on developing practical skills in implementing these essential techniques for…