SlickBio - Unraveling the Wonders of Biological Research

“My ague has left me in such a state of torpidity that I wish I had gone thro’ the process of natural selection.” wrote Erasmus Darwin in his letter to his grandson, Charles Darwin.1 In the same letter, he stated that On the Origin of the Species was “the most interesting book” he had ever read. The book, however, also received harsh criticisms, and that bipolar opinion on the book that continues to this day. Indeed, I don’t think there has been any book in human history that generated such polarized opinions. I suspect the reason for this polarization stems from the word evolution, a word, ironically, Darwin didn’t use in the first edition of On the Origin of the Species . In this essay, I want to go over some arguments for and against evolution.2 As to why I am writing about evolution, I will come back to it at the end of this essay. Fossils of Crinoid columnals found in Utah (courtesy: Wikipedia) The Fossil Record: If evolution occurred, then one would expect to see intermediate f...

 In 1838, a prolific writer compiled a list of pros and cons to decide whether to “marry” or “not marry”.1 Some of the pros for marriage included having children and having a constant companion (and a friend in old age), someone he could love and talk to. But bachelorhood also offered some compelling benefits like having the freedom to go anywhere and having more free time in general. With that freedom, the writer reasoned, he would be able to enjoy intelligent conversations with “clever men at clubs.” That writer was Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary biology. Charles Darwin (Courtesy: Wikipedia) Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shrewsbury, England on 12 February 1809. He was the fifth child of Robert Darwin, a doctor, and Susannah Darwin. In 1825, he worked as an apprentice doctor under his father’s supervision and eventually was sent to the University of Edinburgh Medical School. He, however, neglected his studies because the medical lectures bored him and s...

In the first part of this series on vaccine development, I went over how our immune system responds to pathogens like viruses or bacteria. Briefly, when our body encounters a novel pathogen, specialized cells from our immune system create antibodies that bind to specific molecular signatures called antigens found on that pathogen. The blueprints for effective antibodies are retained as memory so that we can quickly produce large quantities of those antibodies when needed.  To develop a vaccine that can protect us from a particular pathogen, hence, we need to somehow elicit these responses without getting sick from that disease. In this essay, I will describe how researchers try to achieve that.1 Let’s come up with some strategies with the information we already have from the first part of this essay. Assuming the antigens are present, can’t we use dead pathogens to elicit the same immune response? Indeed, in the 19th century, scientists discovered that inactivated or killed micro...