Truth and Beauty: The unseeable biology

Brain animation.
By Nevit Dilmen.
Source Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes it's difficult to tell you about things that happen inside the cells. And these things are difficult to teach as well. However, one of the ways we have to show you those beautiful things inside the cells is with animations.

These animations are based on accurate scientific data and show us, many times in a very spectacular way, those things that we can't see. Animations are a combination of truth and beauty.

As examples of these animations I want to share with you some videos that I hope you like.

"Science is sexy and it is our job to tell everybody that"

Yesterday, I saw in twitter the link to a very interesting post published in Agora, the L'Oréal-UNESCO for women in science blog. And the reason is very simple. They posted Ingrid Scheffer's speech at the inaugural SOBR (Student Of Brain Research) in Melbourne. I loved her speech.

She talked about how important is to communicate our science to the non-scientists. She covered different issues from how to prepare a powerpoint to how to talk to the media. Quite a few and very interesting things in not many minutes.

So, here you have the videos of her speech. I hope you enjoy them as much as me. Becasue... "Science is sexy, and it is our job to tell everyone that." Never forget it.

Are journalists from Mars and scientists from Venus?

Are journalists and scientists from different planets? Do they speak different languages? Are they forced to not understand each other?
These questions are framed in a long debate that looks like a never ending one. This time it re-started with a post in the “Notes and Theories” blog of The Guardian written by Ananyo Bhattacharya, chief online editor of Nature. What does this post say? In few words, that scientists don't have a clue about how journalism works.

There was a quick reaction from different bloggers and scientists who replied to that post giving their opinion and saying why, in this case, journalists don't understand how science or science journalism work. Even Ed Yong published in his blog a diagram of the relationship between journalists and scientists.

The greatest show on earth (Symphony of Science)

Symphony of Science is a very interesting project that brings scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public in a new way, combining science and music. John Boswell, the musician and producer behind Symphony of Science has made several videos about different topics in a very enjoyable musical way.

All of them are really good, but I want to share the last one: "The greatest show on earth". This video has been released last week and it's a video about the evolution. I'm sure you will enjoy it.

And before leaving you with the video, I want to add that John makes all his videos for free and all of us can enjoy them without any cost, so if you think they are good, you can help him with this project donating some money.

And now, here you have the last "Symphony of Science" video, "The greatest show on earth"

Diversity & Soaps Operas for Better Science Communication

A couple of weeks ago Abby Tabor from MyScienceWork contacted me asking to interview me for an article about science communication that she wanted to write. I said yes and the result of that and other two more interviews gave as a result an amazing post that you can find in the Agora forum, For Women in Science community and in MyScienceWork blog, Multidisciplinary Research News. I hope you like as much as I do.

The "Blogfather". Interview with Bora Zivkovic

There is a new science communication project in Spanish. A free online magazine of science communication called Journal of Feelsynapsis. This initiative comes from an online community of scientists called Feelsynapsis and the passion for communicating science of Enrique Royuela.

I take part on this amazing project and  I have two articles in its first issue. One of them is an interview with Bora Zivkovic that you can find translated into English below. I hope you like it.

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SciFund is really happening!!!

Last month has been crazy. Apart from the regular work in the lab I've been doing something else. Something different... and quite fun I have to say. It´s been a month of thinking about how to explain my project with regular words and how to explain it in a catchy and good video as well!!

The SciFund Challenge has been a very important and special part of my life this month. And after all the work done and the collaboration with other scientists to get our projects done in the best way possible this part of it is ended. The experience is been great and I have made my first video ever!!!! I'm so proud of it...

But the good news are that the public part of SciFund is starting now!!!! Finally, all the effort and the work we have been doing for the last month will pay off. Well, we hope so. Now we will see if we've done a good job or not. If people like our project, or not. It's pretty exciting.

Now it's time for a different job. Getting our projects funded by people. It's a proper job of marketing and a good experience for us, scientist, to go out and spread the word about our research. This is something that we don't do very often and can be scary. Well, it is scary. These last days since the SciFund went live have been also frenetic. Thinking about who to contact to get some publicity for my project and trying to convince my friends to donate to it.

It's something completely new for me and I'm loving it. Now there is almost one and a half months to see if I'm good at marketing my project and I can get people as excited about my project as I am. Let's see what it happens and good luck to all #SciFunders!!!

Check out my #SciFund project Cancer? Yeast has the answers and fuel it!!!!
Published originally in the SciFund blog
And the same day in the SciFund blog my project as the Feature Project of the day!!!!

Crystal violet lactone

This is not a post written by me. This post is been written by a proper chemist called Sarah Murray who lives in  Manchester, like me. You can find her in twitter as @SarahScientist I hope you like it.

Cristal Violet. Courtesy of Chemblink

One of the great joys of being a scientist, is that there is always the opportunity to learn something new ( and meet and work with amazingly talented  and lovely people). It is now the end of October and this means that in the UK, the half term holiday is over and so sadly is the Manchester Science Festival which takes place during these holidays. At this festival I reprise my role as STEM Ambassador, i.e. in essence I'm a science communicator and I love it! I could write about what a STEM Ambassador is, and what it means to be one. That could be an entirely separate post altogether.  Alas as I write, it is over for another year, always a time of feeling a little sad but so very pleased to have been part of it. As 2011 is officially the International Year of Chemistry, I fully expected this years festival to have many chemistry themed events and I wasn't disappointed.

Oh my cold!

I’ve had a cold for several days and I hate it. What I hate the most is the running and stuffy nose. But the problem with cold is that you cannot cure it. The only thing you can do is to pass it and treat the symptoms. Many people think that you get stuffy nose because your nose gets filled up with mucus but the reality is a bit different. The main cause of the stuffy nose is the inflammation of the blood vessels in the nose. This makes the tissue in the nose to swell and get closer blocking the nose. We can find this type of inflammation in colds caused by viral infections and in allergic processes as well. Actually the production of mucus is a defensive mechanism that cells use to get rid out of the foreign agent (virus or particle that is producing the allergy).

Our little contribution to science funding: the SciFund challenge

Nowadays we are suffering an economic crisis and one of the fields that is noticing this a lot is the scientific research. National and regional governments are cutting their budgets and some of the biggest cuts are in science. We, researchers, are having a very hard time to do our research and people in general doesn't like these cuts in science.

Well, there is a way for all of us to make a contribution in order to alleviate this money problem in research, or at least to help funding some interesting and useful projects. It's called SciFund challenge and it's an experiment of crowd funding. Several scientists will present their projects in a creative way to get funding from people for those projects. Everybody will be able to fund several research projects through small donations and help these scientists and their groups to do their research.

Science online, passion and thoughts

Badges at SOLO11

I've just had two great days in London  in the "Science Online London 2011" conference (#solo11). This was my first time and I have to say that the experience is been worth it. When I arrived in the British Library the first day I had the impression that there were many people attending the conference. All from many different ages. So I grabbed a coffee and walked around trying to read their badges that, in my opinion, had the key information: name, job place and twitter account. And there was a bit of everything: researchers, journalists, people from scientific journals, from online networks... I loved that because of the potential of this mixture to contribute to the meeting. However, it made me wonder what I was doing there. I got the answer straight away: "learning, meeting people, networking and doing my best to contribute". Because science online is everybody's responsibility and not something restricted to few people.

"Biomarker Jones" and the search of cancer

Golgi in 3D. Brad et al, 2001

Cancer causes a high number of deaths each year. However, most of the cancers are treatable and get cured if they are detected early. But how doctors detect cancer? One way is to take a sample of the suspicious tissue and check for the presence of cancer cells and/or proteins that are present in those cancer cells. This has a big problem. Imagine that for detecting a cancer every person has to have a surgery. Well, the process would be very long, expensive and uncomfortable for the patients. But don’t worry. There are other ways of detecting cancer. One of them is the detection of tumor biomarkers in blood. These biomarkers are proteins that cancer cells produce and are present in the blood. In this way the patients only need a blood test to know if they have cancer.

Fatal attraction: tall women and cancer

Three women.  Schaver.com

When it comes to chat up there are some women who are very good at it. They attract all kind of men and can choose their partners without any problem. Some of these women that come to your mind when we talk about this are the typical tall actresses or models. Those ones with endless legs and charming smile. It looks like everything is perfect for them, right? Well, it’s not. And not only for those actresses and models, but also for tall women in general. The Lancet Oncology journal has published an article of a research group from the University of Oxford in collaboration with some researchers at the Catalan Institute of Oncology where they show that there is a direct correlation between cancer and height (at least in women).

Baking Science and Cancer

Fission yeast

Post originally published in the L'Oreal Foundation for women in science blog Agora

When they asked me to collaborate with this blog I asked what they expected from me to write about. The answer was very simple:  “write about your field of expertise”. So here I am, ready to tell you quite a few things about… YEAST!!! Yes, you have read it right: Yeast.  But don’t worry; this is still a blog about Science, not a baking one. And I won’t talk just about yeast, but also about other research done in the field I work in now (cancer) and can be interesting for you.

Conspiracy for not curing cancer

Cancer cells
Source: Wikipedia

Everything related to cancer and finding new drugs to cure it is a very interesting subject for many people. If you add a touch of big pharmaceutical companies conspiracy, the result is headlines like "Researchers find the cure for cancer but is not profitable for the pharmaceutical companies and it may never come to light". 

These last days several friends, readers of my blog and some twitter users have contacted me to ask about some news about a "wonder drug" that can cure cancer. These articles were talking about the fact that this drug has been in the market for a long time and it's not covered by a patent. Therefore, the big pharmaceutical companies are not interested in funding the research with this drug (that is going to cure cancer) because is not profitable for them. 

The so called "wonder drug" that "cures cancer" is called dichloroacetate (DCA). The DCA is a small molecule very similar to the acetic acid, but with two hydrogens substituted by two chloros. Interestingly, if we add one more chloro it turns into TCA, a compound that we use in the lab to make DNA and proteins insoluble.

In cancer, 1+1 are not 2

The Oxford dictionary defines cancer as "a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body". This idea is somehow far away from reality. 

Cancer is not A disease. Cancer is the name given to a range of specific illnesses resulting from one of our body's own cells growing out of control. There are many types of cancer and each one has different causes and symptoms, and requires different treatments.

Without plaits there is an explosion

As I've mentioned in my previous post Why using yeast for research?  one of  the applications of yeast for research is in the field of discovering new antifungal drugs. In order to do this the studies are focused on  the yeast cell wall. This cell wall is present in yeast and fungi but not in human cells.

So, to continue with my posts about basic research with yeast, today I'm going to write about a study done by some scientists I used to work with during my PhD in Salamanca.

This study is about a protein that transfers sugar chains, made by the cell, to other chains fostering the intertwining between them to form the cell wall. The formation of these "plaits" after the action of this protein helps the cell to be alive and not explode!!!!

Cell wall of S.pombe. Modified from C.Vazquez de Aldana

Colaboration in "Partiendo de Cero"

Well, well... today I have good news... this week  a journalist from a national radio station in Spain (Onda Cero) got in touch with me. She saw the interview in "El Mundo" and she loved it, so she wanted me to colaborate in the program "Partiendo de Cero" this last Saturday night.

This is a science communication program where researchers present their work in different fields. It's a place where listeners can get some knowledge about what is going on in labs and libraries and about the result of the financial investment in science that get to the researchers. I hope you like it despite it's in Spanish. You can listen to it here.

Fungi, do you eat me or I eat you?

I've always loved science communication and few years ago I started doing some small things about it.

Here you have the poster I presented to the first contest of science communication posters of the Spanish Young Researchers Association (Valencia, 2005).

I did it with my friends and colleagues Cristina Jimenez Ortigosa and Eva Pablo Hernando.

I hope you like it even if it's in Spanish.. we won the third prize!!!!

Why using yeast for research?

To start this blog properly I have to start talking about the organism I started working with in the lab. The organism I worked with when I started my research career in 2002 and I'm still working with: the yeast

The most common usage of yeast is to bake bread or brew beer. Or if the yeast are more complex (fungi) are meant to be eaten or to annoy you on your feet...

Well, actually there is much more behind a simple yeast. This has been an organism that is been used in biomedical research for decades already. Why? It's simple: it's a simple organism that is easier to work with than other organisms.