Molecules are abstract objects, so it’s easy to talk about one using the single property we know about it. Penicillin cures infections. Chlorophyll harvests sunlight. Cocaine gets you high. Thinking this way keeps everything simple and makes it easy to tell a story about them. Referring to molecules by a single characteristic keeps things simple. Unfortunately, nature hates simplicity. A molecule doesn’t know the role we’ve given it. It wiggles blindly through solution, crashing into…

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My last couple posts have become longer than I expected. I’m going to break the pattern this week. I’m starting a recurring series of posts containing brief thoughts, centred on a single topic in the molecular biosciences. These posts will be unorganized, full of sarcasm, conjecture, and the occasional opinion. I’m calling it: Untranslated Elements. Today, CRISPR technologies.   For a brief background, CRISPR/Cas9 is a gene editing technology developed from a bacterial system for…

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My research focuses on antibiotics – specifically antibiotic resistance. Last week I gave a seminar on my work, which was followed by some excellent questions about the origins and evolution of resistance. While I don’t personally get my hands dirty studying molecular evolution or microbial ecology, I think about these topics often, for a couple...

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A molecule is intangible. It’s too small to see, too small to feel. Trillions could fit on the sharp end of a pin. These strange entities lives in a world very different from our own, at the boundary between quantum uncertainty and statistical chaos. Many processes in chemistry, biology, and medicine depend on our understanding...

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If you cant defeat your enemies by force, defeat them with subterfuge. Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, lives by this mantra. While other disease-causing bacteria mount an all-out assault on the body, the tuberculosis bacteria lay low, hide, and slowly kill us from the inside out. M. tuberculosis is a master of stealth...

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Hi! Welcome! If you’re reading this, you’ve found your way to my tiny corner of the web, where I will be writing on a regular basis about the things that excite and challenge me in science (with regular digressions, as mood strikes). I hope you might join me for the ride. You can also find...

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