The simplest organic molecules out there are alkanes, which consist of one or more carbon atoms coated with hydrogen atoms. If you loop an alkane chain you get a cycloalkane. For today's post I'll be looking at a couple of cycloalkanes and their relevance to human health and biology at large.Cyclopropane is an unstable carbon...

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Alcohol-sensitizing drugs are used to ruin the experience of consuming alcohol. This can be helpful for people seeking treatment for alcohol dependence, but otherwise sounds absolutely terrible.After consuming an adult beverage, alcohol is absorbed into your bloodstream and carried to your liver. There, it is set upon by two enzymes. The first, alcohol dehydrogenase, converts...

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I'm Canadian and didn't grow up on a farm or anywhere particularly rural, so it shouldn't be surprising to learn I've never fired a gun. Furthermore, guns are very far down on the list of things I'm interested in learning more about. Yet sometimes tooling around the scientific literature leads to unexpected topics, such as...

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One of the main reasons we study how bacteria and fungi work is to minimize their negative effects on our health. These effects usually stem from being munched on (in other words, an infection) and/or being damaged by a toxic substance (being poisoned). While poisonings due to bacteria and fungi predominantly occur either in association...

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Curries, macaroons, piña coladas...where would we be without the captivating culinary contributions of the coconut?Confusingly, the word coconut can refer to the tree (Cocos nucifera), its fruit, the seed contained within the fruit, or the white edible flesh contained within the seed. Coconut trees are found along the coasts of tropical places. They're native to...

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Guacamole, while delicious, is actually fairly destructive. This is thanks in part to a compound called persin, which is present in the fruit and leaves of the avocado tree (Persea americana). Persin is an acetogenin (a type of polyketide) made via the same biochemical pathways the avocado plant uses to make its delicious fatty acids. In...

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Hey, it's a holiday-themed post!Let's talk about hearts and how they get broken. Literally, with drugs.When we swallow a pill, it's often to help address a problem we're experiencing with a particular body part. An aching head or a sore throat, for example. The pill breaks down in our guts and we absorb the drug...

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Way, way up in northwestern Canada (on the lower east side of Cape Bathurst, Northwest Territories), where the mainland meets the Arctic Ocean, a 30 km stretch of seacoast has been smoldering away for hundreds if not thousands of years.The Smoking Hills, named by the explorer John Franklin during one of his early 19th century...

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Within the ground beneath our feet lie dark cavities of various shapes and sizes. They're home to pale and eyeless creatures living a midnight existence. Natural holes in the ground, filled with air and/or water, can be roughly categorized into three types based on the particular habitat they provide for subterranean organisms:(1) Caves are large,...

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Escherichia coli is a two-faced little slimeball.As is often the case with bacteria, it comes in many varieties. Some, such as the infamous O157:H7 serotype, can make people very ill. Once inside us (usually via contaminated food or water), they do harmful things like pump out toxins and feast upon the walls of our intestines. We're...

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