John Hewitt

Psychoactive drugs include all manner of hallucinogens, deliriants, hypnotics and psychedelics. But what is a psychedelic, really? Insofar as many in the field are now moving toward bringing new molecules with presumably ...

There are many genes, or at least markers of one sort or another within our DNA sequences, that have been associated with height. By some estimates the number could be thousands. However, finding those select genes that have ...

A viable molecular explanation for the origin of compact myelin of vertebrates has been a long time coming. While many invertebrates are certainly capable of wrapping their axons with crude glial extensions, none can manage ...

Huntington's disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disease characterized by expansion of the number of trinucleotide CAG repeats in the first exon of the HTT gene encoding the protein huntingtin. While ...

The homotrimeric spike glycoprotein (S) from SARS-CoV-2, particularly its S2 subunit, is a fusion protein extraordinaire. It can fuse viral particles to cells and also fuse cells to cells to create multifarious syncytia among ...

Cobalt sits in the center of the corrin ring of vitamin B12 and the important cobalamins we derive from it. Perhaps surprisingly, only two of our enzymes bother to use these painfully constructed and meticulously channeled ...

Transposable elements, or jumping genes, are now known to be responsible for many human diseases. Keeping them repressed by methylation, RNA binding, or the attentions of the innate immune system is a full-time jump for ...

One of the biggest challenges in biology today is to explain the structure of cristae, the inner membranes of mitochondria. An explanation in this case is a set of principles to predict what form the cristae will take after ...

Students of physiology are invariably taught that the primary function of myelin is to insulate nerves. In particular, to make action potentials more efficient by increasing the thickness of the membrane and thereby decreasing ...

Around half of the genome is made up of transposable elements or 'jumping genes' that derive from ancient viral integrations. They persist in various states of decay like an old fashioned 'pull your own' junkyard where parts ...

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing recently reported intriguing new evidence for a possible mouse origin of the Omicron variant. Their paper, posted on the BioRxiv preprint server, was quickly picked ...

"The First Cell" is the title of a revolutionary book written in 2019 by oncologist Azra Raza from the Columbia University Medical Center. In it, she calls for a radical shift in cancer funding away from its current predominant ...

Many big pharma companies were able to roll out vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in record time by retooling their existing experimental mRNA gene therapies to carry a new payload. Whereas these cancer vaccines originally coded ...

Insofar as the war on cancer used to be fought by surgical strikes, chemical warfare and nuclear bombardment, today's and tomorrow's cancer battles are fought through information warfare. The treatment of blood cancers, in ...

Researchers from Hefei University of Technology in China have recently published an exhaustive review in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry on emerging roles of small kinase inhibitors in the treatment of diseases. In contrast ...