John Hewitt

It took the coronavirus for scientists to finally question the standard ethics of the placebo controlled study. Even the top mainstream science journals, like Nature, have now at long last finally admitted that no one should ...

In a recent paper in the journal Heart Rhythm, doctors describe how they turned off the potentially life-saving cardiac defibrillator function of an implanted Medtronic device simply by holding an iPhone 12 near it. The authors ...

By any measure, carbon-based life originates from carboxylation. That is to say, the coupling of atmospheric carbon dioxide to sugar. Carboxylation is also critical for mitochondria to function. There are five carboxylation ...

There is a sense in which the information encoded in a gene sequence can be represented by two bits per base pair location. The reality, however, is that this is far from a complete description. Although many academically ...

Insofar as variants for mitochondrial disease are supposed to be rare in the genome, don't think for even a minute that it can't happen to you. In fact, the closer one looks at the full mitonuclear genomes of normal folks, ...

Inasmuch as therapeutic options against coronavirus have been focused mainly on blocking the interaction between its spike protein and the ACE2 receptor on host cells, SARS-CoV-2 has several additional critical proteins that ...

Individuals with different genetic variants in their immune system components often have very different immune responses to Sars-CoV-2. They also will have different responses to vaccines. By the same token, newly emerged ...

Everybody loves Neandertals, those big-brained brutes we supposedly outcompeted and ultimately replaced using our sharp tongues and quick, delicate minds. But did we really, though? Is it mathematically possible that we could ...

Autoinflammatory syndromes are often the result of genetic mutations that ultimately compromise neutrophils, macrophages and other cells of the innate immune system. Rather than showering sufferers with broad immunosuppressives, ...

A lot has been written recently about the merits of different potential vaccines for SARS-CoV-2. "Merit" is generally assumed to mean that the vaccine will make us immune. But what, exactly, is immunity, and how would we ...

In order for tumors to successfully take hold and spread in the body, they typically must meet several developmental milestones. These include things like suppressing apoptosis, cultivating replication and angiogenesis, weaning ...

One of the most hotly contested issues in biology, or at least in mitochondrial biology, is determining which proteins can get into mitochondria. Having this kind of access essentially means a protein maintains a residence ...

NAD, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, probably needs no introduction. Together with its primary alter-egos NADH, NADP and NADPH, our private suite of pyridine-based nucleotides serve as hydride donors in some 400 enzymatic ...

It shouldn't be any secret that mitochondria can make their own fatty acids. The enzymes mitochondria use to do it were discovered decades ago. Unfortunately, only a few individuals among the biologically literate masses ...

One test of both the power and hunger of any individual or organization is the ability to master any and every new, sufficiently advanced technological opportunity that urgently presents itself to the world at large. For ...