John Hewitt

Lurking just beneath the surface of just about every common nursery rhyme is a complex record of times long gone. For example, the "crooked man" who "laid a crooked sixpence upon a crooked style" was none other than the great ...

Among the most easily recognizable features of any nervous system is the synapse. While the question of how synapses evolved has been a longstanding mystery, it can now largely be solved. In a nutshell, it appears that the ...

Transfer of mitochondria between cells is a ubiquitously occurring and now universally known phenomenon. For years, researchers have been serially demonstrating that one particular new cell type can transfer its mitos to ...

Deep sea alkaline hydrothermal vents have been theorized to be a place where life could have originated. The elevated temperature, alkaline pH, and unique vent action concentrate minerals and create local energetic gradients ...

Although most neurotransmitters perform the same basic role, they are not fungible. Each takes the baton from an incoming action potential and passes the neural message across the synaptic divide, yet each flavor of transmitter ...

In the natural course of events, multicellular organisms frequently need to eliminate cells. In humans, for example, superfluous tails, finger webbing, immune cells raised with wrongthink or neurons making inappropriate friends ...

Neuroregeneration entails not only neurogenesis, but also regrowth of lost connections and birth of non-neuronal cells. While adult neurogenesis in humans is only known to occur definitively in a few precisely circumscribed ...

The immune system uses its mitochondria to self-stimulate innate and adaptive responses to infection. Reactive oxygen species (ROS), immunogenic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and even whole mitochondria are locally mobilized ...

Mitonuclear interactions are believed to play an important role in the so-called "life history" of Eukaryotic organisms. Unfortunately, no one has come up with any sort of general concrete theory that can predict or even ...

Mitochondrial genetic engineering is the adaptation of genetic engineering techniques to specific mitochondrial problems. Although it is not common to be born with severe mitochondrial issues, we will all eventually have ...

One of the most puzzling aspects of cancer is how cells inevitably manage to reactivate precisely those few genes that can turn them into tumors. One example, discussed at length here yesterday, is the restoration of telomerase ...

Telomerase is a reverse transcriptase that uses an RNA template to synthesize telomeres. These repeat sequences bind special proteins that fold the ends of chromosomes back onto themselves to create a stable cap. When this ...

In contrast to unpaired organs like the heart, liver or appendix, the brain is recognizable as a roughly symmetrical organ. Consciousness is a seemingly unpaired phenomenon created by this paired organ. One way to explore ...

The immune system is host to a bewildering array of cell types. Traditionally, immunologists have classified cells in different states of activation according to the various interleukins, interferons and other cytokines they ...

There have been a lot of theories about what causes Alzheimer's disease. Many of them have given rise to experimental treatments of one form or another. None of them have worked much better than taking anything you might ...