Niko McCarty.
@NikoMcCarty
Science. Biology. Progress. Founding Editor @AsimovPress / Subscribe!
This is an ongoing thread for my series, "30 Essays to Make You Love Biology." ❤️🧬 I'll pin it on my profile.
We just launched Issue 07 of @AsimovPress! Our opening article aims to separate myths from facts about the origins of aspirin. (Hint: The drug is not as ancient as you probably think.)
Uncertain Origins of Aspirin 💊 It's hard to know where this incredible pain reliever actually came from. Willow bark tea? Hippocrates? Or John Reverend Stone? The trail is littered with bad record keeping and obscure translations. Our latest explains what we know for sure.🔻
Excited to share our new work—PhageMaP, a high-throughput platform for genome-wide knockout screening in diverse phages across multiple hosts. PhageMap reveals essential, non-essential and conditionally-essential genes, interactors with host anti-phage defenses & enables rational…
Today, we @CultivariumFRO are launching PRISM, an AI assistant for what actually happens in the lab. Learn more here: blog.cultivarium.org/p/prism-captur…
An AI-ready lab notebook for life science doesn't need to be complex or expensive. At @Pioneer__Labs, we use a lab management system built entirely with generic software tools. It's simple, cheap, and easy to modify. See our now how-to post ⬇️
Here is a story that most people don’t know about Charles Darwin. In 1832, during the early months of his voyage aboard the HMS Beagles, Darwin was docked at Cape de Verd, off the coast of West Africa, and gathered some dust into a little tube. The dust had scratched the…
WHAT MAKES A MATURE SCIENCE. "There are exceptions to every rule" is a common phrase in biology. But what if we could reorganize biology such that this wasn't the case? In a new article, @mold_time argue we should try, even if “biology” is too broad of a field for this to work.
In 1931, Stanford doctors tested whether DNP—an explosive chemical used during WWI—could help people lose weight. Daily DNP administration led to a 40% increase in metabolic rate. Patients lost 0.9 kg per week on average; comparable to Ozempic. From our latest article.🔻
If not for Caesar, the Gauls would have coalesced into a united state in the face of growing threats from Rome and the Germans. In fact, any general less competent than Caesar would’ve lost to Vercingetorix at Alesia and thus brought that very state into being. This united…
What is your most controversial historical take? Mine is that the Aztecs would have been destroyed within 2 or 3 generations even without the Spanish arriving in Mexico
In ovo sexing is one of the biotechnologies that I've long been most excited about. And now you can buy eggs from in ovo sexed hens in the U.S. This is a fantastic milestone for animal welfare.
In-ovo sexing is officially available to American consumers! This is a particularly high-leverage time for the technology since many other companies will be looking to see how these first eggs perform with consumers before deciding whether to adopt the tech themselves.
Unexplained deaths amongst French workers, during World War I, led to the development of "mitochondrial uncoupler" drugs. These drugs were roughly as effective (but more dangerous than) modern Ozempic. Brilliant essay by @Atelfo.
French munitions workers during WW1 mysteriously began losing weight. One of their explosive chemicals, called DNP, caused it. This became one of the first effective weight-loss drugs. But a newly-established FDA banned it for safety reasons in the late 1930s. By @Atelfo 🔻
I really enjoyed @NikoMcCarty's piece with Hani @genophoria. "AlphaFold is important because it says something about a protein's function by predicting its structure. Similarly, if two cells have the same gene expression patterns, then they probably have the same function,…