Forget your leggy blondes and busty brunettes, muscled hunks and sexy, skinny guys, the undisputed top model in the world of genetics is the tiny fruit fly.
Forget your leggy blondes and busty brunettes, muscled hunks and sexy, skinny guys, the undisputed top model in the world of genetics is the tiny fruit fly.
First discovered by sixteenth century doctor and botanist Johannes Thal, Arabidopsis has long been a firm favourite of geneticists who prefer their subjects to stay still in a pot.
Gregor Mendel discovered the principles of genetics. But it turns out that people are not peas… and even peas are not peas.
Exploring the story of the world’s first commercial GM food crop
The year is 1872. A young American doctor, George Huntington, has just started his career, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who were general practitioners in the prosperous Hamptons area of New York. Graduating from Columbia University the year before, at the tender age of 21, George is keen to make an impression on the medical world.
It may sound strange, but a chicken virus has won three Nobel prizes. Not bad work for a tiny bag of genes loitering on the edge of life.
What’s stronger than steel, tougher than bulletproof Kevlar, can withstand temperatures ranging from 200 Celsius down to minus forty, can stretch up to five times its length without breaking, and is made by squeezing goop out of an arachnid’s backside? The answer is of course spider silk – one of the most remarkable substances produced by a living organism that we know of.