Michael Ralph Limmena, Health, Medicine & Veterinary Science editor Warning: This article contains details that some readers may find distressing With the discovery of the potential graves of 215 Indigenous children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School and a further 751 potential graves at the former Marieval Indian Residential School, many Canadians are horrified […]
by Rick Gierczak, guest contributor CRISPR-Cas9 technology was accidentally discovered in the 1980s when scientists were researching how bacteria defend themselves against viral infection. While studying bacterial DNA called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), they identified additional CRISPR-associated (Cas) protein molecules. Together, CRISPR and one of those protein molecules, termed Cas9, can locate […]
Malgosia Ip, Mathematics & Statistics editor Meet the Philippine tarsier: a tiny primate with giant eyes that’s native to the Philippine archipelago. Despite its small size, this little fella has been the subject of controversy for over a century – is it more closely related to the lemur (a so-called “wet-nosed” primate) or to apes […]
Robert Gooding-Townsend, Science in Society co-editor Can biotechnology bring back extinct species? If it can, should it? In her new book Rise of the Necrofauna, Britt Wray chronicles the nascent movement to bring back extinct species. She calls these resurrected creatures “necrofauna”, conjuring images of undead mammoths, passenger pigeons, and more. As compelling as the […]
Sunitha Chari, Biology & Life Sciences co-editor To understand the story of CRISPR-Cas9, you need to appreciate the significance of accidental discoveries in science. Imagine a world where Alexander Fleming did not discover a fungus capable of killing the bacteria on his forgotten bacterial plate. Or, imagine a world where Wilhelm Röngten did not […]
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