cells

All living organisms on Earth are made up of living cells. All cells fall into one of the two major...

Extremophilic microorganisms are called extremophiles and live in environments considered hostile to most forms of life. Scientists have only discovered life in these extreme environments in...

What are extremophilic microorganisms? Let’s start by looking closer at microorganisms. All the organisms we know about on Earth are either cellular (by far the majority)...

Florence Nightingale, who was born 200 years ago, is rightly famed for revolutionising nursing. Her approach to caring for wounded soldiers and training nurses in the...

There are many different viruses. Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that cause diseases in birds and mammals. They are all similar in their shape, and...

Here are some interesting facts about forensics and DNA: New Zealand was the second country in the world to establish a databank of DNA profiles. Find...

Food’s macronutrients undergo chemical breakdown as they move through the digestive system. Learn more about the digestion process and its hormonal control with these explanations of...

What makes you, you and me, me? Genes or environment? How we look and act is the result of the interaction of our genes with our...

Microscopes let us view an invisible world – the objects around us that are too small to be seen with the naked eye. This timeline provides...

What’s going on inside us when we get sick? What do germs have to do with us getting sick? How does our body help us to...

Taking a closer look at our world Microscopes let us view an invisible world – the objects around us that are too small to be seen...

Medical researchers from the UK, the US and Canada have developed a new tool that identifies mutating genes to detect the early stages of oesophageal cancer....

In 2014, the World Health Organization announced the results of its first global report on antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance. They say that antibiotic resistance is...

An international team of researchers has identified the specific gene fault that causes a type of early-onset melanoma that accounts for about 3% of the cases...

Legionnaires’ disease is a severe form of pneumonia. In New Zealand, it is most commonly associated with gardening activities. Christchurch Hospital now tests every pneumonia patient...

Television dramas like CSI Bones and Criminal Minds – can create false expectations and impressions of forensic science, especially in the courtroom. Listen to this radio...

Find out how and why we use bacteria to improve our lives, and discover how the DNA revolution has led to new uses for bacteria. Making...

By choosing appropriate genes to introduce into bacteria, scientists have developed bacteria with characteristics that are useful to humans – such as the ability to make...

Like other organisms, bacteria use double-stranded DNA as their genetic material. However, bacteria organise their DNA differently to more complex organisms. Bacterial DNA – a circular...

The bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli for short) is crucial in modern biotechnology. Scientists use it to store DNA sequences from other organisms, to produce proteins...

The development and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is one of the greatest threats to human health today. The incorrect use of antibiotics, medical tourism and natural...

Using modern laboratory techniques, it is relatively easy to add pieces of foreign DNA to bacteria. To do this, scientists first package their DNA of interest...

Bacteria can produce foreign proteins from introduced genes, using their own gene expression machinery. Producing proteins in bacteria has greatly simplified the study of how proteins...

In a bacterial library, many different DNA sequences are introduced into the cells of a bacterial culture. Libraries are powerful tools for improving protein function. What...

Proteins are the key working molecules and building blocks in all cells. They are produced in a similar two-step process in all organisms called protein synthesis...