Science Monkey

There was a moment recently when I was flipping through my IB Chemistry book, just going back to basics for a bit of revision, when I came across something we all learn early on: atoms can neither be created nor destroyed . That line stopped me in my tracks. It felt so final. So absolute. But then I thought, wait—if they can’t be created or destroyed, where did they even come from in the first place? That one thought opened a whole door in my mind. If atoms are always there, or at least the energy that forms them is always there, then what did the Big Bang actually do? Did it create matter? No—it couldn’t have, right? So maybe it didn’t create matter or energy. Maybe it just spread it out . That was the first moment I began to rethink what cosmic expansion might actually mean. Where Does Matter Go When the Universe Expands? Cosmic expansion is a well-accepted idea, especially following the discovery that galaxies are moving away from each other. Scientists say that space itself is expa...

   🧬 Designing the Future: Superhuman Biology and the Limits of Perception What if we could code life the way we code software? What if we could build new organisms—cell by cell, gene by gene—by simply writing out a string of nucleotides and feeding it into a machine? Lately, I've been thinking deeply about the idea of  coding life  from scratch. I don’t mean inserting one gene into a plasmid and calling it a GMO. I mean  literally writing out a whole genome —ATGC by ATGC—assembling regulatory regions, coding sequences, non-coding DNA, and everything else a cell would need to become alive and self-sustaining. And then giving that blueprint to a system—an automated platform that synthesizes the DNA, inserts it into an empty cell, incubates it, and  grows life from instructions . That’s not science fiction. It’s where synthetic biology is heading. And it's only the beginning. The Dream: A Mission-Control for Life Imagine this: You enter a digital platform—so...

One of the fastest vaccines to be ever developed was for the COVID 19 virus, and along, a-raised a lot of fabricated deception. There are a lot of people around world dying due to COVID 19, mainly because of the fear to take the vaccines. It is very important to understand the working of these vaccines.  So without any delay let's first understand how many vaccines are there and how they function to boost immunity.  The below is the list of the currently authorised vaccines used for COVID 19 and their vaccine type. To know about the vaccines and types refer to the previous article on  Vaccines and their functioning.  Comirnaty (mRNA based vaccine) Moderna COVID 19 (mRNA based vaccine)  Covishield (Adenovirus vaccine)   Sputnik (Recombinant adenovirus vaccine) COVID 19 vaccine Janssen (non-replicating viral vector) CoronaVac (Inactivated vaccine) BBIBP-CorV (Inactivated vaccine) EpiVacCorona (Peptide / Subunit Vaccine) Convidicea (Recombinant vaccine fr...

A vaccine is a biological substance designed to boost immunity against an infection caused by bacterias and viruses. These vaccines function by training the immune system to a particular infection. To dwell further we should know the basics of how the immune system functions (for more details refer to the previous article on "The production of antibodies and their roles"). The immune system relies on immune cells called the lymphocytes; they produce the chemical substance known as antibodies along with a memory cell. These secreted antibodies are used to fight against the foreign invaders by attaching to the antigen of the pathogen. This antigen is the active part of the pathogen causing infections. The binding of the antigens and the antibodies suggest how the body fights the infection. With the case of vaccines the same antigen is injected into the body to create defences against specific diseases before you even get them. The simple concept of the working of the vaccines i...

  Antibodies are the defending soldiers of the immune system. In the context of biological science they are identified to be the Y - shaped protein structures that fight against the pathogens (foreign invaders). These biochemical protein structures are produced by a specific group of immune cells called the lymphocytes. The two types of lymphocytes associated with the production of antibodies are called the Helper T-cells and the B-cells. Before moving further, we should know that the defensive fight between the pathogen and antibodies occurs based on the chemical interaction between the protein structures on the surface. This binding surface protein is known as the active site. The particular name for an active site of a pathogen is known as an antigen.  When a pathogen enters the bloodstream it is consumed by a macrophage. This macrophage is another immune cell called the phagocyte, it functions to engulf the pathogen and digest some parts of its body. As the process of...

Most of us would have come across the immune system in our bodies but do we know where exactly its located? Or the fact of how it functions ? Well digging from the basic, what does the term 'immune' stand for? It is an action of resisting or protecting a system against a counter effect, which in the case of the human body refers to the defence mechanism against outside invaders (like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and toxins produced by microbes).  Now that we know the immune system corresponds to the defence mechanism of the human body where do you think it could be located? It is known that only a group of organs functioning together can make a system, so what are the organs making up the immune system? Some of the major organs that we should know to understand the working of the immune system are  the bone marrow, the thymus, the spleen, the lymphatic vessels and nodes and so. How does these organs help with defence should be the next question, where the answer is the production...

In the recent days VIRUS is a very common term used across the globe, but do we know what they are and where the come from?  Well, on a brief note viruses are biomolecules that lives or tends to activate only when present inside a living host. This means they are non living entities that develop a living symbiotic relation when present within a living organism. In simple term viruses are identified to be an incomplete cell or a combination of protein structures that lack the full potential of sustaining life. From this it can be stated that a virus body could have been a previously lived organism, or a degenerated cell structure. Thereby suggesting these structure to be a little or far related to an existing organism.  And hence leads to various hypothesis on its origin to classify the diverse group of viruses. Some of the very common classification of viruses are based on its morphological structures, and its genetic material type (DNA or RNA). The figure below depicts the hi...

 Wondered Why Cells Don't Grow After A Particular Size?  Answer : The concept of surface area to volume ratio... Surface area to volume ratio is an important concept to understand the limitation of cell size. One of the reasons limiting cell size growth is the metabolic rate and the exchange of excretory products. Curious what metabolism has got to do with cell size? It is all that plays the role of growth within cells.  Metabolism is a chemical breakdown of biomolecules to produce energy, during this reaction the build up of metabolic waste accumulates within the cells. In order to prevent accumulation the cell tents to excretes waste, hence this means there must be a larger surface area for faster rate of excretion. Volume on the other is proportional to the cell metabolic rate. Hence the relation of metabolic rate with volume and surface area is of key significants for a proper working of a cell. This could be seen in the following figure.  (Source :    ...

Molecular docking is a method of studying the interaction between two molecules known as receptor molecules and the ligand molecule. The purpose of this method of docking is to predict the structure of the complex formed after the interaction of the ligand and receptor molecule through computation method. To understand further it is necessary to know what are a ligand and a receptor molecule, in common terms they are both proteins. The receptor molecule is often justified as a small protein molecule that is mobile with the body system such as hormones, enzymes and so. Whereas the ligand molecule is a bigger protein complex with different combinations of proteins bonded together having different protein receptors within them.  This method of docking is a combination of different algorithms functioning together to compute the ligand-receptor interaction in all conformational sites possible of the protein.  Throughout this docking, the basic concept of geometrical and chemical ma...

 Epigenetics: The reprogramming of genes  By this time, I am definitely sure most of you have realised the change in our environment and lifestyle are the major causes of various diseases and disorders. Epigenetics is one such study probing to identify and reason the effect of environment and behaviour on gene expression. In other words, it is a study on the changes in the surrounding to lead to changes in gene expression.  Does this mean there is a change in the DNA sequence causing mutation? that is a definite NO. The DNA sequence is not changed in any way, but the process of reading all the sequence of genes is changed. Hence, this causes the functioning of the proteins to vary, thereby either strengthening or weakening the biological mechanism of an organism.  Gene expression functions by binary characteristics of either being turned 'on' or 'off'. This particular term gene is simply a portion of the long-chained DNA sequence coding for a particular protein. As k...

The challenge that humanity has not realised yet It is very disappointing that mankind is focusing on inventions more than conservations. People are not really ready to face the upcoming issue of climate change. If we haven't noticed, it has already started destroying a broad range of species to go extinct. Just consider the wildfire in the Amazon forest, it was the largest existing ecosystem with many species that went extinct without even being discovered. Well, you may be thinking, what does all of this have to do with conservation and climate change. To put it straight, those lives matter to bring a balance to our existence on Earth. If not for those species at least start conserving the nature that built you, or the future life you want to hold on this planet. Many people talk about patriotism to their country, their culture, their tradition, and etc. All of these are created within the human communities, but what about nature, and the Earth that created you to evolve to what ...