Category Archives: Biochemistry

Pick your poison

Medicine can be approached very differently based on one’s guiding principles. For example, one might take the proverb, “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” as the defining philosophy to medicine. This would be advantageous with respect to pathologies that are easily exacerbated by attempts to treat them. For example, a person taking antibiotics to […]

Atoms of Life

The chemistry of life is largely about organic chemistry, and organic chemistry boils down to recognizing the physics behind covalent bonds. In particular, when covalently bonded atomic nuclei have different numbers of protons, there are many physical consequences. Consider two similar molecules: ethanol and ethane. Their compositions differ in only one atom; oxygen. However, Oxygen […]

Does DNA lie?

Chemical information can travel in many ways, one of which is ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequences. In vivo, a complementary RNA sequence to DNA is used to create proteins. This process of DNA to RNA to protein is the fundamental basis of modern biochemistry. Information is a nuanced matter though. Often times, especially in eukaryotic organisms […]