Key to immune system could lie in the cheek!

A team led by Professor Phil Stephens in the School of Dentistry have performed an experiment and found out a group of new cells that "suppress the immune systems" function. The cardiff scientists have believed that the new cells that are created will help with the disorders of the immune system. They initially took cheek cells of the patients and cloned them. Then looking at the lab results they figured even a small amount could inhibit the lymphocytes in the immune system. The overall breakthrough of the experiment shows that cheeks cells have the potential for future immune system therapies.


I was intrigued by the results of this particular experiment because its quite amazing how cheeks cells can have such a potential to function in other parts of our body. I mean now cheeks cells are helping fight off diseases? How amazing is that? Maybe this might spark a new light in finding the cure for cancer as well. 

Controlling Mice

Scientist from the Scripps Research Institute have performed an experiment on mice where they have inputted harnessed neurons in the mice brains. They were initially  looking to find "How does the activity of the the brain represent the world" but neurologist Mark Mayford led a brand new study to use this experiment to "understand what goes wrong in situations where you have inappropriate perceptions. They started off by inserting two genes that manipulate memories in the mice which they tied to a natural gene that turns on and off in specific memories. 


I found this particular article interesting because just the brain itself is a very interesting topic to research. In addition, the way it works and everything just blows my mind. Its quite astonishing how the brain controls every aspect of your body and all the tiny components. Another reason I found this article interesting was because how it talked about memory and the active and inactive genes. 

K-Cast: How to use Prezi.

You need to use prezi for your Fast Plant lab presentation construction.  So, here's a little video that shows you how to do that.

After constructing your presentation, please embed it in a post on the blog with the title "<group name> Fast Plant Genetics Presentation." Give Information on how to do this is shown in the above video and also discussed (in general terms, the embedding process is similar regardless of item), here.  To move to HTML mode in blogger, you click the big HTML button on the top right of the composition window:

Give your post the labels lab, students, presentation, Fast Plants, genetics.