English For Biologists

​​#microbiology

An ancient killer that is still among us 🦠

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis (TB), an infectious disease that most commonly affects the lungs. It spreads through the air when people with pulmonary TB cough, sneeze or even speak.

One of its distinctive features is a lipid-rich cell envelope containing mycolic acids. It contributes to its characteristic ability to retain a stain even after treatment with acid-alcohol, which normally removes dye from other bacterial cells.

📜 TB is far from a modern disease. Scientists have detected DNA from the M. tuberculosis complex in ancient Egyptian human remains dating back thousands of years. Yet the bacterium itself was identified only in 1882 by Robert Koch.

🔬 Want to see what M. tuberculosis actually looks like? Check out this microscopy link.

​​#neuroscience

A magnetic helmet that reads your brain like an open book

OPM-MEG is a non-invasive brain imaging technology using optically pumped magnetometers instead of traditional SQUID sensors. OPM sensors work at room temperature without cryogenic cooling, making them small, lightweight, and wearable directly on the scalp. This minimizes distance to the signal source and allows movement during scanning. It suits infants and any head size. Applications include studying brain activity and presurgical mapping.

Advantages of using OPM-MEG:
▪️higher sensitivity and spatial resolution;
▪️uniform coverage and adaptability;
▪️freedom of patient movement;
▪️lower operating costs.

The main limitation is its high sensitivity to external magnetic interference, which requires careful magnetic shielding. It has also only recently left the lab and is not widely adopted, so access is limited.

Hit 🔥 for more on tech prospects in brain analysis!

​​#phrase_of_the_day

A can of worms (укр. скринька Пандори). This means a situation that, once investigated or dealt with, unexpectedly creates many new problems or complicated questions.

The discovery of an unusual mutation opened a whole can of worms, raising questions about its evolutionary origin, clinical significance, and possible effects on other genes.

#Weekly_quiz

Sunday was marked in red on the calendar since it's Teachers' Day; get ready to write down the correct answer to the question 📝 🧑‍🏫

​​#biotechnology

What if your everyday plastic bottle wasn't a centuries-old hazard, but a biodegradable package grown entirely by microbes?

Metabolic engineering lets E. coli and yeast synthesize polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs)—natural biopolymers matching traditional plastics.
◾ Using KEGG and MetaCyc, researchers wire custom metabolic pathways to turn agricultural waste into high-grade biopolymer inside microbial cells.
◾ Scaling industrial bioreactors harvests these polymers, which fully decompose in soil within months. High costs still limit mass adoption, but 2035–2050 targets full replacement.

Explore the KEGG Database to see how these cellular assembly lines work, or read more about bioplastics here.

Would you pay 2x more for packaging that composts in 3 months? Synthetic PHA or plastic-eating bacteria: which one saves us first?

​​#microbiology

When bacterial communication is disrupted 🦠📡

In E. carotovora, AHL molecules are more than just chemical messages. When AHL reaches a certain concentration, it triggers a regulatory response that changes gene expression and coordinates specific bacterial processes.

If AHL is destroyed by an enzyme such as AHL-lactonase, its concentration remains below the required threshold. As a result, some quorum-sensing-controlled genes are no longer activated properly, and coordinated behaviours can be reduced.

Importantly, this does not necessarily kill the bacterial cells. They can continue growing and carrying out essential metabolic processes, but without some of the collective responses controlled by quorum sensing.

If AHL production resumes and the signal accumulates again, the system can become active once more. So quorum sensing is a flexible regulatory mechanism rather than a process essential for bacterial survival. 🧬

​​#genetics

🔬🧬SNPs as Genetic Markers

A Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) is a single-nucleotide variation typically found in at least 1% of a population. As the most common type of genetic variation, SNPs occur roughly every 300–1,000 nucleotides in humans. Scientists detect them using sequencing, microarrays, PCR.

Most SNPs lie in noncoding regions and don’t directly alter proteins. However, they can be useful markers of disease risk. in Genome-Wide Association Studies, researchers use tag SNPs: variants that may have no functional effect themselves but are inherited together with a nearby causal variant due to genetic linkage. By tracking them, researchers can therefore identify carriers of a disease-associated variant, making SNPs useful for studying susceptibility to conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Need a refresher on the methods? See our post on microarrays and PCR.😉

​​#neuroscience

Social Influence

Another person’s gaze captures our attention — but their influence on the brain does not end there.

Social presence can change how the brain processes rewards, errors, decisions, and performance. When we observe others’ choices, neural systems involved in social cognition and reward processing integrate their behavior with our expectations.

This helps explain conformity: disagreement with a group can act as a social prediction error, increasing the likelihood that we adjust our decisions.
Through social facilitation, the presence of others can enhance well-learned responses while impairing difficult or unfamiliar tasks.

Meanwhile, theory of mind allows us to model what others may know, believe, or intend.

Another person is not simply part of our environment — their presence becomes information the brain uses to recalibrate behavior.

How much of your behavior is really independent of other people?

​​#phrase_of_the_day

A chain reaction (укр. ланцюгова реакція). This describes a series of events in which one event causes the next, which then causes another, producing a continuing sequence of effects.

A single mutation can trigger a chain reaction of molecular changes that ultimately disrupts the normal functioning of a cell.

#Weekly_quiz

Time for a quick quiz!)
How much do you remember from this week’s posts? 😉

​​#cell_biology

A single cell that moves like Flash

Scientists have discovered how the single-celled organism Spirostomum ambiguum can contract at an extraordinary speed of about 100 body lengths per second. The key to this movement is a unique protein network called a myoneme, which surrounds the cell like a fishnet.

Using electron and immunofluorescence microscopy, researchers found that calcium ions trigger contraction. The myoneme contains the proteins centrin and Sfi1. When calcium is present, Sfi1 changes its structure and makes the network tighten, causing the whole cell to shrink rapidly. Unlike human muscles, Spirostomum does not rely on ATP to power this contraction.

Scientists are now investigating how the cell resets this mechanism and repeats the movement. Understanding it could help researchers develop ATP-independent artificial muscles and contribute to future biotechnology.

​​#microbiology

What if bacteria could jam each other’s conversations? 🦠📡

Some bacteria can interfere with quorum sensing by destroying the chemical signals their neighbours use to communicate. This phenomenon is known as quorum quenching.

A striking example involves Bacillus thuringiensis and the plant pathogen Erwinia carotovora. Erwinia uses AHL molecules to coordinate the expression of traits involved in plant infection. Bacillus, however, produces an enzyme called AHL-lactonase, which breaks down these signals before Erwinia can use them.

🔸In co-culture, B. thuringiensis reduced AHL accumulation and strongly decreased the soft-rot symptoms caused by E. carotovora in potato tissue — without stopping the pathogen from growing.

But what happens when the AHL signal is destroyed? 🧬 Try to predict which bacterial behaviours could change — then check the answer in the next post!

​​#genetics

What happens when one gene is switched off at the very beginning of human development?

🧬base editing (a DNA-editing method that can change individual bases without creating double-strand breaks)
🧬 NANOG
🧬 Embryogenesis

Scientists used base editing to investigate the role of NANOG, a gene crucial for early embryonic development. Using the adenine base editor ABE8e, researchers disrupted NANOG in human embryos without cutting both DNA strands.

The edited embryos still reached the blastocyst stage, but their epiblast — the cell population that forms the embryo itself — developed poorly. Instead, cells preferentially adopted programmes associated with extraembryonic tissues, including the placenta and yolk sac.

Single-cell RNA sequencing revealed major changes in gene expression. Interestingly, human embryos retained primitive endoderm differentiation, highlighting an important difference between human and mouse development.

Would you have expected NANOG to have such a specific role in early human development?

​​#neuroscience

Another person’s presence and gaze profoundly alter your behavior

Direct gaze activates subcortical systems, such as the amygdala and superior colliculus, signaling social evaluation or threat. By contrast, averted deictic gaze triggers reflexive gaze following through the superior temporal sulcus and frontoparietal attention networks. This happens fast, automatically, and independently of the task. Being observed can also heighten social evaluation and promote caution.

Gaze following appears foundational for theory of mind – inferring others’ beliefs and intentions. Deficits in these processes are associated with autism spectrum disorders. Furthermore, women may respond more strongly than men on average, partly because testosterone can suppress gaze following.

Additionally, studies in primates confirm that gaze following precedes speech and the development of an understanding of others. Thus, gaze is a window into social cognition and linking perception.

Our next post will expand this topic further. So stay tuned!🤭

​​#phrase_of_the_day

Go against the grain (укр. йти проти течії). This means to behave or think in a way that is different from what is generally accepted or expected.

The researcher went against the grain by challenging the widely accepted hypothesis about how the gene regulates cell division.