Biologists Being Basic

Join Biologists Being Basic (B3) hosts Paige, Joe, Gina and Robyn as we take a break from published research articles and ask each other science-based questions from Reddit! See how our scientists and non-scientist team members try to think through and answer questions outside their expertise. We talk, we goof, and we learn new things as we explore the realms of science reddit.

Further Resources:

Thanks AskScience Reddit and its users for the questions we answered: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/

If you are curious about the topics we discussed and want more info, please see the following resources! There are some amazing scientists and science communicators who explain some of these topics.

The Science of Melanin Magic by Raven Baxter (@ravenscimaven) is a fun and entertaining look at melanin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dt1NYLqMqM

For more of her work, check out her webpage: https://www.scimaven.com/

...or her youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqRkU0Z4V6UjDKnbc5brl8A

Want to get to know your moles better? Visit the NIH to learn about moles and how they form: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/moles

...and the American Academy of Dermatology for the ABCDEs of melanoma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir90SPorFfQ&feature=youtu.be

Learn more about alcohol dehydrogenases in humans and primates from this great Science Magazine news article: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/ability-consume-alcohol-may-have-shaped-primate-evolution

...or go straight to the scientific paper: https://www.pnas.org/content/112/2/458

Learn more about the alcohol tolerance of tree shrews from this second great Science Magazine news article: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2008/07/now-thats-party-animal

...or go straight to the scientific paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2492458/

Still wondering how animals reach islands? BBC has your back with these possible explanations: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170213-mega-landslides-help-explain-how-life-reaches-remote-islands

Scientific American answers how the same fish can end up in different lakes: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-fish-species/

We mentioned Charles Darwin and his incredible book, On the Origin of Species, which is available online for free: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2009/2009-h/2009-h.htm#link2HCH0012

If you’re curious about Darwin and his research, but want a shorter segment, check out BBC’s amazingly animated video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOk_0mUT_JU&t

Lastly, if you’re still thinking about those cute lil chubby bugs, check out Popular Science’s answer to the question: https://www.popsci.com/article/science/ask-anything-can-insects-get-fat/

...and this scientific review about the insect fat bodies that we mentioned: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3075550/

If you have any questions or comments you can email us at [email protected] or find us on twitter or instagram (@biosbeingbasic). See our website for more details (http://biosbeingbasic.podomatic.net).

In the final episode of our COVID-19 mini-series, B3 hosts Joe and Robyn discuss an exciting paper looking at SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Testing. They are joined by UCSF scientists Cody Mowery and Professor Jeff Wittman, and our fabulous non-scientist guests Jacqueline Fabius and Lauren Weiser.

This paper took a good look at the performance of some of the first antibody tests to come on the market, and in this episode we discuss what these findings are and what they mean for the public.

All of the findings we talk about today can be found on the COVID-19 Testing Project webpage here: https://covidtestingproject.org/ and in the recently published peer-reviewed manuscript in Nature Biotechnology titled “Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 Serology Assays Reveals a Range of Test Performance”.

Additional publicly available resources or articles discussed in the episode:

Apoorva Mandavilli’s article in the New York Times covering the Nature Biotechnology paper: “Coronavirus Antibody Testing: Can you Trust the Results?”

Ed Young’s article in the Atlantic on Immunology: “Immunology is Where Intuition Goes to Die”

The FDA’s List of Emergency Use Authorization for Diagnostic and Serology Testing: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-emergency-use-authorizations-medical-devices/vitro-diagnostics-euas#individual-serologic

Note that the science on COVID-19 is ongoing and guidelines do change. For the most up-to-date IDSA guidelines for serology testing, please see this website: https://www.idsociety.org/practice-guideline/covid-19-guideline-serology/.

For a truly excellent quick demonstration of False Positive/Negative as applied to antibody tests, please check out Mona Chalabi’s visual explainer on instagram

And if you are interested, check out back in April: House Oversight Committee seeks changes to FDA serology test policy

If you have any questions or comments you can email us at [email protected] or find us on twitter or instagram (@biosbeingbasic).

In the second episode of our three-part COVID-19 mini-series, B3 hosts Mehdi and Robyn are joined by our guests Gina and Andrew for an exciting discussion about how the virus hijacks host signaling networks. We focus on a new paper from QBI scientists that uses a special systems biology technique to track changes in protein phosphorylation of infected cells, and to identify key regulatory proteins called kinases that manage these intracellular signalling events. You can find the original peer-reviewed journal article that was published in Cell here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420308114

In this episode we talk about the pathways that are activated during infection with SARS-CoV-2, including pathways that lead to a reorganization of cytoskeletal elements that help the cell grow new tentacle-like protrusions, called filopodia, for the virus to escape from. For those who are interested in what this looks like, you can find colored versions of the electron microscopy images from the paper on our website (biologistsbeingbasic.com) or our instagram.

If you have any questions or comments you can email us at [email protected] or find us on twitter or instagram (@biosbeingbasic).

B3 hosts Michael and Robyn are joined by our guests, Megan and Alexa, to talk about recently published research that takes a look into the biology of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. We talk about the experiments we use to decipher the molecular mechanisms of infection and then look at how this information can inform clinical researchers looking for new drug treatment options.

You can find the original peer-reviewed journal article that was published in Nature here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2286-9

If you have any questions or comments you can email us at [email protected] or find us on twitter or instagram (@biosbeingbasic). See our website for more details (biologistsbeingbasic.com).

In our introductory episode, our Biologists Being Basic (B3) hosts Paige and Robyn sit down with guests Devin and Gina to answer the question, "what is basic research?". We talk about our roles as basic biology researchers and how we try to communicate our work to the world.

If you have any questions or comments you can email us at [email protected] or find us on twitter (@biosbeingbasic) or instagram (@biosbeingbasic). See our website for more details (biologistsbeingbasic.com).