CRISPR is a very powerful technology. With any new technology, there are many important questions about how to use it responsibly. These questions can be quite difficult. And not everyone agrees on the best ways to use CRISPR or gene editing. Some ask if we should even use CRISPR at all. One major area, though not the only one, for those difficult questions has been around the use of gene editing in humans.
Could you use CRISPR to make a super hero? If gene editing can change the kinds of traits a person has, could you give them better, enhanced traits? What would they be like, and what could those enhanced people do?
The peppered moth lands on the bark of a tree trunk and opens its wings to rest. A hungry flycatcher bird that was close behind swoops down for a meal but loses sight of its prey. The moth blended in with the tree trunk. Blending in let it avoid the pesky flycatcher, so the moth lives to see another day. This may seem like a simple act of nature, but scientists are quite curious about how and why these sorts of interactions arise.
How much has the human brain changed from the brains of our ancient ancestors? Evolutionary psychologists think that the modern human brain has not changed much over the past 50,000 years, but other scientists disagree.
Ceara O'Brien
When looking for something to experiment with, Mendel turned to what was already available in his own backyard: the common pea plant.
The pea plant was perfect for Mendel's experiments for a number of reasons. First, pea plants were easy to grow and could be grown quickly in large numbers.
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Below is a list of phenotypes easily identified in humans that follow the pattern of Mendelian inheritance. Look at yourself in the mirror to see if you carry the dominant or recessive alleles for these traits.
The life and work of Gregor Mendel has some surprising pieces. Known as the father of genetics, his work was mostly unnoticed for 30 years after he published his famous paper. It is also possible this famous scientist suffered from test anxiety.
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From the time of Aristotle, scientists have been arranging living things in order to study and understand them. The science of classifying living things is called taxonomy.
In a classification, a taxon is a group, and the smallest taxon is the species. Usually, only members of the same species can mate with each other and produce young—or seeds, in the case of plants. There are some exceptions to this rule, but often the young of mixed species cannot reproduce or do not survive well in the wild.
