Thursday, January 17, 2013


My name is Sarah Kempel and I am a sophomore in Molecular and Cellular Biology with a probable minor in Anthropology.  I am very excited to take this class because I love diseases in every form.  My bookshelf is filled with books on epidemics and plush microbes.  More than anything I am curious to learn about evolution and disease from an anthropological stand point as opposed to a biological one.

Before this assignment, I had never (at least knowingly)  read a scientific blog.  I was surprised to find how many there were.  Three blogs that I found the most enlightening were these:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2013/01/10/fake-feces-to-treat-deadly-disease-scientists-find-they-can-just-make-sht-up/

http://www.medpundit.blogspot.com/

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/01/hair-and-eye-color-can-now-be-determined-for-ancient-human-skeletons/

The last blog was absolutely fascinating.  It is slightly off topic but shows the importance of DNA even centuries later.  A group of researchers from Poland and the Netherlands have gained the ability to determine hair and eye color of ancient skeletons.  In order to test their accuracy  they tested it on a former Polish Prime Minister who died in a plane crash in the early 1940's.  The description of a blond hair, blue eyed man matched the photo graphs.  I find it fascinating that DNA has evolved to become so stable that we can analyze it lifetimes after it has stopped replicating.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Sarah! Just a quick note that you provided blog *posts* rather than *blogs,* which is what the assignment prompt requested. I'm just letting you know for next time.

    ReplyDelete