• Medicine

    Saving babies in Gambia

    15/06/2019 - By 

    Being a pediatrician in Gambia is a challenge. In a country like Gambia, where hospital infrastructure can be a challenge, medical professionals still work tirelessly to help those in need, especially the most vulnerable, the neonates. One such heroine is Dr. Uduak Okomo, a pediatrician and infectious disease epidemiologist. Uduak is affiliated with MRC unit The Gambia as well as the London school of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Recently Uduak was also one of the proud winners of the OWSD – Elsevier Foundation awards for Early career women scientists in the developing world. I had the honor of interviewing Uduak,…

  • Microbiology

    Persistence pays off

    30/05/2019 - By 

    There are many reasons why antimicrobials are failing. The discovery of penicillin heralded a new age in treating infectious diseases. We finally had a means to cure infections specifically and successfully, and this created a whole slew of antimicrobial drugs, eradicating diseases that would otherwise almost certainly kill the patient. However, these days, infectious disease agents are finding ways to overcome and become resistant to the arsenal of antimicrobials that we have. Scientists are now scrambling not only to discover new antimicrobials, such as antibiotics, but also to discover the mechanisms by which bacteria, fungi and other infectious agents are…

  • Microbiology

    The Diversity of Fungi

    15/05/2019 - By 

    Fungi are absolutely cooler than you might think. Think of fungi, and images of cheese gone bad, mushrooms and that annoyingly persistent infection between your toes are sure to pop into your head. But fungi are so much more than that. The Westerdijk Insitute.(Photo credit: Thijs Rooimans) I interviewed Professor Pedro Crous, the director of the Westerdijk Institute in Utrecht, The Netherlands, to find out more about fungal diversity, and why it is so important to keep doing research in this extremely exciting area. Pedro is also instrumental in pioneering a citizen science project, where school children are asked to…

  • Alternative science

    Biohacking in Amsterdam

    29/04/2019 - By 

    Meet a completely new way of thinking about science! Think of the word “hack” and you might have negative mental images of illegal online activity, ala Mr. Robot. But the original idea of hacking was a positive one, where one would take things apart, understand how they work, and then work to improve them. Biohacking is defined by the Merriam – Webster dictionary as ” biological experimentation done to improve the qualities or capabilities of living organisms especially by individuals and groups working outside a traditional medical or scientific research environment”. And one institution in the Netherlands has taken this…

  • Space science

    An Absolute Space Girl

    07/04/2019 - By 

    What is it like to work at NASA? Are you as inspired by the movie Hidden Figures as I was? Meet Holly Griffith, a real life engineer who works at NASA. Listen to her talk about what she does at NASA, life as a #WomanInSTEM, and the most nerve wracking thing she has ever done at work! © Sheba AJ , Holly Griffith This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

  • Medicine - Microbiology

    On being a fungal physician

    10/03/2019 - By 

    Fungal infections are far more wide spread that we all think. The biggest challenge here is the proper diagnosis, treatment and prevention of these infections. I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. Andrej Spec, an infectious disease specialist at the Washington University School of Medicine. Here he talks about what he does, the kinds of infections he encounters and what the biggest challenges are for the field. Read also a piece I wrote in 2016 about general fungal infections and how they impact plants, wild life and human beings. © Sheba AJ , Andrej Spec This work is licensed…

  • Medicine - Microbiology

    My microbes made me do it!

    12/01/2019 - By 

    The brain gut connection has never been clearer. We have known for a long long time that we are covered in bacteria inside and out, to the count of 10 – 100 trillion indigenous microbial cells living in symbiosis. Until recently however, the actual identity of the species of bacteria that inhabit us was unknown. With the advent of advanced molecular biology techniques, like 16S RNA sequencing (at a much lower cost and very high speeds), we now know not only what lives in and on us, but also the differences between different body sites, different individuals, and also between…

  • General - Microbiology

    The Biology of Color

    24/12/2018 - By 

    How do cell biologists visualize cells? Visualization has always been an important component of cell and molecular biology. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek marveled at the diversity of “animalcules”, using a single lens microscope that he designed himself. Since then, microscopy has come a long way, but had still depended on the visible spectrum of light to illuminate cells and structures. That is, until the discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein, or GFP. GFP was discovered in the Aequorea victoria jellyfish, a small 238 amino acid protein, which glowed green when excited by light in the blue to ultraviolet range. The most exciting…

  • General

    Introducing We Talk Science!

    24/12/2018 - By 

    Our first podcast with Annelies and Sheba One of the things that has always concerned me about how and where people get their information these days is the assumed accuracy of said information. A lot of what we eat and do and how we behave is based on scientific information that is meticulously investigated everyday by scientists all over the world. The question has always been how to get this information out in a way that is easily understood, but also has supporting evidence that is accurate at that moment. That was when the idea of a community blog, science…