Name dropping!
April 9th, 2024 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
TIU: Top It UpWhat’s this? As our skin ages, there will be two significant changes: a decrease in the production of growth factors and a fall in the supply of nutrients from the rest of the body. This means that cell division will slow down for lack of intsructions to devide and because of the lack of the wherewithal to allow cell to grow and divide. This is the double whammy that will accelerate skin aging. You will not notice a difference in your teen years but you may in your twenties and certainly in your thirties. What will you see? Thinning of the skin, wrinkles, laxity. Oral vitamins will…
February 4th, 2024 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
I am happy to report that much of the buzz about cannabidiol (CBD) is fact, at least the part that concerns its skin benefits. Let’s look into the science of CBD and the science of skin and their interaction. The most important thing? There are receptors in the skin that recognize CBD. The skin is one of the many organs equipped with the endocannabinoid system. You may have heard about anandamine. Discovered by Raphael Mechoulam in 1992, this is one excellent detective story. He said: if humans have receptors for cannabinoids CB1, and CB2, there has to be a natural chemical in the body that binds to those receptors. Mechoulam…
September 28th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Using information from folk medicine and old pharmacology, Julius elucidated what happens when our bodies encounter chili peppers. In 1997, Julius and his colleagues cloned and characterized the transient receptor potential V1 (TRPV1), the molecule that detects capsaicin, the chemical in chili peppers that makes them “hot.” They found that TRPV1 also detects noxious heat (thermoception). TRPV1 is part of a large family of structurally related transient receptor potential (TRP) cation channels. Animals lacking TRPV1 lose sensitivity to noxious heat and capsaicin. It may seem obvious, but these receptors don’t exist simply to allow us to enjoy Mexican food; they are responsible for a body function that allows us to…
June 2nd, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Her life reads like a TV series, how come nobody produced it yet? In fact, there was both a musical and a comedy inspired by her life. Chaja Rubinstein was born in 1870 to a Polish Jewish family. She was lucky to be was born in a city, Krakow (Lesser Poland) then part of the Austria-Hungary empire, at a time when there was some tolerance towards minorities. She had a good education and even started medical school. The only part that she liked was labwork and not dealing with illness and death. Late in the 19th-century doctors did not have many tools, and being a doctor was not a satisfying…
January 4th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
What is sustainability? It is a relatively new word, plus its meaning has been changing with time. Originally, “sustainability” meant making such use of natural, renewable resources like a forest so that people could continue to rely on their yields in the long term. In other words, using a resource in such a way that it never runs out. Nowadays it means keeping the balance between environment, equity, and economy. In any of its uses, it’s an admirable aim and looks great in advertising. Because the meaning of the word changes with the source, it’s a good idea to ask what the person (or the advertiser) means by it. How…
December 28th, 2021 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Robert H. Grubbs (1942-2021), who shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry said “there was great joy in making new molecules”. An efficient method of carbon-carbon double bond formation was uncovered over 50 years ago when scientists Robert Grubbs, Yves Chauvin, and Richard Schrock began their pioneering research into metal-catalyzed reactions. Their catalytic reaction is known as olefin (or alkene) metathesis. Schrock discovered that two metals, tungsten, and molybdenum, were effective catalysts in producing metathesis, which means “changing places.” The metals caused carbon bonds in molecules to break apart and then rearrange themselves in different ways, creating new chemical bonds. In 1992, Dr. Grubbs improved the process by demonstrating that…
October 7th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Dr. Doudna and Dr. Charpentier created is a system to edit DNA as desired. This optimized tool is based on the research of many scientists who worked before the two Nobel Prize awardees and was inspired by an innate immune system that is present in very primitive bacteria. This system has already been used to edit genetic information in cultured human cells, yeast, and plants. Some bacteria defend themselves by using the CRISPR system to recognize the genes of an attacking virus and destroy them using an enzyme called Cas9 that slices the viral genetic material. How to use this amazing tool? If there is a genetic flaw that results…
February 15th, 2020 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Stanley Cohen was 97 when he died on February 5th, 2020. This is the Stanley Cohen who discovered epidermal growth factor. He followed the path of so many immigrants and children of immigrants and benefited the USA and humanity with lives of extraordinary achievement. From Wikipedia Cohen was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 17, 1922. He was the son of Fannie (née Feitel) and Louis Cohen, a tailor. His parents were Jewish immigrants. Cohen received his bachelor’s degree in 1943 from Brooklyn College, where he had double-majored in chemistry and biology. After working as a bacteriologist at a milk processing plant to earn money, he received his Master…
September 28th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
“Breakthrough’s” James Allison is having fun and curing cancer The Nobel laureate talks about his new documentary and the cancer treatment revolution Mary Elizabeth Williams September 27, 2019 10:00PM (UTC) Dr. James Allison doesn’t look the part. The diehard Willie Nelson fan has an unruly head of gray hair and plays harmonica with his blues band. He’s been described in the press as a “carousing Texan.” He’s also a Nobel laureate, a man whose unwavering faith in and curiosity about the human immune system led to one of the most revolutionary developments in cancer research in over a century. Oh, and he saved my life. Eight years ago, after a…
September 20th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Some scientists, when doing their research, realize that something is missing. Few of them can develop something new, a new method, a new tool that allows them to do that experiment they want to do. Even fewer of them find that their innovation becomes a useful tool for many other scientists. Such developments are revolutionary because they can advance research in many fields. I was fortunate to meet some of these people. So please, let me show off! I will add more names later on. Photo: Norman Good (1917-1992) Buffers are crucial tools in biochemistry and physiology because life depends on regulation of pH (acidity of the medium). Buffers are…
August 17th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
I would choose two: Drs Luis Leloir and Carlos Cardini. They were also among the very best scientists I ever met, and leaders of a scientific group that achieved Nobel prize fame. They were also great at promoting women and respectful and kind. From one of my articles: “Although the basic studies in starch biosynthesis were carried out in England during the 1940s and led to the discovery of phosphorylase and Q enzyme (branching enzyme), the basis of our modern ideas originated in Argentina from the work of Luis F. Leloir and Carlos E. Cardini. During the late 1950s, they established that nucleoside diphosphate glucose was involved in the synthesis…
August 17th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
I never felt jealous of Elizabeth Holmes, the infamous founder of Theranos, a company that sold science fiction as health care (Walgreens bought into it). Her photo on magazine covers did not impress me. I am human, I do get jealous of scientists that achieve something important and useful or just beautiful, because sometimes experiments are beautifully done and they become more than science, almost a work of art. But in the case of E.H., I knew that she was trying to con the world. I have many decades of biochemistry on me and I know how to analyze scientific (or pseudo-scientific) talk. I still resent the fact that so…
July 11th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
How come Jonatan Funtowicz is so interested in ROS*? Maybe by osmosis? He does not remember it but he was a quasi godson of a pioneer of the ROS* toxicity field, Dr Rebeca Gerschman, Dr Gerschman (1903-1986) was an Argentinian scientist who, together with Daniel Gilbert, discovered oxygen toxicity, a problem that later developed on a whole new field of research, that of reactive oxygen species and aging. She helped me when I was a budding scientist doing research with Rodolfo Sanchez on the effect of oxygen on seed germination . At the time (after Second World War II), oxygen was believed to be benign and only benign, but Dr.…
May 28th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Profiles in Science Frances Arnold Turns Microbes Into Living Factories Instead of synthesizing new biochemicals from scratch, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist puts nature to the task — with astonishing results. By Natalie Angier May 28, 2019 PASADENA, Calif. — The engineer’s mantra, said Frances Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, is: “Keep it simple, stupid.” But Dr. Arnold, who last year became just the fifth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, is the opposite of stupid, and her stories sometimes turn rococo. Take the happy images on her office Wall of Triumph. Here’s a picture of a beaming President Obama,…
April 14th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
By Denise Gellene, April 14, 2019 Paul Greengard, an American neuroscientist whose 15-year quest to understand how brain cells communicate provided new insights into psychological diseases and earned him a Nobel Prize, and who used his entire $400,000 award to create an academic prize in memory of the mother he never knew, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 93. His death was confirmed by Rockefeller University, where he had worked since 1983. Dr. Greengard received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Dr. Arvid Carlsson of Sweden and Dr. Eric R. Kandel of the United States for independent discoveries related to the ways brain cells relay messages…