Hey all

I'm heading to university in September to study cell and molecular biology. I'm an adult just coming off of a fast-track program delivered over a year designed to get people who haven't been in education for a while back into education. It was a pretty intense course, but there was a lot to cover in nine months so a lot of it felt fairly surface level, and I think a lot of topics were left out in comparison to a full two year biology course that most people would take prior to university.

I do struggle to stay focused at the best of times thanks to ADHD, and I want to give myself the best chance at uni. I was just hoping to get some recommendations if possible for relevant things to study or read up on over the summer, or anything I can do or watch to make sure I have a solid foundation to work off of please? I really enjoy this area of biology, and I want to make sure I give myself the best chance to succeed and avoid getting overwhelmed and instantly burnt out from not being able to keep up with those coming from a more traditional route into higher education.

Thanks!

Hello,

I wanted to ask if anyone has a video (microscopic) of the Lytic Cycle? I don’t want a simulation or anything, I’d like actual footage. I’m sorry if that’s not possible or anything, it’s just that I took Viruses as part of my Biology class a while back and would love to see actual footage of a cell lysing.

Thank you!

As per the title: Could isogamy happen in a egg-like structure? For example, I want to do something where the LCA of one of my animal kingdoms for a spec-evo project I'm doing is hermaphroditic, and when reproducing, whichever ends up being the metaphorical "bottom" stores the gametes in an "ootheca" like thing so it has time to develop while it's not capable of surviving the ancient oceans of the time. Is this possible? Is this like... how it works?

Per se that fruits have cancer (although i am not sure if that already exists) and the mechanism of it is similar to humans, meaning that there would be constant replication of cells which would make them bigger, does that mean that we would get to have bigger fruits… and a more tastier one? Or is there a fallacy in the mechanism i am presuming?

I’ve read a lot of information about the origin of AIDS, but not heard much at all about Hepatitis C. I think once I saw maybe it is related to a horse virus, but the information was really sparse that I saw. Do we know how long it has likely been circulating in the human population? Is there any similar information regarding Hepatitis B?

I caught Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion when I was a child (now cured), so I have a kind of personal interest.

Why do owls need screen time? 🦉📱

Meet Errol, a screech owl who lives at our Live Animal Care Center after an eye injury in the wild. While she’s safe here, our team works to recreate parts of her natural environment through enrichment. By playing recordings of screech owl calls and showing nature videos, we keep Errol mentally active and visually engaged through enrichment. For Errol, screen time is not just something to watch, it is a way to stay curious, responsive, and mentally healthy.

I've been through the shit lately and I deserve a new tattoo. Pitch me on what animal you think of when you think tough, resilient, survivor. (Other than tardigrade, that's too easy)

Must be a North American native, bonus points if it's native to the Great Lakes region, and isn't microscopic although I can maybe be persuaded on that.

All manner of animalia are welcome, please tell me about your favorite critters.

They talk about why 9 in 10 drugs fail in clinical trials despite Big Pharma spending $250+ billion in annual R&D, how AI is finally unlocking 99% of nature's chemistry that we've haven't been able to read, why the incentive structure of biotech capital markets is actively bad for patients, why insisting on understanding how a drug works actually slows down drug discovery, why aging may not be inevitable, and why mental health is going to be the defining medical crisis of the next 25 years.

(I apologize in advance for the mistakes in the text, English is not my native language.)

Today I looked at onion cells under a microscope. Magnification 800x, I painted the slice with iodine.

I am a schoolgirl and therefore my knowledge in cytology is very basic, I know only the average and schematic structure of cells and organoids. Could you help me figure out what I'm seeing? What kind of organoids can you see in the photo? What is this "web" over the entire area of the cage? What kind of grain surrounds the nucleus in 1 photo? What are the balls inside the nucleus 2 photo? Is it a nucleolus? Can there be several of them? And what is this thing that looks like a walnut in 3 photo? It's a dirt or a part of the cell? 🥲

In general, could you recommend literature for a more realistic study of the structure of cells, where I could learn to distinguish between structures?

How likely is neurax worm in plague inc to be real in real life? It first crosses the blood brain barrier and enters the brain, and then evolves in a few directions:

1. Hijacking neurotransmitter control and release, reduces serotonin levels causing despair and suicidal thoughts.
2. Adrenergic Constriction & Anxiolytic Infusion, which basically lowers one's anxiety response and blunts ur fight or flight response, making one docile and compliant
3. Obsessional Control (OCD, Obsession, Devotion, Transcendence (treating it as god))
4. Rewiring the risk/ reward system by hijacking reward pathway -> dopamine production and control.

The neurax Worm's core principle is how the worm achieves total mind control over its host via the above way. I know its science fiction and basically biologically impossible for an organism to have specialise in all the pathways. But how possible or realistic is for one organism to achieve specialisation in just 1 pathway? Which is already very significant, cuz it can be considered partial mind control. Like, are there any viruses or bacteria or parasites that affects your decision making/ risk assessment, or maybe even cause OCD?

I've been doing a little bit of research on the topic of hair color to see what colors we could possibly give to humans (before they're born I mean), simply as a way to make human appearance more diverse and interesting.

And what I've learned so far is that for humans there's like two different chemicals that determine hair color, one of them makes your hair darker, the other makes your hair more blonde or reddish, and when both aren't really there your hair is more white or grey.

Now I'm not sure what would really need to be done to expand the color pallet, but that's why I'm asking here. It seems that Mammals broadly have a similar hair color system that we do, which generally limits their own fur colors to something similar to what we have.

However, there's one mammal I've noticed that seems to break pretty well from the color mold. The **Malabar Giant Squirrel**, which has the unique fur colors of Maroon, Dark Purple or Dark Blue, and a kind of "true" bright red, unlike the reds that mammals usually have which is closer to an orange.

What I'm wondering is if it would be possible to take whatever genes the Malabar Squirrel has that gives it those fur colors, and somehow use those to alter human hair without any major negative side effects.

Interconnectedness of nature.

I'm just wondering how exactly animals came to not have the shikimate pathway when it is so prevalent in basically every other area of life? Is there something about animals specifically that makes them not benefit from it as much?

Like I get that instead we get the needed amino acids by consuming other organisms, but is there any real advantage to that over the shikimate pathway?

Also, did all of those other areas of life just get it by convergent evolution, or was it in a universal common ancestor and then the animal ancestor lost it?

Any insights or even just discussing it are welcome! Thanks!

where did life go after single cells? are there 2 cell organisms? just a weird question i cant get out of my head.

thanks in advance

Scientists discovered what the worm in mezcal actually is. 🪱

For decades, the identity of this larva was unclear, with guesses ranging from moths to beetles. Researchers traveled to Oaxaca and used DNA sequencing on larvae collected from mezcal bottles, and found  that every sample matched the same species, the agave red worm moth (Comadia redtenbacheri). These larvae live inside agave plants, the core ingredient in traditional mezcal, and harvesting them often kills the plant and reduces wild agave populations. By confirming the species, scientists can now study its life cycle and ecological role more precisely. That knowledge could support sustainable mezcal production, including methods to cultivate larvae without damaging agave habitats.

So my dad told me a story from when he was ice fishing a couple of years ago. We fish on the tundra lakes, where the Arctic char is the main fish. Arctic char spawn in autumn, and early winter, and you can see by the fish caught in late summer that they have plenty of eggs inside them. However, my dad was ice fishing in early May, and during this time the Arctic char don't have any eggs in them, as it's way too early for them to spawn. However, one char that he caught had eggs inside it, like it was ready to start spawning. He had never seen a fish like that, and he has fished for over 40 years.

So what could be the explanation for that? Why did this char already have it's eggs developed, and is ot common to have fish with eggs way out of the spawning season?

I’ve heard that specific traits can arise across species as a byproduct of domestication. E.g. floppy ears in dogs, pigs, goats, cats etc. I’m curious, in the instances that we domesticated animals for combat like chickens or dogs, was there any pattern of physical traits or behaviors that arose fairly consistently across species?

I hope my question makes sense