John Snow: Contributions to Society & Modern Epidemiology

John Snow, who was a practicing obstetrician in London during the Victorian era speculated that cholera, (originated from a contaminated water supply pump on Broad Street. Mayo Clinic (2017) has reported that “cholera is a bacterial disease usually spread through contaminated water. Cholera causes severe diarrhea and dehydration. Left untreated, cholera can be fatal in…

Lab Explained: Effect of Salinity on Seed Germination

Research Question How does salinity affect the seed germination of Solanum lycopersicum? Introduction Relevance to Real world Covering 14% of Australia and home to over two million people, the Murray Darling Basin is Australia’s largest and most iconic river system (figure 1) (McCormick, 2015). As over one-third of Australia’s food supply is produced by the…

Essay: Embryonic DNA Reconfiguration via CRISPR

Just weeks ago on September 28th, Japan’s governmental health and science ministries officially drafted national guidelines on human gene-editing and manipulation experiments, particularly within embryos (Cyranoski, 2018). Before then, Japan’s stance on genetic experiments had remained neutral. Now it is joining an increasing list of countries who support this genetic innovation.             One of the…