Today, let us welcome another S3 alumnus to the Presenting Alumni stage – Felix Lahr, now a new biochemistry student at the University of Heidelberg. Despite having just finished high school, Felix is already shaping up to be an incredibly accomplished and inspired scientist. Join us for an overview of his endeavors so far and his experience as a participant at S3 2019.
CRISPR-Cas9 technology probably needs no special introduction. After all, exactly this system for precise genome editing has started a complete revolution of genetic engineering. Still, the focus of today’s article won’t be the application of CRISPR-Cas9 in biotechnology, no matter how fascinating it gets (but no worries, we will come back to it some other time).
Today, it’s time to take a look at the background of this almost perfect molecular tool, today’s version of which is reduced to only one enzyme and one carefully picked RNA molecule.
In this month’s Presenting alumni section, we are welcoming Jelena Tica, an inspiring molecular biologist, scientist, traveler. Starting October 1st, she will be working for Johnson & Johnson, on clinical trials testing the Janssen Ad26.CoV2.S COVID-19 Vaccine. Besides her exciting career path, we will also look back at Jelena’s experience as S3 project leader and organizer.
Co-author: Ivana Osredek
Hi everyone! We are continuing with our new topic, where we look at various career paths one can take after studying science. Today we are bringing you consulting, a very interesting career focused on problem solving and strategizing. To get a better sense of what consulting is and what it looks like from the inside, we spoke with our EVO alumni and members Matilda Maleš and Matija Žeško.
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Drug interactions 101
Since I started working as a community pharmacist, it has come to my attention that a big part of the general population takes six or more medicines every day, especially the elderly. Although they prepared us for this at university, it still surprised me once I witnessed it in everyday practice. The major problem with polytherapy are drug interactions, which are often neglected, especially in Croatia. The idea of rational pharmacotherapy is just that – to rationalize drug use and consequently assure safer treatments (fewer side effects, minimal risk of sub-dosing or overdosing), less cost to the healthcare system and greater adherence to the therapy; the latter possibly being the most crucial.
Co-author: Mario Zelić
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Marie Curie
Radiation is a word that incites fear in a lot of people. Much of that fear originates from a misunderstanding of what it actually is, what it does and what it does not. “Radiation” is a very broad term, generally used to represent any emission of energy by a source of some kind. However, there are many different phenomena that fall under that umbrella, and they come in varying degrees of rarity and of danger. Even those that may be seen as “dangerous” in some respects can be more useful than harmful – which is why medicine has both treatments for those who suffered too much damaging radiation, and treatments utilizing the purposeful irradiation of a patient.
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How we know what we know
If you have ever sat in a science class, you might be familiar with the classic science-teacher opening to an introductory lesson on a new topic. Quite typically, you are not given an immediate outline of the new concepts, but rather briefed on how and why we came to know them in the first place. If you are to study the classical law of universal gravitation, you first need to know the story of how an apple supposedly decided to study the crown of Isaac Newton’s head. You might think this is somewhat silly. Why turn a physics lecture into a history class? Well, there is a reason for this trend, and it is not to fill time.
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Questioning our past (posts)
Co-author: Mario Borna Mjertan
Greetings, S3 blog reader! We have prepared something special for you – an interactive quiz! The questions are varied, from physics to medicine, so don’t worry if you are not familiar with some terms, and try to answer anyway.
Each question has only one correct answer. When you choose the answer, you will see whether you got it right and get an additional explanation. Beneath each question there is also a link to the text from our blog that deals more with its respective topic. Have fun!
Today, it is my pleasure to present another Presenting Alumni interview, this time with Srinath Krishnamurthy. Srinath was a project leader at the Summer School of Science in 2018, where he held a biochemistry project alongside his wife Sindhuja. He is in his final year as a postdoc in biophysics, working with membrane protein complexes.
It is likely that most of us, especially if we are hopeless romantics, had heard about the book or movie called „The Notebook“. In this two-hour romantic drama we are led through a wonderful and a bit painful story of a young couple who, against all ods, managed to grow old together. However, „The Notebook“ shows us much more than just a romantic love story – it also shows us the tragic lives of some 50 million people around the world whose memories and families fade away due to dementia.