They say that Archimedes, the great Greek engineer and physicist from Syracuse, said: “Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.” Although he was referring to the law of the lever, the image it generates in our brain is so powerful that we metaphorically refer to it in many other human situations where a problem needs to be solved that could be approached with the right data and tools. This is how we scientists who dedicated ourselves to human genetics felt during the 90s, in the full effervescence of the Human Genome Project. This year we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first complete draft of the human genome, the instruction manual that explains what humans are like and which marked a before and after for biomedicine.

One of the most provocative recent scientific studies has attempted to determine How did the crossbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals occur?The sensationalized news in many media outlets claims that ancestral pairings primarily occurred between Neanderthal men and modern human women. However, in science, press headlines are not always a reliable reflection of scientific data, because they often seek social impact or clickbait

Every February 11th, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science is celebrated to highlight women's contributions to scientific progress. This year, there is also another celebration: the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first draft of the human genome, based on the almost complete sequencing of all our chromosomes. This milestone—having our instruction manual—opened the door to understanding why humans are the way we are. Since then, enormous strides have been made, and articles will surely be published about the many important scientists who have contributed to this progress. But on the occasion of February 11th, we must also remember the pioneering women scientists who made significant contributions to laying the foundations of the DNA and genome era, beyond Rosalind Franz. Today, it is worth remembering two contemporary researchers, Martha Chase and Maxine Singer, both deceased, two very different faces of the difficult path women have taken in the world of science.

Chocolate derives from chocolate, a word that the Spanish colonizers went imported at the end of the 16th century as a phonetic derivative of a Nahuatl term (Aztec language) of uncertain etymology, which was the name given to a new drink that mixed cocoa with chocoatl (bitter water). The scientific name of the cacao plant leaves no room for doubt, Theobroma cacao It means "cacao, the food of the gods," and certainly, few people can resist the allure of a good piece of chocolate, dark or milk, but always smooth thanks to the quality of the cocoa fats and its unmistakable spicy flavor.

The domestication and cultivation of cereals in the Neolithic period allowed human populations to grow and expand, with small villages and settlements becoming permanent, always near water and arable land. Obtaining grain that could be stored allowed people to survive harsher winter conditions or years of poor harvest. Cereal flour, such as that made from wheat, rye, barley, or oats, not only contains carbohydrates that provide energy, but also protein, which in this case is called... gluten Generally speaking, although there are several proteins; and if the flour is wholemeal, in addition to fiber, we also find various vitamins and trace elements. In fact, if The human species has been able to increase in number and survive thanks to the cultivation of cerealsHowever, a small percentage of the world's population cannot consume gluten, either because they have celiac disease (around 2%) or a gluten allergy (less than 1%).

Why do some women only have girls or only boys? This is a question many people ask when they observe that some families with three or four children all have the same biological sex. Is there a genetic factor that determines this? In human populations as a whole, if no external discriminatory factor is at play—such as sex selection at birth or wars, among others— The ratio of biological male to female sex is very close to 1:1Certainly, there is a slight increase in the percentage of boys compared to girls among newborns, but after one year of life, these percentages are already equivalent. The fact that humans have few offspring makes it difficult to analyze whether there is any genetic factor skewing the proportion when we are only looking at the progeny of a single couple. With two or three children, statistically it is difficult to distinguish the action of chance from the action of some genetic or environmental factor, which must be subtle.

The US Secretary of Health, Robert J. Kennedy Jr., has stated that The blame for the poor health of their fellow Americans lies with ultra-processed foods.and has launched a campaign against these foods, which it defines as true "poison," to make the US healthy again (Make America healthy againOn average, it is estimated that Between 58% and 75% of the food intake of citizens of the United States is based on ultra-processed foods The percentage of skilled workers in the US is higher, while in other countries the percentage is much lower (31% in France or 25% in Spain). It is also true that US citizens have a life expectancy of around 78 years—four years lower than in other countries with a similar average purchasing power—and a lower percentage of older adults with a good quality of life due to the increase in diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic problems. But what is the real cause? Is it all the fault of ultra-processed foods?

"There once was a king who had three young sons, in the country of Serendip. As his successor, the king wanted to appoint the son who was the smartest and most capable of solving the daily problems of his people"… As a story of Arabian Nights, thus begins the version of a Persian tale in which the three sharp and clever princes of Serendip (present-day Sri Lanka) describe, as if by divination, a stolen camel they have never seen before. In reality, they infer it from small clues that seem trivial to the rest of the audience, but which, by applying deductive reasoning, allow them to make inferences and describe the animal with a mental game. The tale, translated from Persian to Italian by a certain Cristoforo Armeno and published by an Italian editor, it was translated into French and reached England, so that in 1754 Horace Walpole coined a new word, "serendipity" in a letter he sent to a friend to explain the fortuitous way in which he made an interesting discovery.

A banal conversation captured by an open microphone as Russian, Chinese, and Korean leaders walked toward the Asian leaders' summit has once again raised the possibility of extending human longevity to 150 years thanks to biotechnological advances such as organ transplants to rejuvenate the body. Because, evidently, they weren't talking about prolonging life with ailments and a fragile body; what the dignitaries were really proposing was obtaining the elixir of eternal youth. But is this possible within the remaining lifespan of these politicians, some of whom are already over 70? Spoiler: the fact is, no, neither Putin nor Xi Jinping will live to 150 years.

It's summer time, beach time. We swim, but we're not used to looking at other organisms that live in the sea, although we are aware that if we walk on the rocks with bare feet, we should be careful with sea urchin spines, and if we see something transparent floating, we know that it's most likely not a plastic bag, but could be jellyfish.

Coinciding with the summer, the latest film in the series initially based on the famous book has just been released in theaters. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. This science fiction adventure novel, published in the 1990s, posed the possibility of the de-extinction of the dinosaurs using DNA from these extinct animals extracted from the blood sucked by mosquitoes that had been trapped in the resin turned into amber. Crichton was inspired by the advances in genetic engineering in the 1980s and the potential applications of PCR (polymerase chain reaction, which allows any DNA fragment to be amplified and which we have heard so much about during Covid-19). Shortly after, Steven Spielberg, with his gift for directing films that tell stories that manage to capture everyone's imagination, made a highly successful film, with a recognizable and iconic logo.

The arid desert conditions and the practice of embalming and mummification, which was widespread socioculturally during the periods of various Egyptian dynasties, make obtaining DNA from human remains extremely difficult. It should be noted that the liquids used in the mummification process degrade and destroy the genetic material of all soft tissues, which remain as leather. Inside a rock-cut tomb in the ancient necropolis of Nuwayrat (a town about 265 kilometers from Cairo), a large sealed clay tub was found, containing the unembalmed body of an adult man.

Omnivorous mammals feed us a wide variety of foods. Driven by curiosity, primates, rodents, and canids try new foods and, at the same time, we have learned to avoid them if eating them has made us dizzy or sick before; this is true even after a single bad experience. It's crucial to learn which foods are toxic to us because survival is key. But how can we learn this from a single exposure?

The title question is a matter of curiosity and controversy, as European society has traditionally been concerned with ensuring that within a marriage, the male parents are the biological fathers of their children, who also receive the family name through paternal inheritance. This concern has been justified by sociology and evolutionary biology with the argument that parents invest a great deal of personal and emotional effort and many economic resources—such as inheritances—in their children, and would like to ensure that the recipients are their genetic descendants.

April 25 is considered Biologist's Day in commemoration of the same day in 1953, which was when the magazine Nature Three consecutive articles on the structure of DNA were published, with just one image each. Two of the images show X-ray diffraction: one of the images is imprecise and is signed by Maurice Wilkins and collaborators; the other is clear and reproduced in all the books, obtained by Rosalind Franklin; as a model of the structure of DNA and has no experiments, but is based on the results of other scientists, it is signed by the famous James Watson and Francis Crick. scientist without whom they would not have obtained the precious award, and who unfortunately died in 1957 from ovarian cancer, at just 37 years old.

One of the news stories of the month is the publication in the media of a story about plush-like mice with fluffy, golden fur, with an enticing headline about the resurrection of mammoth genes. These mice were created by a privately held biotechnology company, Colossal, which aims to de-extinct species, has set its sights on the mammoth. Aside from the obvious appeal to potential investors, why the mammoth and not any other species? According to the company, They intend to contribute to repopulating the Arctic tundra with mammoths., and solve the problem of the release of CO₂ by permafrost, which would contribute to combating climate change.

When Evelyn was born, her parents cried. A scan of the baby confirmed the news they had hoped not to receive: she suffered from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), the same devastating disease that had already caused the death of their first child, Josephine, at just 15 months old.

On February 11th we celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. It seems incredible that we still need reminders of the need to make women scientists visible and promote vocations, but this year I would also like to remember that – perhaps as a consequence of the fact that women were not encouraged to access science careers for years – women have not been the subjects of biomedical research. I suppose we were considered unimportant. Little is known about the physiology and metabolism of the female biological sex, beyond its ability to conceive and bear children. Infertility is a taboo, and menopause is not talked about. Even in old age, men and women are not equal, and neither the medications, nor the doses, nor the diseases that affect us are similar or comparable.