ILSI-Biomed Israel

Antioxidants Cause Genetic Abnormalities?

A new research reveals that high doses of antioxidants cause stem cells to develop genetic abnormalities, paving the way for cancer When people look back on the beginning of the 21st century, they might think this was the time of the antioxidants. Antioxidants supplements are being sold everywhere, usually without a doctor prescription, as a way to halt aging, heart diseases and whatever else is promised on the label. But current research, published online in the medical journal Stem Cells, r...

Plastics that Distort DNA Readings

A new research reveals that polypropylene tubes can contaminate solutions in the PCR and distort the DNA spectrometer readings. One year ago, a group of researchers at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem reported a sharp rise in the diagnoses of a certain metabolic disorder. To those of us who live in Jerusalem, fear not. Other than the Holyland story, nothing really happened in the Israeli capital in the last year. The only change is that the lab at Hadassah changed th...

Nanodrop Vs. Regular Spectrophotometer ?

A low-budget Youtube commercial for a Nanodrop spectrophotometer gives back its money worth - and much more Kindly watch the below video. It opens up slow, and it goes on even slower, but... well, it's only three minutes!     So what do we have here? Two nerdy looking scientists, having a painfully-mock argument about the virtues of the Nanodrop spectrophotometer as opposed to using the old fashioned spectrophotometer. Let me stress that I'm all for the Nanodrop device, as it tru...

A New Promise for High-Speed Genetic Sequencing

A new promise for high-speed genetic sequencing by threading DNA segments through carbon nanotubes was revealed in Science this week The Human Genome Project was first launched in 1990 by the US government, and a working draft of the genome was issued ten years later. At 1998, a similar venture was launched by Craig Venter and his firm Celera Genomics, who made use of a faster sequencing method to reach an initial working draft in only two years. It’s clear that genetic sequencing technol...