You’ve heard the word protein before. On a food label, in a biology class, from someone at the gym who will not stop talking about their macros. But strip away all of that and here’s what protein actually is: the molecule your body uses to do almost everything. Every reaction happening in your cells right now, every signal your body is sending, every structure holding your organs in place; there’s a protein behind it. You are, in a very literal…
One cell. 37 trillion outcomes. Here’s the system running it all. You started as one cell. Not a particularly special looking one either. Just a tiny sphere, sitting there, with no obvious signs that it was about to do something quite insane. Because from that one cell came a brain, a spine, two eyes in exactly the right place, ten fingers, and a heart beating on the correct side of your chest. The same outcome, repeated across every human who…
If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you’ve seen the joke. Someone asks a biology question and the answer is always, inevitably, without a doubt “mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.” It’s the one biology fact everyone remembers, usually because it was drilled into them so aggressively in school and over the internet that it’s almost impossible to forget. The problem is that’s basically where the explanation stops. Powerhouse of the cell. Great. Thanks. But what does that…
Here’s something you probably didn’t learn in biology class: your DNA is being damaged right now. Not occasionally, not under extreme circumstances, but constantly. Across basically every cell in your body, thousands of times a day. Your DNA being damaged is more common and more “voluntary” than blinking or breathing. And yet here you are. Fully intact. Which is actually the interesting part. The Problem With Being Alive Your DNA has a lot of enemies, and the most surprising ones…