A stroke happens in America every 40 seconds, and someone dies of it every four minutes! In the United States, every year, the month of May is observed as the National Stroke Awareness Month. This is to create public awareness about stroke risk factors and to lessen the occurrence of strokes in the U.S. Many people think a stroke happens in the heart, but it happens in the brain. Stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of disability in the United States. Stroke is a disease that affects the arteries leading to and within the [...]

Imagine a vast library filled with billions of books. Each book contains a unique story that contributes to the overall narrative of life on Earth. Now, imagine trying to read and interpret all these books in a lifetime. This is the daunting task that computational biologists face in the era of big data. However, with the help of computer science and mathematics, they are making significant strides in understanding the complexities of biological systems. Computational biology is an interdisciplinary field that has emerged due to the explosion of data in the life sciences. Computational biology combines biology, computer science, and [...]

Imagine that you and your friend want to start a poultry farm to produce eggs. If possible, one excellent way to reduce the cost is by removing all the features that are not necessary for laying eggs - feathers, legs, eyes, and other sensory perceptions - from the chick. It is as if it were born anew only to lay eggs and nothing else! This is the concept echoed in synthetic biology, to engineer unicellular organisms doing only intended tasks and nothing else. Synthetic biology, sometimes called "Nature 2.0," is an emerging field in life science with enormous potential to [...]