The US Supreme Court recently sided with patient advocacy groups that a company cannot patent your genes.  Sounds like a pretty clear case, but the decision also creates some exceedingly odd loopholes, and even loopholes within loopholes, to say nothing of the fact that Justice Scalia dissented with the uncontroversial, basic science introduction to the case.

The U.S. Supreme Court just released a groundbreaking decision about the ability to patent genes – the assembly instruction for life.  

Amid much discussion about potential implications for the biotech industry, a separate, extremely troubling aspect of this decision has largely slid under the radar: one of the SCOTUS Justices dissented with basic science saying he is "unable to affirm... knowledge or even my own belief" in high school biology

Though the mechanism responsible for generating part of the skeletal support for the membrane in animal cells is not yet understood, researchers have found a well-defined layer beneath the cell outer membrane forms beyond a certain critical level of stress generated by motor proteins within the cellular system.

A few brief days in embryonic life lays out our body's construction plan. The appearance of limbs and vertebrae is orchestrated by a family of 'architect' genes called Hox, each providing precise instructions at a given time.

New research has demonstrated that these genes were aligned within our chromosomes according to the order of structures - collinear expression in developing limb buds: first the components of the shoulder, then the arm, and finally the fingers.

Female mosquitoes are predators of mammalian blood, relying on blood proteins to lay their eggs. While certain mosquito species are attracted to mammals by their emission of body heat and carbon dioxide, other species, such as Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti, have evolved a strong lust for the smell of humans. Such mosquitoes are also deadly vectors that contribute to the efficient spread of human diseases such as malaria, Dengue hemorrhagic fever, West Nile fever, and chikungunya, with the latter two commonly known as urban epidemics.  

Mouse studies have determined that a small molecule called natriuretic polypeptide b (Nppb) released in the spinal cord triggers a process that is later experienced in the brain as the sensation of itch. 

Nppb streams ahead and selectively plugs into a specific nerve cell in the spinal cord, which sends the signal onward through the central nervous system. When Nppb or its nerve cell was removed, mice stopped scratching at a broad array of itch-inducing substances. The signal wasn’t going through.