Sleep And DNA Repair And The Value Of Blogging

This episode of Talking Biotech begins with a call to action on the part of the host and first guest regarding the value of blogging and social media for the proliferation of science. The first guest explains that real researchers and doctors, despite their reservations about the quality of audience on certain outlets, need to make themselves heard in order to keep the internet a source of quality information. Despite time constraints and frustrations with audience interaction, the guest claims that grad students will find blogging and posting about their research to be well worth it; both in resume building and spreading quality information. 

Then Lior Appelbaum discusses his research, published in Nature Communications, on the DNA repair done in nervous system cells using Zebra fish as a model. Dr. Appelbaum speaks a lot about chromosome dynamics (the movement of the chromosome within the nucleus correlated with the amount of transcription taking place) and how they are connected to both quality of sleep and DNA repair. The Zebra fish, both because of their short life cycle and being vertebrates, are good models for sleep research and models of how melatonin affects the body.