Over half of the American population requires some degree of vision correction.[1] Eyeglasses and contact lenses remain the most common tools to restore proper eyesight but they are sometimes inconvenient. Not surprisingly, laser refractive surgery is becoming a popular option in vision correction for many people. Each year over a million Americans have a trained professional shine a high-powered laser in their eyes at a cost of $1500 to $2500 per eye.[1-3] The procedure is quick and almost painless, the recovery time is surprisingly short, and the results are nothing short of a miracle; however, nothing comes without a price.…

From the time of Charles Darwin, it has been the dream of many biologists to reconstruct the evolutionary history of all organisms on Earth and express it in the form of a phylogenetic tree. Phylogeny uses evolutionary distance, or evolutionary relationship, as a way of classifying organisms (taxonomy). Phylogenetic relationship between organisms is given by the degree and kind of evolutionary distance. To understand this concept better, let us define taxonomy. Taxonomy is the science of naming, classifying and describing organisms. Taxonomists arrange the different organisms in taxa (groups). These are then further grouped together depending on biological similarities. This…

The biochemical potential of a cell to carry out specific chemical reactions is nothing short of enormous. Even the simplest of cells have the ability to catalyze over a thousand reactions, only a subset of which is required at any given time. In order to save energy and resources, the cell needs to regulate these reactions such that only those that are necessary are carried out. In simplest terms, this involves a two-component system: one for sensing environmental conditions and thus metabolic needs, the other for translating these needs into a regulatory mechanism that can induce or suppress pathways according…