the Runaway Lab Book

You might have noticed when doing your shopping that certain food items come in black plastic trays instead of clear ones. This makes the food stand out more, and it looks much more tasty! What you might not know though is that the black pigments added to the plastic are so good at absorbing light…

We all know that sugar-filled fizzy drinks can be a cause of weight gain, but did you know that the same might be true for the sugar free versions? Even low calorie, sugar free versions of fizzy drinks could be encouraging you to eat more. Scientists recently found that rats that drink diet or regular…

Did you know that your genome isn’t completely static? During your lifetime, small groups of atoms called methyl groups are continually added to and taken from your DNA, turning on and off genes and changing how your body works. This process can be disrupted by all sorts of things we do, like smoking, or drinking…

Thinking you want that triple chocolate chip cookie? Think again. Researchers have found that microbes living in your gut have ways of suppressing or increasing your cravings. Choosing between a cookie and an apple can change the population sizes of different of bacteria, as well as what kind of nutrients they absorb. One study has…

Over the years, scientists have spent a lot of time looking at the beneficial effects of coffee, possibly because many of them seem to live off it. A recent reanalysis of existing studies suggests that people who drink 2 additional cups of coffee are 44% less likely to get excessive liver scarring. What is amazing…

Cephalopods (like octopus and squid) can make edits to a large portion of their RNA (which is used to make proteins), allowing their cells to react to situations without changing their DNA. By using this mechanism, they can try out proteins with different functions without needing to wait for evolution to take place. However, the…

Everyone has heard of the 5-second rule right? If not, you’re about to! The idea is that if food has been dropped on the floor but was picked up within 5 seconds, it is safe for eating. A couple of studies have looked into this! One group studied how fast bacteria transfer onto toast, pasta,…

Recently, scientists have found out that bone marrow are not the soloist involved in making blood – lungs are also involved! Not only are lungs responsible for making approximately 50% of the platelet (things that help blood clot), cells in the lungs can move to and repopulate the bone marrow in mice with stem cell…

In addition to using the position of the sun as compass to find their way home, ants also use an inbuilt pedometer that tracks how many steps they have taken. To show that this step-tracking mechanism is important to ants’ sense of direction, researchers changed the sizes of the steps by either tying them to…

The origin and spread of these adorably nasty little creatures are still not well understood. A recent study has sequenced DNA from more than 200 cats that lived between 200 to 15,000 years ago, from more than 30 archaeological sites across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The researchers found that the cat population appear…