Understanding the impact of city living on mental health has never been more important. By 2050, 70% of the world's population will live in towns, cities, and megacities like London, New York, Tokyo, and Shanghai. Growing evidence links urban living to psychotic disorders such as... click to read more

Do you drink one small glass of wine a day? Four pints of beer a week? Did you know drinking at even these relatively low levels can increase your risk of cancer? Less than 15% of the population are aware of a link between alcohol... click to read more

The majority of cancer-related deaths are due to the spread of cancer cells throughout the body, a process called metastasis. While we still do not fully understand how metastasis works, an important role is attributed to the "disobedience" of a patient's own immune cells. In... click to read more

Every day cancer, viruses, bacteria, and parasites are threatening our health. The weapon to fight these threats is our immune system. Our immune system is armed with several types of immune cells, with each of them pursuing a distinct task. Scavenger cells are the first... click to read more

How many times have you heard "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day"? This view is so pervasive that to admit to not eating breakfast is almost tantamount to admitting to a non-healthy behaviour! I am a rheumatologist and many of my patients seek... click to read more

Ebola virus causes a deadly and highly contagious infection, known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever. Repeated outbreaks of severe, often deadly epidemics since Ebola was first identified in the 1970s have killed thousands of people and scared the world. The West African Ebola epidemic in 2014... click to read more

Obesity is a major public health concern worldwide, with high prevalence paralleling an increasingly "obesogenic" environment that promotes a sedentary lifestyle and poor-quality food choices. However, even within this environment, some people are able to maintain a healthy body mass index (BMI, defined as weight... click to read more

Green tea, like many other teas, is brewed from the dried leaves of the Cammelia sinensis bush. It originates from China, but nowadays it is grown and produced all over the world. Green tea is typically green, yellow or light brown in color, and its... click to read more

Does it all come down to a roll of the dice, or are there important underlying factors that determine who wins and who dies when they play the game of thrones? Game of Thrones is a popular HBO television series that has captured the imagination of... click to read more

Imagine trying to understand an unpredictable movie - such as the iconic Psycho - based only on a sequence of still images, or worse yet, a single image. Biologists currently face a very similar conundrum - we attempt to decipher dynamic processes occurring within cells... click to read more

Our laboratory is interested in how the cells that "see" color are made. There are three types of color-detecting cells that sense red, green, or blue light. We cannot study how these cells are made in developing human babies, so we take human stem cells... click to read more

Hypertension or high blood pressure is the major risk factor of heart and kidney diseases affecting the human population. Indeed the incidence rate is very high: 1 in every 3 adult individuals. Hypertension is normally treated in the clinic as an independent disease. Nonetheless, it... click to read more

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating disease that on average kills in only 3 to 5 years after diagnosis, and for which there is still no cure today. ALS patients have progressive muscle weakness, leading to gradual paralysis and difficulties breathing which will usually... click to read more

Molecular biology is difficult to teach in schools, since the concepts can't be seen and are instead represented with abstract diagrams in textbooks. Some schools have introduced hands-on activities, such as growing cells that glow green, to illustrate these ideas in real life and facilitate... click to read more

Genome editors are simple tools that allow scientists to make very precise changes to the genome of any organism by cutting the genome at a very precise location. If you imagine the genome as a single, continuous string of information containing the instructions to build... click to read more

Bacteria are in a constant struggle with the viruses that infect them. While we often think of bacteria as agents of infection, bacteria are in turn infected by viruses, called phage. The phage that infect bacteria and archaea are the most abundant class of organism... click to read more

Breaking news! Believe it or not, we are formed by cells! Well, to be honest, we know this since 1665 when Robert Hooke discovered and named the fundamental constituents of all animals. Hooke performed pioneering microscopy and biological studies but, in addition, he was also... click to read more

Headache, nausea, and fatigue are all common symptoms experienced the morning after a night of heavy drinking. Individuals also describe effects on concentration, mood, and decision-making. However, the scientific literature investigating these effects is scarce and has often produced mixed results, preventing firm conclusions. Given that... click to read more

Although gray hair is often seen as just another sign of getting older, for us at the Harris Lab it’s a window into the mysterious world of stem cells and their role in aging and tissue regeneration. Hair color depends on a specialized set of... click to read more

It is well known that to grow and invade different organs, tumours must find ways to evade several layers of controls that are in place in our body. The immune system, a complex network of cells and antibodies has been shaped by evolution to protect... click to read more

Despite consisting only of one single cell, the microorganism Paramecium has an amazingly complex life cycle. It has a period of infancy and of old age, it learns, defends itself from prey, has sex, responds to different sensory cues - all things we can relate... click to read more

Gonorrhoea is a common bacterial infection caused by a bacteria called Neisseria gonorrhoeae. It is usually sexually transmitted and can cause complications such as an infection of the upper part of the female reproductive system (i.e. pelvic inflammatory disease), septic arthritis and heart muscle inflammation.... click to read more

It has long been understood that what we eat impacts not only our health, but our environment too. Despite this food-sustainability awareness, very few national dietary recommendations (NRD) make any consideration of sustainability. For example, the USDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans has a lot of... click to read more

Cells form the biological unit of all living organisms. But, like organisms, cells go through a life cycle: new cells emerge after cell division, they live, they age and they die. In some cases cell death is necessary for the organism's development and life. However,... click to read more

Much like parts on an older car become rusted and need to be replaced, muscle cells can accumulate damage which may contribute to declines in function with age. But instead of going to a mechanic, a trip to the gym may stimulate the replacement of... click to read more

Obesity rivals tobacco as the leading preventable risk factor leading to cancer and is associated with reduced patient survival. While most people are aware of the connection between smoking and cancer, the connection with obesity is currently underappreciated. In fact, it is estimated that obesity... click to read more