It has been said that if one really wants to learn something, they should teach it. However we may want to expand that aphorism, to perhaps if one really wants to learn something, they should teach it, organize it or animate it. The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly – […]

Again and again I come up against the greatness of one single man. William Clouser Boyd (1903-1983) appears to be one of those fascinating people who go on to dominate an entire area of research for a generation. It seems as if his creativity knew no bounds. In the 1940’s Boyd noticed that the protein agglutinin in lima bean would agglutinate red cells of human blood group A but not those of O or B; he had in fact discovered that many of these blood agglutinins were actually specific to one blood group or another. With Elizabeth Shapely he coined their modern-day name, lectins, which is Latin for “to pick or choose.”

Although almost everyone knows that fingerprint ridge patterns remain constant and unchanging throughout life (which is why they are so useful to law enforcement) even professionals involved in dermatoglyphics research are often unaware of the changeable nature of the actual height of the ridges themselves. There are a series of surprising correlations between changes to the height of the ridge pattern and links to gluten intolerance found in diseases such as celiac.

Gluten consumption may link to schizophrenia via to changes in glycosylation of the schizophrenic brain.