• Question: what was the weirdestt things you found while you were researcing

    Asked by anon-350285 on 13 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Silvia Mazzotta

      Silvia Mazzotta answered on 13 Mar 2023:

      I did not find this while I was researching, but I found this out when I was preparing for my teaching: do you know that your respiratory system, which allows you to breath, develops from your digestive system, which allows you to process and use up the food you eat? This happens very early in development, between weeks 3 and 5 of development (very early, if you consider pregnancy is 9 months long).
      Another really weird thing: the placenta, which is the organ that your mum developed when she was expecting you and that helped her keeping you alive by feeding you and helping you breathe etc…well the placenta evolved over 100 million years ago from an ancient viral infection! We basically kept what we needed of this viral infection, and used it to be able to form a placenta!

    • Photo: John Clark-Corrigall

      John Clark-Corrigall answered on 14 Mar 2023:

      That there’s sugars in breast milk that aren’t nutrients to help the baby grow but to encourage growth of the bacteria in the gut which also helps their immune system develop!! Amazing!

    • Photo: Edward Guy

      Edward Guy answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      The weirdest thing I found is that a certain blue dye used to colour jeans is actually almost the same molecular shape as the building blocks of our DNA and, instead of using it to dye clothes, it can be used in researching how proteins work inside our cells.

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