Marisa Chiaravalloti
Bio
Hello, I am an Honours Biomedical Science student with a Minor in English curious about all things science. I am also the primary writer and researcher for the TMU Rare Diseases Club's online educational section. I hope you enjoy! 🔬
Stories (3)
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The Role Of Schizosaccharomyces pombe In The Age of Gene Editing
In the ever-evolving world of molecular biology, the need for an organism with a genetically tractable genome is crucial for many large findings. For the study of eukaryotic cells, one of the most important simple model organisms of the past twenty years has been yeast. Saccharomyces cerevisiae known as bakers yeast and Schizosaccharomyces pombe known as fission yeast are at the forefront of cell cycle and cell division research for their applications as model(1). S. pombe is commonly referred to as “an ancient yeast”(1) when compared to its common ancestor S. cerevisiae. The conservation of S. pombe has led to it being a highly viable organism to study human cells1 as it represents eukaryotes higher than itself and can be used to closely study crucial characteristics of the cell cycle(1).
By Marisa Chiaravalloti2 years ago in Education
BREAKING: Fake News Leads To Fake Science
A Deeper Look Into Fake News As It Relates To Epidemiology In my recent studies, a huge topic of discussion among my colleagues is the importance of fake news versus real news. This is a huge issue in the field of epidemiology as it leads people to believe in misinformation. Commonly fake news is used by professionals to sell their product to the general public. This is done by the use of skewed news that does not display an accurate representation of its population. An example of this that I have studied is the concept of causal inference and ecological fallacy, and looked at the relationship of how the consumption of chocolate and winning the Nobel prize was “correlated”. Obviously this is not the case and is related to other factors such as their overall consumption of chocolate as well as their possibility of being a large manufacturer of chocolate (ex. Switzerland). This concept peaked my interest, and I wondered, how many other sources of fake news in current healthcare topics have we fed into? I will be using the COVID-19 pandemic to look deeper into this topic and the importance of discrete statistics for the proper identification of health risks.
By Marisa Chiaravalloti2 years ago in Education
A Formal Analysis Of A Case-Control Study Focused On The Sleeping Behaviours Of Children Diagnosed With Smith-Magenis Syndrome (SMS)
When I was five years old my aunt had her first son. When he was born, he had a plethora of minor health issues and as he grew up, his parents and family noticed that he had behavioral differences and struggled with important aspects of life such as sleeping, cognition and health problems. My aunt brought him to the hospital frequently until they finally diagnosed him with Smith-Magenis Syndrome (SMS). Since that day they have been on the hunt for various ways he can be treated to alleviate the difficulties of the condition. When I was fourteen my sister and I held a bake sale concerning PRISMS, the foundation dedicated to furthering research on Smith-Magenis syndrome. It is an American-based foundation as there are no Smith-Magenis foundations in Canada. It is a condition that is deemed very rare, and therefore it is hard to find proper treatment and support, especially in Canada. One thing I always noticed is that my cousin does not sleep very well. He often wakes up throughout the night and won’t sleep for more than a few hours, frequently waking up every day at 5 am. I have always been curious about furthering my knowledge on the condition and ways to help my cousin, therefore I will be looking at a case-control study that looks at the sleeping habits of children diagnosed with Smith-Magenis Syndrome.
By Marisa Chiaravalloti3 years ago in Education
