Curious
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Probiotics and your gut health for dealing with COVID
29/07/2024Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Recent studies highlight the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on gut bacteria, indicating that the virus can alter the gut microbiome and potentially persist there even after respiratory symptoms resolve. This finding opens up new treatment possibilities, including the use of antibiotics to manage bacterial reservoirs and probiotics to restore gut health. Probiotic-rich foods are crucial in maintaining a balanced gut microbiome, which is essential for overall health and may help mitigate some effects of viral infections. In this article, we summarize natural food sources of probiotics.
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Beyond ancestry: using genome sequencing for genealogy and family history
26/02/2024Posted by:Anonymous
In this post, we look into the two primary benefits of DNA testing that people generally identify with: uncovering one’s ancestral links and health-related information.
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Most gossiped about genetic news of 2023
30/01/2024Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
We go over the most shared online stories related to DNA, genetics, and COVID-19 and present to you the top 10 list. As always, wild stories abound.
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IgG4 update from Dr. Bossche
25/11/2023Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Dr. Geert vanden Bossche is currently the only expert we know of who dares to predict the ending to the current pandemic (warning, it ain’t pretty). How do the IgG4 antibodies seen in mRNA vaccinated fit into all of this?
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Iodine, fluoride and what? Autism?!
30/09/2023Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Iodine is necessary for proper brain development. However, fluoride exposure could impede proper iodine uptake and potentially affect the brain. Could fluoride exposure be responsible for the rise in autism we have been witnessing worldwide in the last few decades?
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Can fasting remove our “bad” antibodies?
29/06/2023Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
We explore the available science to see if fasting can be used to remove unwanted antibodies from our body, such as the IgG4 antibodies observed to be notably increased in some of the mRNA vaccinees.
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Is triple DNA helix possible?
31/05/2023Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Can a triple helix DNA exist in biology besides in our imagination of alien creatures? We delve into the concept of how such structures could be formed and how they could be advantageous.
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Review of Dr. Bossche’s book – the final countdown to The Inescapable Immune Escape Pandemic
25/04/2023Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche’s new book, The Inescapable Immune Escape Pandemic , is reviewed. See how he makes predictions of the impending but catastrophic end to the pandemic.
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Most gossiped about genetic news of 2022
01/02/2023Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
A compilation of the most shared genetic stories of 2022 sorted by what fascinated the public the most - as always, ranging from super cool to super absurd.
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Immune inflammation - helpful until it's not
28/11/2022Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Inflammation is very familiar to us and we know it can be bad. But how and why does it exist in the first place? In this post we explain inflammation as an innate immunity defensive mechanism and also how it can be a double-edged sword. Plus, how to stay on top of it.
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Pseudouridines of mRNA vaccines
26/10/2022Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
In this post, we talk about the mystery behind why the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines had to be chemically manipulated to achieve their success and what this chemical alteration consisted of, and then we ask questions about what it means for any further potential biological impacts because so many gaps in the knowledge of this new technology need to be filled.
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How antibodies drive viral evolution - Dr. Bossche’s theories continued
28/08/2022Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Predictions of outcomes for the ongoing pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 are scarce. One notable exception is Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche who early on warned that mass vaccination during a pandemic would have dire consequences on the population immunity. Here Merogenomics provides a simple graphical chart along with detailed explanations of his thoughts on the complex interplay between viral infection and the effect on the immune system in vaccinated versus unvaccinated individuals.
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Could GC content of mRNA vaccines affect cancer through potential G-quadruplexes?
25/07/2022Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
A very unusual potential pathway to cancer development has been proposed from mRNA vaccines (but so far completely unconfirmed). It involves the vaccine’s mRNA independently adopting a certain 3D shape that is different from the expected 3D shape of a SARS-CoV-2 RNA that codes for production of the spike protein. This different 3D shape of the vaccine’s mRNA would then lead to an unexpected binding of cellular proteins and RNA, removing them from their native function. If this interference of normal function became great enough, it would have the potential to promote cancer development.
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The future of the pandemic according to Dr. Bossche
19/04/2022Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
The Omicron appears to have become one of the most infectious viruses we ever had to contend with - the exact opposite trend of what we wanted to accomplish during the management of the pandemic, which was to dramatically decrease the transmission of the virus in the population. But no one is asking why this has happened? For this reason, we were highly interested in Dr. Bossche’s latest blog post pertaining to why the Omicron is both more infectious and milder in nature than previous variants, and how this development could be leading to the future progression of the pandemic.
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Post vaccination menstrual cycle analysis
27/02/2022Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Dr.M.Raszek
Recently Merogenomics has published a video on a scientific investigation into whether vaccines might be influencing the menstrual cycle and/or the duration of menses. What followed was hundreds of comments on what so many women have experienced, and who described their extreme experiences in detail. We decided to present it in a graphical format, at least until we see a proper scientific analysis of these extreme outcomes being reported!
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Most gossiped about genetic news of 2021
21/12/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
At the end of every year we like to see what online articles tied to DNA have captured the most attention, and we rank the top 10. One consistent theme is that typically these will be the stories with the most emotionally gripping content of the past year! So, what did we find this year?
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“Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” - a Merogenomics’ NIH grant review
05/10/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Two NIH grants that funded the work in Wuhanwere finally made publicly available. They were not provided voluntarily though. It is the Intercept that finally provided access to these two NIH grants, not any public agency. And they had to sue the NIH to get access to their Freedom Of Information Act request for these “public” documents and they are staggering! The type of research done is what we describe as crazy dangerous!
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How new emerging variants are outsmarting our antibodies
07/09/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
One very strong candidate for the evasion of antibodies, including those of vaccines, that you might have heard about, is the Lambda variant. We wanted to drill in a bit deeper here to show you on a molecular level how cleverly the virus has mutated to start escaping the antibodies specifically mounted against the viral spike protein. And also how viruses could potentially take advantage of antibodies to infect more cells.
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How the immune system fights viruses like coronaviruses
24/08/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
This article was inspired by what we consider to be the best illustration of overall immune system functions that we have seen. More specifically, the illustration concerns the immune system reaction to a viral infection by enveloped viruses such as coronaviruses.
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Immune escape – Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche explained
27/07/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
This post examines the theories of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche about virus immune escape. And specifically, his claims that mass vaccinations will potentially help develop immune escape variants of SARS Co-V-2 and why this could be very dangerous to everybody.
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Lab leak theory vs natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 – why past conflicts of interest might be driving the current debate
26/06/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
After a year long campaign of ridiculing and silencing any public suggestion that SARS-CoV-2 virus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory, suddenly the media is very open to entertaining this notion. This is such a strange tale of how public perception is shaped by prevailing propaganda, but what we can say with high certainty is that the public’s perception in the US of the virus’ origin has so far been shaped by two figures with a staggering conflict of interest: Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Peter Daszak.
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COVID-19 and genetic predisposition
07/05/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Everyone in the world probably knows by now that if someone gets infected by SARS-CoV-2 virus, the resulting impact can range from a complete lack of symptoms to severe respiratory failure leading to death. Obviously, one possible contributing factor that would be worth investigating is the role of our personal genetics. So, what have we learned so far?
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Vaccine adverse side effects: how do COVID-19 vaccines compare?
17/03/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
This article is based on the information that is reported in a publicly available database compiled by the US Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), termed the Vaccination Adverse Events Reporting System. This database was set up approximately 30 years ago to allow anyone to report any side effect (whether adverse or non-adverse) suspected to be from taking a vaccination. The idea of the database is to be able to capture any worrisome events and allow rapid investigations of vaccine safety. We hope we have got your curiosity going enough to now check out what this database has shown so far for the different vaccines, and especially how that might compare to the new mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. The results are definitely captivating.
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Could COVID-19 have actually originated many years ago?
15/02/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
In the summer of 2020, a curious hypothesis came out that perhaps COVID-19 actually emerged many years prior in China. This hypothesis was based on the fact that in 2012 six miners became severely ill with a mysterious inflammatory lung disease. Drs. Latham and Wilson proposed that SARS-CoV-2 could actually have evolved in the lungs of the miners that became ill after being infected with a bat virus. One major problem with this hypothesis was that there was no prior scientific evidence that human lung tissue could act as an environment that could drive the substantial mutational changes that would be required for adaptation of a bat virus to a human-infectious virus. However, thanks to the current pandemic taking place around the world, it appears that we finally have evidence that this indeed can happen.
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Genetics of cheating
07/02/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
For the past couple of years, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, Merogenomics has posted articles dedicated to the genetics that concern romantic relationships. We started the trend with the genetics of sexuality, then last year we moved to the genetics of love, and we wanted to play a “dirty” joke by completing the trinity of relational aspects with a topic dedicated to… the genetics of cheating!
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Most gossiped about genetic news of 2020
20/01/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
For a fifth year in a row, we review the most shared genetic stories on social. The only metric we look at is the highest number of shares for any content related to genetics. These are all over the board, from absurd to celebration of our greatest achievements, DNA-related stories that captured our imagination the most in 2020!
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The new UK SARS-CoV-2 strain – a first science info analysis
11/01/2021Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
This story of a UK new SARS-CoV-2 strain exemplifies how rapidly the leaders are willing to respond to maintain the general safety of the populatio. How the decision was made to proclaim the emergence of this new threatening strain is not discussed in the media and very few have actually probed for its scientific merit. But are you curious, where did it come from? Very few people get to peak behind the curtains.
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COVID-19 PCR tests – are we over-testing or under-testing? Who is right?
06/12/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
There is a massive public debate going on about the COVID-19 pandemic threat. Wherever you might stand on the spectrum of this debate - whether you decry anytime someone dares to step outside into the fresh air, or you belittle the existence of this infection as nothing more significant than a bad flu – there is one argument used by either side that gets a lot of collateral damage: the use of PCR tests to diagnose the infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So where do we really stand on these PCR tests? Which side might be right and which side is wrong? Let's look at the science behind these PCR tests! You just might be surprised by what you find out.
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Fake viruses? SARS-CoV-2 origins conspiracy theories Part 3
21/10/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
The last two blog posts we have dedicated to going over a controversial, non-peer reviewed online report outlining reasons why the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been of natural origin. The authors promised to follow up that initial report with further proof of why a number of published coronavirus genomes from different animals are fake. We were really curious what kind of evidence they would propose to build their case to claim an academic fraud of such massive proportion, and this is what this post is about.
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SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus origins alternative theories – do they hold up against science? Part 2
10/10/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
This is the second post of a two part series dedicated to analyzing the conspiracy theories regarding the SARS-CoV-2 origins that are different from the widely accepted “natural origin”, where we offer a contradictory, equally controversial viewpoint to a synthetic origin theory, and review the authors’ “smoking gun” evidence of why the SARS-CoV-2 was engineered.
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SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus origins alternative theories – do they hold up against science? Part 1
28/09/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Earlier this month a deeply controversial and outright shocking report came out purporting to provide smoking gun evidence that SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was laboratory engineered. With a title like "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" this report promised to have some incriminating statements so obviously we were going to investigate it, and see how the published science stacked against their claims.
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What is genetic mosaicism?
14/09/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
In this post we will discuss what might seem like an obscure topic but is a very real-life issue: being composed of more than one genome. Or in other words, situations where an individual carries two different types of genetic information in the cells of their body. This is especially significant for those who are interested in prenatal DNA testing.
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Hearing loss DNA testing
07/08/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
In this post we wanted to recount the story of a family with children that presented with hearing loss with no prior family history. It turned out to be very unique account of unsuspected genetics - a paradigm that will continue to happen with greater frequency as more people chose to analyze their DNA. This story demonstrates the potential power of proactive screening of one’s genetic state, and even hints at when it might become a necessity with regards to planning a family.
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Human genome project twenty years later
26/06/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
On this day (June 26th) in 2000, the completion of a working draft of the human genome reference was announced by President Bill Clinton. Today you can sequence your entire genome in mere hours but the very first human genome sequence that was decoded was an enormous undertaking of thousands of scientists from around the world in a project spanning more than a decade and at an estimated cost of $3 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money! And like any good story, there always has to be some controversy.
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Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2
25/04/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
We naturally build antibodies against infectious agents that we come into contact with. Thus if someone gets infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus then they will produce antibodies against it. But now imagine, it would be pretty handy if you could have access to such antibodies without the need of infection. So how do we get our hands on such antibodies that we could use for treatment?
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Options for prevention of COVID-19, options for treatment of COVID-19. What does research find?
07/04/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Perhaps this article is massively overdue. It is in fact a continuation of what we touched upon in our very first foray into studying the structure of SARS-CoV-2, when we mentioned one study which looked into potential compounds that could inhibit viral infection. The need for this story has since massively expanded, so in this post we will take you so deep that we peer into atomic structures and traverse the landscapes of biological molecules and list some our favourite chemicals that we found that might have protective capabilities against COVID-19!
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COVID-19 coronavirus and ethnicity differences
19/03/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
One of the more compelling questions that has been asked around with regards to the Wuhan coronavirus is whether it infects different ethnic groups to a different extent. One paper was published recently that attempted to answer that question, and showed that indeed there could be racial differences for coronavirus infection based on what type of genetic mutations different populations might have. So let’s break it down.
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Wuhan corona virus uniqueness – what does science say?
08/03/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has not been conclusively demonstrated. Meaning we do not know how it started to infect humans. There has been a tremendous amount of confusion and rumours with regards to whether this virus was human engineered rather than originating from nature. So let’s pose the nasty question: could the virus be synthesized by humans? To answer this we will dive deep into current scientific understanding of the architecture of this virus, and find out what makes SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus unique enough to have stirred so many controversies so quickly.
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Genetics of love
09/02/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
Could love be genetically driven? There seem to be strong arguments that say yes. The components of adult romantic love are actually similar to the intense love between parents and infants. It has been proposed that the already existing design used for offspring caring might have been evolutionarily adopted for use between the mates. There is support for the notion that romantic love and parental offspring bonding share a biological signature, including genetic footprint underpinning it.
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Most gossiped about genetic news of 2019
12/01/2020Posted by:Dr.M.Raszek
It is that time of the year again where we continue our tradition of looking at some of the most frequently shared articles on social media relating to DNA and genetics. These vignettes are in stark contrast to the typical information shared on the Merogenomics blog which is carefully vetted for scientific accuracy - but just as entertaining to read. Also unlike the typical content of the Merogenomics blog, the content produced for social media’s viral output can at times be absolutely outrageous!