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If not friend, why friend shaped?
Bears are round, furry, and they have cute little ears and tails. These are characteristics they evolved mainly for heat conservation. And what about those boopable noses? Bears have an incredibly...
Just a couple of resons to back this project today
It's genuinely cool. We're reading polar bear genomes to find which lines say "go on buddy, eat as much fat as you want!" It's almost the end of the year. What better way to close out 2025 than ...
Do you think polar bears are white? You are wrong
I know, this is a strong statement, but polar bears aren't white. They're transparent.Well, their fur is. Let me explain.Like many cold-adapted animals, polar bears have two-layer fur. The underlay...
Is she doing ATAC-seq by herself?
The ATAC-seq work will be done by Dr. Paola Giusti-Rodriguez's team, who have the expertise and equipment for chromatin accessibility experiments.They've already prototyped the library prep protoco...
Why black bears instead of brown bears?
In the last lab note, I mentioned we're comparing polar bears to American black bears—even though brown bears are polar bears' closest living relatives. Why not use brown bears?Great question. The ...
Black bear sampling
Why black bears? Aren't brown bears the closest relatives to polar bears? Yes, and there's a reason we're not using them. I'll explain in the next lab note (backers only).I guess that if you're rea...
Larry the polar bear's dietitian appointment is scheduled for Thursday
Polar bears eat seals, right?Yes. But let me be more specific about what that actually means.Imagine being a seal. A polar bear could smell you from a mile away, silently cover that distance across...
Four stories written in polar bear DNA
EBF2 (Brown Fat and Thermogenesis)We identified two accelerated regions near EBF2, a gene that collaborates with another major regulator (PPARγ) to drive brown fat differentiation. Brown fat isn't ...
Who is this girl and what is she doing?
Hi everyone! I'm Giada, and I'm about to launch a crowdfunding campaign that I'm really excited about. But before I do, I wanted to introduce myself a little bit more and explain why I've spent the...