Month: April 2022

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New NIH-Wide Resource for K-12 Educators

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A dark blue background with large colorful letters in the title. Under the title “STEM Teaching Resources,” the text reads “innovative NIH-funded content to engage K-12 students in health science.” In the bottom corners, are a green bar with the website “science.education.nih.gov” and the NIGMS logo.

Attention, educators! We’re announcing a new clearinghouse of free STEM education resources covering a wide range of health and biomedical research topics for students in grades K through 12. The STEM teaching resources website provides links to great content from various institutes and centers within NIH, as well as materials developed under the NIGMS Science Education Partnership Award program.

The resources are easy to navigate within the following subject areas:

  • Being a Scientist
  • The Brain & Mental Health
  • Diseases & Conditions
  • Drug Use & Addiction
  • The Environment & Human Health
  • Genetics
  • Healthy Living
  • The Human Body
  • Molecules & Cells
  • Scientific Tools & Methods
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How Bacteria-Infecting Viruses Could Save Lives

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A headshot of Dr. Young.
Dr. Ry Young. Credit: Texas A&M University.

“My parents told me that I already wanted to be a scientist when I was 7 or 8 years old. I don’t remember ever considering anything else,” says Ry Young, Ph.D., a professor of biochemistry, biophysics, and biology at Texas A&M University, College Station.

Dr. Young has been a researcher for more than 45 years and is a leading expert on bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria. He and other scientists have shown that phages, as bacteriophages are often called, could help us fight bacteria that have developed resistance to antibiotics. Antibiotic-resistant infections cause more than 35,000 deaths per year in the U.S., and new, effective treatments for them are urgently needed.

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In Other Words: Some Antagonists Are Heroes

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Many of us learned in English class that an antagonist is a person or thing that a hero fights. But in biomedical science, an antagonist is a molecule that binds to a cellular receptor to prevent a response, such as a muscle contraction or hormone release. Antagonists can be important medical treatments, like the antagonist naloxone—also known as Narcan —that can reverse an opioid overdose.

Below the title “Antagonist: In Other Words,” two images are separated by a jagged line. On the left is a dark figure with a hat, and on the right is an antagonist bound to a ribbon model depiction of a receptor. Under the images, text reads: “Did you know? In biomedical science, an antagonist is a molecule that binds to a cellular receptor to prevent a response, such as a muscle contraction or hormone release.” 
Credit: NIGMS; Yekaterina Kadyshevskaya, The Scripps Research Institute.
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