misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Intelligence without a backbone

Written by: Lacey Bishop-Schouster

Edited by: Courtney Myers

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

When we think about intelligence in the animal kingdom, our minds often go straight to ourselves. Then maybe to apes cracking nuts with tools, dolphins playing games, or elephants who “never forget.”

However, there’s another group of animals that is often overlooked and should be included with these examples: the cephalopods. Cephalopods—octopuses, squids, cuttlefish, and nautiluses—are a class of mollusks distinguished by their soft bodies, tentacles, and ability to move by jet propulsion. Although they are invertebrates, they show some of the most complex behaviors on the planet. In fact, they have the largest brains of any invertebrates, and their path to intelligence looks nothing like ours.

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misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

How Tiny Particles Shape Climate

Written by: Hasnaa H. Abo Shosha

Edited by: Jessica Li

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

I was amazed when I first learned that something as small as a particle of soot could shift the Earth’s climate. These particles are so tiny that you could line thousands of them across a single strand of hair. And yet, they have the power to change how much of the Sun’s energy warms our planet. I like to often think of them as invisible sun catchers floating in the sky.

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misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Epigenetics: How Cells Keep their Sense of Self

Written by: Carly Blair

Edited by: Charukesi Sivakumar

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

Almost every cell in the human body contains around two meters (or 6.5 feet) of DNA, encoding the complete instructions for all of your body’s functions. Hair, stomach, brain, skin; each part so vastly different, but all stemming from the same base instructions. So what stops a skin cell from producing stomach acid, or the brain from producing hair? The answer lies in epigenetics.

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misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Educating the Educators: The Importance of Educational Training for Future Faculty Members

Written by: Theresa Murphy

Edited by: Kaitrin Freeland

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

When most people think of “college”, they think of their own personal experience. “College” conjures memories of big games, late nights, dodging 8 a.m. classes, making friends, and maybe even a class or two. The majority of people only ever scrape the surface of what universities have to offer, whether as undergraduate/graduate students, parents of students, or members of the public whose tax dollars fund public higher education. Beyond the parts of the university designed specifically to engage with the public (such as sporting, alumni, and public engagement events), most laypeople are only ever associated with college through academics. Their exposure is college courses, professors standing in front of a chalkboard lecturing, and students with piles of reading. Colleges have a PR problem. The university is a large ecosystem, and for many well-known universities, undergraduate teaching is only a small portion of that ecosystem. However, the dissonance between public expectations and the actual, multifaceted priorities of the university exposes an important flaw in the system: most college teachers are not adequately taught how to teach. 

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misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Brown Fat: Unlocking the Body’s Natural Weight Loss Tool

Written by: Chidinma Chukwukaeme

Edited by: Courtney Myers

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

What if we could make clones of Brad Pitt or Taylor Swift that can act or sing as well as they do? These clones could stand in for them in film scenes or concerts and still perform well. This analogy is similar to what we are researching in the Lee Lab at Michigan State University. Our research focuses on developing and testing clones of chemicals secreted by brown fat (a type of body fat that burns calories to generate heat when activated). These chemicals secreted by brown fat increase the breakdown of fat and glucose in the body. This may provide a less expensive way to help your body burn fat and lose excess weight without exercise or strict dieting.

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misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Myelin Matters: Understanding Oligodendrocyte Dysfunction in a Rare Neurodegenerative Disease

Written by: Alexandra (Alexa) Putka

Edited by: Colter Giem

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

         In 2019, rare diseases in the United States cost almost $1 trillion in direct and indirect costs to patients and caregivers, according to the National Economic Burden of Rare Disease Study. This astronomical number emphasizes that research on rare diseases not only benefits patients and their families, but it also stands to make a considerable societal and economic impact. I am a graduate student researching a rare genetic disease called Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, or SCA3, which affects one in every 50,000 to 100,000 people. Ataxia means loss of coordination, and symptoms appear similar to drunkenness: stumbling, falling, incoordination, and slurred speech. Symptoms are relentlessly progressive and result in death, usually 10 to15 years after symptom onset. Unfortunately, SCA3 has no known cures or treatments to halt or reverse disease progression. This emphasizes the need for ongoing research to better understand the disease and provide answers for this fatal disease.

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misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Evolution in Plain Sight: The Simple Observations Explaining Nature

Written by: Elena Renshaw

Edited by: Courtney Myers

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

Natural selection is happening all around us, shaping the living world and our future; we just need to observe. When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, he proposed a revolutionary idea: organisms within the natural world actually change over time, through a process he called adaptation by natural selection. What made his work so groundbreaking was not any specific discovery, but how he applied what he saw to explain how species adapt and diversify. Darwin demonstrated that by carefully observing the natural world, we can trace how small differences in individual beings accumulate into significant transformations over generations.

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misciwriterseditors blog, ComSciConMI2025

Sensory Neurons: A New Target for Treating Peripheral Neuropathy in SCA3

Written by: Juan Mato

Edited by: Brenna Saladin

This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3) is the most common inherited form of ataxia– a disordered loss of motor coordination. This rare, progressive disorder stems from a genetic error in the DNA sequence encoding the ATXN3 protein. Instead of functioning normally, this mutant protein becomes toxic, gradually damaging nerve cells.

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misciwriterseditors blog, RNA2026

Dr. Shelley Berger: Epigenetic pathways as targets in human disease

Live Blogger: Camila Gonzalez Curbelo

Editor: Paola Medina-Cabrera, Ryan Schildcrout

This piece was written live during the 10th annual RNA Symposium, “RNA Frontiers: From Mechanisms to Medicine” hosted by the University of Michigan’s Center for RNA Biomedicine.

“Doesn’t everyone want to increase their memory?” asks Dr. Shelley Berger. 

Understanding the mechanisms that drive memory loss and aging is precisely the motivation for Berger’s ongoing and exciting research. Dr. Shelley Berger is a scientist in the epigenetics field – the type of science that studies how genes can be regulated without altering the DNA sequence. Authoring high-impact publications in Nature, Science, and Cell, Dr. Berger is undoubtedly a world-renowned expert who has advanced our understanding of many basic biological pathways and has worked to translate this knowledge into applications in medicine and beyond. 

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misciwriterseditors blog, RNA2026

Dr. Nils Walter: Life in Flux: Dynamic RNA:Protein Complex Assembly Shapes Biomolecular Function

Live blogger: Ryan Schildcrout

Editor: Brenna Saladin

This piece was written live during the 10th annual RNA Symposium, “RNA Frontiers: From Mechanisms to Medicine” hosted by the University of Michigan’s Center for RNA Biomedicine.

Dr. Nils Walter opens his keynote speech by acknowledging the 10th annual RNA symposium. As a co-founder of the Center for RNA Biomedicine here at the University of Michigan, his excitement for the innovations proposed here is palpable. We feel similarly here at Michigan Science Writers for our 10th year celebration. Walter goes on to say that RNA biomedicine is unique–it offers the fastest path from fundamental discovery to medicine. He emphasizes that this symposium is all about collaboration in working towards swift translation from discovery to medicine. 

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