Quora is a question-and-answer site. You can view all my contributions here; selected highlights are listed below. I encourage you to check out the other answers submitted for each question, too!

I haven’t been as active as usual over the last few months; I took a break over the summer, and then entered the busiest few months of my professional life (as well as doing my usual full-time job I also helped organise and run the 2014 Joint Annual Meeting of the International Human Epigenome Consortium and the Canadian Epigenetics, Environment, and Health Research Consortium, then studied intensively for my Project Management Professional exam, which I passed just before Christmas). I still managed to write a few answers though!

Cancer

Which cancer strains are contagious among humans and how can they be contracted?

Do you think the government knows the cure for many illnesses like cancer but hides the information to make more money off the unsuspecting general public?

What types of cancer are affected by epigenetics?

Epigenetics

How difficult is epigenome sequencing, as compared to genome sequencing?

What are all the elements of an epigenome?

What are some great resources to teach epigenetics to a class?

Does DNA methylation and histone acetylation add to the amino acids of the histone or nucleotide?

Other Scientific Subjects

Why isn’t there a cure for Ebola yet? Is it as mysterious as HIV?

What does it mean to have a genetic predisposition to a disease?

Why are longer DNA sequencing read lengths preferred over shorter read lengths?

What are the most amusing figures or images from academic journals and articles?

Do siblings who share the same set of parents each have the same distribution of parental DNA? Can one sibling have more of one parent’s DNA or would the parental DNA distribution be equal?

Does a chromosome contain a thousand genes, or is it gene pairs (i.e. 2000 genes in all)?

About Scientific Research and Careers

Why are biologists so secretive of their data?

What happens to old scientific grant applications?

What’s competitive research funding?

Miscellaneous

What has been the toughest decision of your life? Did it turn out to be the right one?

What is the wittiest thing a child has ever said to you?

Is the term “agnostic atheist” a double negative?

What are the best examples of people “gaming the system”?

What’s the worst logo failure you have ever seen?

Quora is a question-and-answer site. You can view all my contributions here; selected highlights are listed below. I encourage you to check out the other answers submitted for each question, too!

Cancer

How would you explain to a layperson why cancer has been such a difficult medical problem to solve?

Are cancer cells organisms?

Can you name some practices that cause cancer that people do without knowing?

Is chemotherapy effective in late-stage cancers?

Why is nausea often a side effect of receiving chemotherapy?

Other Scientific Subjects

What non-standard model organisms are currently used in experimental biology?

Should genetic engineering be banned?

Is AIDS a virus or cancer of the human blood?

Do human beings have unique toe prints, similar to unique fingerprints?

Doesn’t a person’s body reject embryonic stem cells from another person?

When will HDAC inhibitors be available for humans?

About Scientific Research and Careers

Writing Grant Applications: How do funders measure their grant’s impact?

What is the most annoying thing people have asked you after you told them your decision to do a Ph.D.?

Miscellaneous

What are some funny stories you have about your name being mispronounced or misspelled?

Quora is a question-and-answer site. You can view all my contributions here; selected highlights are listed below. I encourage you to check out the other answers submitted for each question, too!

Cancer

How has smoking been proven to cause cancer?

Could intentionally causing cancer cells to mutate into a form more vulnerable help destroy cancers?

Can cancer be caused by defects in RNA splicing?

Why is breast cancer so deadly even after someone has been declared cancer-free for many years (i.e. it often comes back and is often deadly)?

How likely is “the cocktail effect” to be the reason for the increasing rates of cancer?

Other Scientific Subjects

How does mRNA decide which gene is dominant?

Geneticists, what are your feelings about the studies on epigenetics? I found a few who are vehemently opposed to its legitimacy, and I want to know if that’s common or exceptional.

Has anyone ever tried crossing animals with plants?

If the surface of our bodies were covered in photosynthetic cells, how much exposure to the sun would you need to sustain the body’s metabolic process?

Is there such a thing as an ideal human or organism?

What is a plasmid?

Science Books: Could you help me to find “scientific novels” in English or Spanish? Not “science fiction novels”, but stories about the human feelings of the people who deal with science.

Is Mary Roach a good science writer?

About Scientific Research and Careers

What great prank has a scientist pulled on his or her colleagues?

What determines a reasonable budget for a research grant?

How many projects is a PhD student supposed to lead and do by him/herself?

Who should not try to become a professor?

What are you doing with your life science PhD? How did you get there? Why did you choose it?

To what extent is/was your choice to pursue a career in academia influenced by things other than interest in a subject?

Miscellaneous

What is the best Schrödinger’s Cat joke? (featuring my favourite photo of my cats – Saba (on the left of the photo) and Google)

What are some witty and amusing things you have heard on an airplane?

Quora is a question-and-answer site. You can view all my contributions here; selected highlights are listed below. I encourage you to check out the other answers submitted for each question, too!

Cancer

What are driver and passenger mutations in the context of cancer cells/genomes?

Why isn’t there more research on why most people never get cancer even if they smoke or are exposed to some other carcinogen?

What is mutational heterogeneity?

Other Scientific Subjects

What is epigenetics, in layman’s terms? (my answer was featured on the official Quora Twitter account!)

DNA: Is the amount and type of information in an individual’s DNA the same on the day they are born as on the day they die?

What is your favourite science book?

About Scientific Research

Academia: Do some professors prefer graduate students who don’t have the same exact research interests as them?

Is there a list of all major scientific research funding bodies?

Miscellaneous

Why would you live in a country with dark, cold,  wet, or snowy winters when you could live one with warmth and sun all year-round?

Book Recommendations: What is your favourite Canadian book?

Quora is a question-and-answer site. You can view all my contributions here; selected highlights are listed below. I encourage you to check out the other answers submitted for each question, too!

Cancer

Cancer: What is cancer?

Cancer: What are the most common misconceptions about cancer?

Medical Research: When the cure for cancer is discovered, what happens to all of the research centers whose purpose was looking for a cure for cancer?

Cancer: What’s more responsible for the increased incidence of cancer as we age: the failing of our immune system to detect and eliminate the incipient cancers, or the dysregulation of tumor-supressor genes and oncogenes?

Cancer: What is the most elementary form of life in which cancer occurs?

Cancer: What is the difference between “cause cancer” and “increase the risk of cancer”?

Cancer: What is the best drug?

Biology: What prevents Herceptin from binding to HER2 receptors in regular, non-cancerous cells?

Cancer: What possible causes of lung cancer are there besides smoking?

Cancer Research: Are there any health supplements whose intake has been shown to cause cancer or other diseases?

Other Scientific Subjects

Animal Behaviour (Ethology): Why can’t animals learn human languages?

Anthropology: Do phylogenetic studies of humans suggest that there were selective sweeps associated with the adoption of agriculture?

Biology: How do cells know when to stop dividing?

Biology: What is the single most important gene in the human body, and why?

Biology: Why is it that chimpanzees have 99% the same DNA as humans, yet the one percent distinguishes us to such a degree?

Cells (biology): How does a cell know which genes to use?

DNA: How did DNA replace RNA during evolution?

Epigenetics: How do you sequence the epigenome when histone tail acetylation is involved?

Evolutionary Biology: Why do all living creatures have DNA?

Evolutionary Biology: Is natural selection a result of mutation? If yes, then why are these two considered to be different basic mechanisms in the explanation of evolution?

Genetics and Heredity: Why do bands appear on chromosomes where they appear?

Virology: What are some of the most amazing mind-blowing facts about viruses?

About Scientific Research

Scientific Research: What is the initial incentive for a scientist to do research?

Genomics: What should I study in college if I want to get a job in genomics. Do I have to get a PhD? What could I expect as salary right out of college?

Crowdfunding: What if rejected grant proposals were automatically put on crowd funding websites? Do you think this is feasible or a good idea?

Miscellaneous

Jokes: What’s the funniest science-based joke you know?

Best of X: What are the best puns that you made up?