Yours Cuprically

Robin and the Honey Badger’s mission is to recharge biology with originality for you, the non-specialist reader. Exploring the Bio-edge is a series of e-essays presenting lateral thoughts in search of ever more interesting stories from biology. In this e-essay: some enzymes have bluer blood than others, and one antioxidant is more electric than most. Copper is in many ways the ultimate nutrient despite also being one of the simplest and most effective of germ-killers. It is indeed food for thought that your whole body contains no more than one tenth of a paper clip’s weight in copper, and yet you need to recycle a little of this metal each day to stay healthy. Here gleams the true power of a catalyst. Join us as Copper explains, in its own words, how it gives the current of vitality to living things in conjunction with other trace elements.

Each morning Robin and the Honey Badger wake up to a world of Nature with new curiosity. Which aspects of the natural world have been underlooked? Which adaptations or non-adaptations of organisms have been downplayed because of some theoretical bias? Which observations have yet to be integrated because of interdisciplinary timidity? How laterally can we think as we cruise the bewildering diversity of life forms on Earth? Join us in our mission of Exploring the Bio-edge in a series of e-essays that fearlessly - but accurately - cover all corners of biology.