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There are so many misconceptions about blood cancer. It is usually thought that blood cancers are very rare, which can occur only in old people, are incurable and are always fatal, etc. This isn't what it is and today, May 28th 2021, I take up this wonderful opportunity to clear some of the common misconceptions about blood cancer. Firstly, any cancer, here blood cancer, is not a single entity but one that comprises a wide group of cancers. Now coming to the most common misconception that it can occur only in old people. No, this isn't true. Blood cancers can occur in all age groups from newborns to the weak and elderly. Well, genetics also can play an important role in the inheritance of these cancers. It's not directly that these cancers have the capability of getting inherited from one generation to the next. Some genetically inherited diseases increase the risk of blood cancers, especially in the younger ages. There is no exact cause in most cases for such cancers. Chil...

  We all very well know that the second wave of COVID - 19 with its double/triple mutants (not only these but many more variants are being reported) are evolving with a motive of evading human immune responses, spreading like wildfire today, with few cases being asymptomatic to cases having totally different symptoms than the ones which the first wave taught us. The public are understandably eager to know what the future will hold with the cases surging in rapid fire. So first of all what is a mutation? A mutation is a change in a genetic sequence. Mutations occur in nucleotides, which are the basic substances that make up RNA and DNA. The amino acid sequence is determined by the sequence of these nucleotides in RNA and DNA. The mutations in a particular viral genome can change these amino acid sequences, which further can change the structure of the protein produced by the life form.  Well, these mutations can be of 2 types - deletion and substitution. Deletions are those whi...