Journal Refresh #3 : Decrypting, Breast Cancer and the Biocompass

I haven't written much for this blog because of my busy schedule so I thought I might as well fill you in with what articles I've been reading lately. I won't write this post in a bibliography style as I did with my other posts.

• Decrypting a brain enigma, written by Kamran Khodakhan based on the letter called Encoding of action by the Purkinje cells by David J. Hertzfeld et al. in Nature Vol 526, Issue No 7573 - pages 326 and 439,respectively.

  These were very interesting to read- I read the "introduction" by Khodakhan first and thus was able to get a better understanding of what the whole letter was about before actually reading it.                

 He compares the computational units of the brain to the ones of

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

Mince pies for Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you. Christmas is a time of joy and happiness, shared with family and loved ones. I hope you get to do that everyday and especially during these few wonderful days. 

This year has been quite hectic for me and to be honest, I can't believe

How amazing enzymes are

Enzymes are biological catalysts.

Enzymes are proteins.

Galactosidase enzyme
Substrates: maltose, which is broken into two glucose molecules

These two sentences are actually the main way to characterize an enzyme. Firstly, a biological catalyst is a substance that speeds up the rate of the reaction (how quickly it happens per unit time) without changing the equilibrium. Further, enzymes are biological catalysts because they are made within the body. It's actually easy to envision two reactions which are reversible- the products can react to form the initial reactants- to understand what is the equilibrium that I'm talking about and how enzymes are maybe best described as the second hand. That is because the reactants can react together on their own but that would take a long time so enzymes, due to their ability which I would talk about as we progress, come and help with lowering the activation energy( the energy needed for the molecules to engage with each other) without being directly involved. Come to think of it,they remind me of industrial machines which help put and secure the cap of bottles on; they do help but after finishing one bottle they can get on with the cap of the next without being changed.


Secondly, they are proteins. Proteins are biological molecules which are made up of amino acids, which bond through peptide bonds. This is really one of the most exciting thing about enzymes and

Journal Refresh #2

I posted something like this early in July, a list of articles I had read up to that point and thought were interesting. And this is the second post in the series.

• Ledford  H.,(2015): CRISPR, the disruptor,  Nature 522, 20–24

• Reardon S.,(2015): DNA editing in mouse embryos prevents disease, in Nature, News

• Reardon S.,(2015): Ethics of embryo editing paper divides scientists, in Nature

• Laird D.W.,Lampe D.P., Johnson G.R.,(2015): Defects in structures that connect cells underlie many diseases, Scientific American 312, no.5

• Kwon D., (2015): What are you doing with my DNA?, Scientific American online

• Courage H. K.(2015): Octopus Genome Reveals Secrets to Complex Intelligence, Scientific American online, also read about it in Nature 

                                    Cristina

A post about synapses

You can try to identify the structures

"SynapseSchematic lines" by Thomas Splettstoesser (www.scistyle.com) - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.


Synapses resemble a basic conversation between two individuals and of course, leave room for other people to enter. Person A tells something to Person B and because they speak the same language and the two are healthy individuals, the message is delivered to the receptor who may say the same thing to Person C or something as a result of the previously received information. But for our brains, the two persons are representations of two neurons and the language is

Tears are made of this

I found out one interesting fact about our tears this week. 

There was one patient awaiting consultation in the ophthalmology department and whilst he was doing so, he also had to undergo a quantitative assessment of tear production. In other words, testing to see if his lacrimal glands produced enough lacrimal fluid. The action was taken because he was complaining of dryness in his eyes. The Schirmer method was used and the scores that result from taking the test actually represent the length of a paper strip that was crossed by the lacrimal fluid. Turns out, that was the reason his eyes felt dry- his tear production accounted for a low score.

Yet, that was not exactly the most interesting thing that came out of that consultation (and why I won't insist on that matter for now).                                                                                                  

I learnt that while you can assess the quantity of tears secreted, you can also assess the lacrimal fluid in terms of

Journal Refresh

I read some awesome articles in the past few months that I think are worth mentioning in a post. This is also a good way for me to keep track of pieces of writing that I really enjoyed reading and I thought I might as well share them with you even if they're going to make a small post.

-In no particular order-

• Deng B.,(2015): The robot's dilemma, Nature 523, No.7558, 24-26       

                                           

• Hilton D.,(2015):Practical policies can combat gender inequality, Nature 523, No.7558,  7   

• Scientific American Board of Editors: A last right for dying patients, Scientific American       312 ,No.6, 7    

                                                                                                                                  

• Gould J.,(2015):Genie in a vector, Nature 515, No. 7528 Suppl.,6-7 (the supplement is Nature Outlook Haemophilia)                                                                                                                     

• Stix G.,Lifting the curse of Alzheimer's, Scientific American 312, No.5 , 

These articles are really interesting ranging from artificial intelligence and gender equality in science to research into treatments for haemophilia and hereditary Alzheimer's. If you do read them do tell me which one you liked the most and why.

                                Cristina