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

About vaccines

We live in a world that is changing as we speak. Apart from the technological breakthroughs that this era is associated with, we must be aware of the other factors in our lives that are also changing. Social life is changing, the way we see things is probably changing as well. In short, everything changes at a given rate. Everything includes medicine and health care- we have seen incredible advances that have saved lives or at least were a sign that we are going to get to that point. Getting people to act and benefit from such things seems, in theory, easy and even unnecessary-who wouldn’t want to benefit? In real life, that question does have long answers that can be viewed from different points –some people don’t want to and others would want but cannot (again, due to a variety of reasons).

When talking about advances in medicine and healthcare of the past century we have to consider vaccines. Whatever views you may have you can’t say that the science and the work behind developing a vaccine are not important. Yet, no medical procedure is in theory unable to lead to

A measurement of time

On an everyday basis we look at the clock(-maybe not the best way to start a post to get you interested but nothing else comes out of my mind at a very late hour),we look at our watches and always ask "What time is it?" as we always find ourselves in between activities.With such rush we hardly ever ask ourselves "what's the deal with time?" or even "what is time?" to be more  exact.And the thing is,it's quite hard to define the term.It's soo familiar to us in soo many ways as it practically dictates our lives yet when we try answering questions about it,most of what we know or we think we do, seems very close to a blur.

It looks like a much easier question to answer is

Look closer

When you see something as a whole it's easy to overlook soo many interesting things and details.

Cells are the perfect unity designed to work in the easiest or most efficient way while displaying complexity.That basic structure that you see in school books is one of an ideal cell that might as well not exist-cells are different,most of them are specialised so that they can only carry out certain roles in an organism and that is reflected in their structure(their membrane,organelles and enzymes and so on) or they are the very start of anything-stem cells-cells that can grow into almost every type of cell(I'm planning on doing a separate post on this so I won't go into details now).

Nowadays,with the help of technology we have been able to see beyond that 'simple'.With the use of stains,fixatives and types of microscopes(just to name a few) the picture of cell has evolved and still has a long way to go.Besides human or animal cells ,in general,now there are pictures of bacteria and viruses that look better than ever before.

Here are a few very interesting pictures I found:

RUB, LS Zellmorphologie und Molekulare Neurobiologie (Department of Cell Morphology and Molecular Neurobiology)

source of image
This image shows the neuron from a mouse's hippocampus surrounded by a special structure of the extracellular matrix.Perineuronal net in blue and various structures of a synapse are shown in red,green and yellow.
The hippocampus is a primitive component of the brain that is very important in short-term and long-term memory.A synapse is the connection between a neuron and another cell(neuronal or not) that allows information in the form of electrical signal to be transmitted.

by Muthugapatti K. Kandasamy from The University of Georgia

source of image

   In this image you can see bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells*-stained for actin* in pink,mitochondria* in green and DNA* in yellow.

source for image

The endothelial cells line the inside of the circulatory system and actin is a structural protein.Mitochondria are important organelles as they are the site of ATP(adenosine triphospate) production-the energy currency of the cell.DNA-deoxyribonucleic acid-is a molecule that contains the genetic information of a cell and is very important for all aspects of a cell's function.

Wei Li, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health

            source of image

You can see here the layers of cells in the retina.The layer at the top(coloured in green) is made of photoreceptors-that actually convert the light into electrical signals that will go to the brain.There are 2 best-known types of photoreceptors in the retina-one of which helps us with coloured vision.A key word here is rhodopsin.Rhodopsin is a molecule that's responsible for starting the process of converting light into electrical signals-it changes shape when light hits.The molecule is embedded in the cell membrane of a photoreceptor-in the image;the very first part of the green layer(if you look at that layer as it might be cut into 2 parts-it's not but just for the sake of understanding).The information is transmitted deeper from neuron to neuron until it reaches the optical nerve->brain.

Heinz Feldmann, Peter Jahrling, Elizabeth Fischer and Anita Mora, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

                                                                     source of image

The Ebola virus.There are 5 types of this virus,each,after multiplying in a host cell emerges to infect again.Viruses like this ones do not really destroy cells-they 'convert' them into a virus-factory-cell.The virus can infect the lining of blood vessels which would lead to excessive bleeding and eventually death-through decreased blood volume.

Seth Pincus, Elizabeth Fischer and Austin Athman, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

                                                                  source of image

Here you can see in yellow the HIV virus-the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.This virus attacks cells(especially T cells-a common target-in blue) and takes over the normal machinery so that it can replicate.As the immunity system is affected,people infected become susceptible to a lot of diseases which the body is not able to fight off,The virus causes AIDS and can be detected.

These are just a few interesting examples I found on the Internet,you can check out more about them if you want(I put the link to the source of every photo).It's amazing how everything is so special and different,don't you think?

Cristina

These pictures are not mine and I do not take credit for them.Each has a link directing to the original source.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to every single one of you!!!I hope you have the best of times during this time of the year,whether you celebrate Christmas or not(or any other holiday).

I know I haven't posted on this blog for a while as I haven't had any time to write a good article(a.k.a. one that I'd be happy with).Sooooo,these following weeks(at least 2) I'm going to post more frequently-I hope you'll enjoy reading and maybe even leave a comment if you really liked that particular post/subject.

Happy holidays!!!

Cristina

A Very Short Introduction...to many things

Now you may think I'm going to write about everything in this post when I'm actually going to talk about books- from the A Very Short Introduction library from OUP(Oxford University Press).These books cover a large range of subjects from Art to Science,now reaching a very impressive number.I picked two numbers over a month ago when I spotted them at my local bookstore:Hormones by Martin Luck ( 394 ) and The Eye by Michael F. Land (388). What really made me curious about them besides
the actual subject was the fact that they looked pretty small for a lot of information-I had seen pictures of them on the Internet but did not expect them to be that size(174x111mm).I really liked that the writing is very small and that they fit perfectly in any of my bags so I can literally take them everywhere with me,which, believe me,is a big plus.

When they say it is a very short introduction,they mean it.These are not overly hard to understand in therms of content books yet I do have to say that I really enjoyed they way things were explained and the graphs along with pictures.If you would want to have a more in depth look in the subjects covered then this is a very good point from where to start with your reading and then move on to speciality books-both of these titles have a Further Reading section at the end which is really helpful if you want to go that way.Really interesting facts I learned from reading this,many "boxes" and side-notes sparked my interest:chemical formulas and graphs and tables.

Hormones is the one that captured most of my interest,I have to be honest,but that is just a matter of preference(I am still waiting for Genes to arrive).I liked how chapters began with a general case and then went into possible explanations for each,covering a little of the clinical related stuff and then even a little chemistry(like I mentioned ,the chemical formulas).

The Eye combined a little anatomy with evolution,in the first part of the book.

A great diversity:from biology to physics and medicine,I could find quite a few titles that I would like to read next(one of them not yet out and I'm getting really impatient).I am looking for Genes(by Jonathan Slack),The Brain(by Michael O'Shea) ,Cancer(by Nicholas James) and Viruses(by Dorothy H. Crawford) which could be the start of my very own collection.

I would really encourage people to read more science related articles and books on the daily basis and these,I think,would make a good start for anybody.

Cristina

A new blog!!!

I have been thinking about launching a new blog on this theme(very big one with many other subjects from it)for quite a while-you can already guess about what it's about:Science!!!(happy dance,awkward dance moves,I don't care at all about that)

As you know(or at least I think you do?) I'm already running a beauty/lifestyle/kind of  blog called Manhattan Snow and this one will be my little side of scientific filled paradise,because although I mentioned I do love to read I did not mention the fact that I'm pretty much into science on the daily basis.

My posts here will be very diverse but they will be a little more oriented towards biology/medicine.From on point facts  to more detailed stories and research I've been reading lately for example.

I want this blog to be interesting for both science lovers and those who read just out of curiosity.It will take some time for me to do just that since it will always be a work-in-process but practice makes perfect,right?

Everything here will be written by me(my opinions of course) and not taken from other sites.

I hope this will blossom into a very beautiful and exciting blog ,so here we go!!!

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Cristina