BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Author: mattochondria

What is CRISPR-Cas9?

CRISPR-Cas9 is a new(ish) technology that is used for knocking out human genes in cell lines for the purpose of seeing what these genes do. CRISPR-Cas9 has a “protein scissor”, the cas-9 protein, and a location that shows the cas9 where to bind to. The “location” is actually a strand of RNA that is complementary to a specific strand of DNA. This RNA strand is like glue in that it binds to the DNA and allows the Cas9 to cut the DNA. This process or the CRISPR-Cas9 technology is like an endless cycle of cutting and repairing DNA until the repair enzyme can no longer repair the DNA or makes a mistake. This technology can make the process of cutting and disabling genes five times faster. It allows scientists to edit parts of a genome by altering, removing, or adding certain sections of DNA. While this technology can be very useful in trying to understand what genes do it does have a downside, “these approaches are costly and time-consuming to engineer, limiting their widespread use, particularly for large scale, high-throughput studies.” The picture below shows what this process looks like on a very basic scale. Hopefully this technology will eventually allow us to fully understand what every gene does.

 

More Than One Type of Giraffe?

It has recently been found that there are four distinct types of giraffes when we only thought there was one. This was found through an analyses that used several nuclear marker genes of more than 100 animals. The giraffe population has decreased by over 35% in the last 30 years so these animals are becoming endangered. And as it turns out these 4 species of giraffes only mate with giraffes of the same species. These giraffes are primarily located throughout Africa. This recent study has proved that we don’t know everything about these animals. In order to help increase the giraffe population people who mate giraffes now need to know that there are 4 distinct species of giraffes and that these 4 species only mate with the same species. hopefully this new data will help improve the population size of giraffes and help prevent them from becoming endangered.

 

More Bacteria than Human?

The well being of humans is best when we are cooperating with others whether that be other humans or bacteria inside of us. According to Matthew Bull “the human gut microbiome and its role in both health and disease has been the subject of extensive research, establishing its involvement in human metabolism, nutrition, physiology, and immune function.” An imbalance in our microbiome will often result in some type of sickness so it is very important to keep our guts healthy. It is likely that there are more bacteria cells in our gut than there are our own cells. So in this image right here  there would be more bacteria cells than human cells. Some people even consider the microbiome a bacteria ecosystem that just happens to be in our gut. While this may sound bad, these bacteria often break down food for us and supply us with energy needed to do daily activities. It is truly fascinating to think that we have many living things inside of us that may even outnumber what is actually considered “us”. But is it possible for these bacteria to take over our bodies? The answer is probably no…we hope, but if we continue to eat well and stay healthy these bacteria should continue to help us. However, if we eat poorly and don’t stay healthy these bacteria can end up being a problem for use. So at the end of the day eating health helps the relationship between us and the bacteria inside of us stay healthy and lets us stay healthy.

The diet that we should have to keep a healthy relationship with these bacteria involve eating less sugar and fat and eating more fiber. A diet with a lot of fat and sugar but little fiber can lead to illness. It is also best to stay away from eating a lot of iron. There are some things that help our microbiomes such as milk, milk has proteins in it that help keep our microbiomes health. So eat less sugar, bad fats, and iron and eat more fiber and drink more milk.

 

If You Didn’t Already Know, You Shouldn’t Eat Sharks

Can sharks give you Alzheimer’s disease? Do people actually eat sharks?

screen-shot-2016-11-14-at-12-47-10-pm

NOAA, national ocean service image gallery flicker.com/photos Licensed for reuse/public domain

The answer to both of these questions is yes. A recent study by the university of Miami found large amounts of toxins that are linked to brain disease. It has been recently found that about 10 types of sharks have high concentrations of these toxins and that the consumption of these sharks can actually lead to the development of brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Though it is very uncommon for someone to be found eating a shark in the U.S, shark is widely consumed across Asia so many asians may be at risk of developing brain diseases. The shark population is rapidly decreasing due for the desire to have shark fin soup, a delicacy across Asia, and this new information may be used to help the argument against the killing of sharks. Since sharks are becoming more and more endangered, this discovery could help save the lives of sharks and of people. So people, especially ones that consume shark, must learn that eating shark can have real negative effects on peoples lives and by killing sharks they are helping the endangerment of the species. This killing and consuming of sharks needs to stop to help save sharks and people.

Hammer Head Shark 1893 No Known copyright restrictions flicker.com/photos

Hammer Head Shark
1893
No Known copyright restrictions
flicker.com/photos

A Brand New Dinosaur? Just When You Thought There Were No More Dinosaurs.

 

Yep, you read that correctly, a brand new dinosaur(…’s skull) has been found in the Patagonia region of south America. Its amazing that after millions and millions of years new dinosaur fossils are still being discovered which can lead to the recognition of a whole new species of dinosaur. In this case, the dinosaur was part of the pterosaurs group, which is a extinct group of “flying reptiles”. This brand new type of dinosaur was named Brain Ancient; just kidding, its name translates to “brain ancient” its really called “Allkauren Koî”. But why was the dinosaur named this? These two additional websites may help answer that as well as show what the dinosaur might have possibly looked like. The name was probably given to this extinct animal because all that was found of it was an ancient brain(in reality the skull and part of the backbone and vertebrae was found). This find shows just how interesting the world used to be and it still amazes me that we are able to find remains of the beasts that ruled the world before humans.

 

williston_pteranodon

 

Here is the fossil of a close relative of this newly found dinosaur (this dinosaur is in the same group, pterosaurs). S.W. Williston’s reconstruction of Ornithostoma ingens, a synonym of P. longiceps

 

To clarify, if you would like to see pictures, that can’t be shown on this article due to copyright issues, of what this new dinosaur Allkauren Koî might have looked like, you can use these two links that are shown below.

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/27867/20160831/fossil-of-new-species-of-flying-dinosaur-found-in-argentina.htm

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/allkauren-koi-argentina-04145.html

 

 

 

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