BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Author: rawgdog

Genetically Modified Food? Now You Can Know For Sure.

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On March 10, 2013

In Student Post

Whole Foods Market has officially become the first grocery store to require the labeling of all genetically modified foods. In an article published by The New York Times, on Friday, March 8th, Whole Foods Market announced that they will be labeling all genetically enhanced food products.

According to Whole Foods president A. C. Gallo, the new labeling requirement was implemente due to consumer demand. Mr. Gallo stated that that their “manufacturers say they’ve seen a 15 percent increase in sales of products they have labeled.”

Today, genetically modified foods are of great abundance in the global food supply. For example, most of the corn and soybeans grown here in the United States are genetically altered. The alterations make the soybeans resistant to a herbicide used in weed control, and causes the corn to produce its own insecticide. Scientists are currently working on producing a genetically modified apple that will spoil less quickly, and genetically modified salmon that will grow faster.

What do you guys think of the position Whole Foods is taking with labeling their products? What are your thoughts on genetically modified food in general? Do you believe that genetically modified foods are safe for humans to consume? Please leave your thoughts and comments below.

 

Altruism Brain Cells Discovered!

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On January 5, 2013

In Student Post

A recent study, published on Dec. 23 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, discovers brain cells that fire when monkeys act unselfishly! In the study, rhesus monkeys were monitored during interactions involving the giving away and acceptance of juice from other monkeys. The scientists observed that certain brain cells were triggered when the monkeys gave away juice, but were not triggered when the monkeys received juice.

Max Rushworth, a neuroscientist at Oxford University wrote in an email: “The new findings provide a ‘complete picture of the neuronal activity underlying a key aspect of social cognition,’…’It is definitely a major achievement.'”

Scientists in the field refer to these observations as the “do-gooder impulse.” Study co-author Michael Platt, a neuroscientist at Duke University, beleives that this primitive do-gooder impulse has evolved into that altruism we see in humans today.

Here is how that study was actually carried out. Platt and his fellow scientists taught the rhesus monkeys to play a computer game in which they looked at different shapes which either meant to give themselves, another monkey, or nobody a squirt of juice. As expected, the monkeys gave themselves the juice whenever they had the option. Then the researchers set up another trial, except this time the monkeys only had the option to either give juice away, or give no juice at all. In this trial, the monkeys consistently preferred giving away their juice over giving nothing at all.

When looking at the monkeys brain map, Platt and his colleagues saw that the neurons in the region called the anterior cingulate gyrus were being fired. That same region has been observed in other social interactions, such as when a person watches his or her romantic partner being pinched. The results suggest that that area of the brain may be responsible for creating empathy.

Platt speculates that this region maybe responsible for what is known as altruism in the human brain.

 

I find it fascinating how scientist are able to trace the sources of even the most highly regarded human traits. What do you guys think? What type of implication can such a discovery produce?

Wanna socialize………with an Elephant?

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On November 6, 2012

In Student Post

Us humans aren’t the only creatures of “socializing.” There is a young elephant at the Everland zoo in South Korea that can speak Korean!

USA today published a recent article about a young elephant that can imitate human words like a parrot. The Asian elephant can speak five Korean words: “annyong” (“hello”), “anja” (“sit down”), “aniya” (“no”), “nuo” (“lie down”) and “choah” (“good”). According to Koshik’s trainers, he learned to imitate  human words in 2004.

Angel Stoeger, leader of this study, says that “Koshik is capable of matching both pitch and timber patterns.” So in actuality, the elephant is just imitating the noises, not really “speaking” words. But who cares? That is still awesome!

In the study, Stoeger and her colleagues had 16 native Korean speakers listen to 47 recordings of the elephant’s “mimics” without informing them of who Koshik was and his abilities. The speakers confirmed the mimics as proper language – this “largely confirmed” the claims of his trainers, says the study.

Koshik was born in captivity in 1990 and moved to Everland in 1993, living with two female Asian elephants until he was 5 years old. Koshik was the only elephant in Everland from 1995 to 2002. He was trained to obey commands in Korean. People were his only social contacts in those years, and the researchers suspect this led to his remarkable imitative powers.

So how does Koshik do it? As you can see in the video, he sticks his trunk in his mouth ,thus allowing him to create different sounds and tones. According to researcher Liz Rowland of Cornell, “[it] is a first for elephants using their trunk[s] to modify the sound.”

The researchers believe the reason for animals such as Koshik to exercise imitative vocalization “might be to cement social bonds and, in unusual cases, social bonds across species.”

 

Why use Advil? Just get bitten by a snake…

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On October 8, 2012

In Student Post

Traditionally, snakes have not been regarded as friendly animals. In fact, snakes have struggled to gain respect given their track record in poisoning and killing humans. However, a new study has arisen that may help their case…

http://www.public-domain-image.com

The black mamba (shown above), is considered to be one of the most lethal snakes on earth. However, a team of researchers in France discovered compunds in black mamba venom that could actually relieve pain. In fact, when the substance was tested on mice, it’s “pain-killing” effects were comprable to that of morphine!

The compounds are called mambalgins, and the seem to work by blocking certain channels and pathways in nerve cells. Generally speaking, the said channels open up in acidic environments, thus triggering pain signals. The mambalgins work by preventing the flow of charged atoms through the channels, thus stoping the pain killers entirely.

In this study, the analysis of the mambalgins was conducted on mice. The team injected the mice with either the mambalgin or morphine before exposing the animals to “pain” (such as painful chemicals). In the majority of the steps, the venom treatment and the morphine alleviated the pain equally as well. However, because mambalgin happens to cure pain through an entirely different mechanism than morphine, it lacks some of the major side effects of morphine such as nausea or seizure.

As with any new scientific breakthrough or theory, the results are still preliminary. Currently, the performance of mambalgins have only been tested on mice. The researchers are predicting a long while before mambalgins may be of real clinical use as they have to undergo a more rigorous scientific evaluation, not to mention all of the legal hurdles. So don’t go out searching for a snake to bite you just yet! 🙂

I found this article very intriguing and ironic. I found this ironic because the source of this new pain killer is one of the most pain-full animals on the planet. This is also intriguing because scientists may have just stumbled upon the first “pain-less” pain killer, which is ironic in itself as well. On a larger scale, I find this article even more fascinating because it testifies to just how little we know about the environment we live in.

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