BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Tag: discovery

Bioelectronic Medicine is Moving Fast, Artificial Nerve Regeneration to the Rescue!

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On October 14, 2018

In Student Post

 

Researchers at both Washington University School of Medicine and Northwestern have just made a discovery that has huge potential for future patients of nerve damage. Diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Bell’s palsy, Cerebral palsy, and many other illnesses regarding the nervous system/ nerves are one step closer to having a cure! Beyond chemistry and drugs, scientists are now using technology to find a cure using the first ever development of bioelectronic medicine. A device, ” The size of a dime and the thickness of a sheet of paper,” is implanted in the body to “speed nerve regeneration and improve the healing of a damaged nerve”.

This device, which is currently nameless, is powered wirelessly by a “transmitter outside the body that acts much like a cellphone-charging mat”. It is very thin and works by winding around a directly injured nerve(precisely where needed). After the device has engulfed the injured nerves, it delivers electrical pulses. These pulses accelerate wound healing and reproduce nerves. Doctors/ patients using this device have the ability to control the times which pulses are sent. Around two weeks after the device is injected, it naturally absorbs into the body not harmfully.

Image result for nerves

The device has yet to be tested on humans. Recent discoveries have been based on observations on rats with injured sciatic nerves. These nerves in rats send signals throughout the legs to control muscles in feet and legs as well as hamstring muscles. To perform the study, scientist spent ten weeks monitoring rats’ recovery while providing pulses one hour per day for one, three, six, or no days at all a week. After a little more than three months, researchers concluded that “any electrical stimulation was better than none at all at helping the rats recover muscle mass and muscle strength”, and the device accelerated the regrowth of nerves. They also concluded that “the more days of electrical stimulation the rats received, the more quickly and thoroughly they recovered nerve signaling and muscle strength”. Overall, no side effects of the device and its reabsorption were found.

Overall, this discovery can do great things for the human population. Making it extremely convenient, this device after put on can possibly replace pharmaceutical treatments for a variety of medical conditions in humans

Researchers are currently continuing to study this device to see what is most effective in animals similar to humans. They are evaluating the effectiveness of the devices different sizes,  duration, and fabrication.

Meet Charlotte’s Cousin (She’s Coming to the Web this Year for Thanksgiving)

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On November 21, 2016

In Student Post

You’re taking a nice autumn walk, enjoying the scenic pathway covered in red, yellow, and brown beautiful leaves. You stop at tree and notice one small, shriveled up decaying leaf still hanging. In a whimsical motion, you decide to pluck the final leaf… Aaaaaahhhh! Spider!

Folks, you’ve heard of the stick bug. Let me introduce you to the leaf spider (it has yet to be officially named!). Don’t worry, you’re unlikely to find one unless you’re in China.

The Leaf Spider’s Cousin: The Barn Spider                                      Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tmh9/233350520

On a research excursion in Yunnan, China in 2011 (they published their findings on November 11), researcher Matjaz Kuntner* and his team came across an unusual species unidentified by the likes of man, the only known spider to resemble a dried up leaf!

Camouflage isn’t new in the animal kingdom; it’s a popular survival trait. But its more common with insects like the stick bug than arachnids.

However, roughly 100 species of spiders have bodies that don’t resemble your typical halloween decoration, ranging from a jumble of twigs to bird poo. But nothing like this!

They described the spider’s back as looking like a healthy green life while its underside resembled a dead brown leaf. And a hairy, stalk like structure branches out of its abdomen like the stem of a leaf! Take a look for yourself!

After searching for another specimen for two weeks, the researchers found only one more: a juvenile male. Searching the world’s museum for another sample, only one resembling the new specimen could be found (in a museum in Vietnam) but it is suspected this specimen comes from a known species whereas these two new individuals are a brand new discovery!

But the icing on the cake… as the title suggests, this spider is a cousin of Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web! Yes, the barn spider (Araneus cavaticus) and this new spider both belong to the Poltys genus along with 3,000 relatives (what a family reunion!).

One thing to note: the researchers noticed leaves stuck to the branch the spider was resting on by silk, indicating that the spider might have placed the leaves there on purpose. Keep an eye out for new research on the matter in the future.

So, the pivotal question I ask anyone who reads this… what should the spider be called? Do you know of any cool arachnids or insects that use camouflage in unique ways? Let me know in the comments.

Original Article: http://www.livescience.com/56910-leaf-mimicking-spider-found.html

 

*Matjaz Kuntner is a principal investigator with the Evolutionary Zoology Lab at the Biological Institute Jovan Hadzi, Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Depression Infection?

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On November 16, 2014

In Student Post

Melancholy_2

 

Major Depression Disorder (MDD), most commonly known as “Depression”, is typically thought of as a genetic or neurological disease. However, Dr. Tuhran Canli, Associate Professor of Psychology and Radiology at Stony Brook University, suggests that MDD be recategorized as a result of a parasitic, bacterial, or viral infection. Canli’s paper, Biology of Mood & Anxiety Disorders, argues how possible pathways from these infections could cause MDD.

The causes of MDD are still unclear, therefore the research is delving more into the causes over the treatments. Dr. Canli suggests that by redefining MDD as an infectious disease, it will push future researchers to focus their attention on parasites, bacteria, or viruses.

Canli’s three major arguments for this change of MDD’s etiology are as follows:

1. MDD patients have a loss of energy, typically found in an illness. Also, the “inflammatory biomarkers in MDD suggest an illness-related origin”.

2. Parasitic, bacterial, and viral infections alter emotional behavior in humans.

3. The body is an ecosystem, made for microorganisms and genetics. These infections alter that ecosystem.

The redefinition of the causes of MDD could have significant help in finding the cause and eventual better treatment of the disease. Has depression been an infection all along?

 

Original article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141114124307.htm

Picture: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Melancholy_2.PNG

The “Social” Bacteria

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On January 19, 2014

In Student Post

800px-M._xanthus_development        The Myxococcus xanthus is a bacterium found in soil that scientist identify as a “social” bacteria. Organized into multi-cellular and three-dimensional structures made of thousands of cells, the bacterium works together by hunting for food and surviving under difficult conditions. They form interesting structures and help each other survive, which are fascinating points of study for scientists who have been researching E. Coli (which has medical significance and influence) in test tubes. However scientists believe that this behavior in test tubes is obviously not as revealing as bacteria behavior in a social or spacial structure that they find in Myxococcus xanthus.

       Myxococcus xanthus eats other microbes and is therefore classified as “predatory”. The structural complex that the thousands of cells form interests scientists, because it is self-made and because it can hunt, kill, and digest various different microbes. By identifying the mechanisms that help the bacteria achieve their multi-cellular behaviors, scientists believe that this will answer questions about how individual cells break their symmetry to organize into these complicated many-celled compositions, teaching scientists about the evolution of multi-cellularity. “The most primitive form of life is single-cell life,” Igoshin, a scientific investigator, says. “The next step up would be going from single cells to multicellular organisms. These bacteria are somewhat in the middle.”

      The bacterium is capable of adopting various forms (ripples, segments, fruiting bodies) in order to hunt for food successfully as a unit and live for a long time together. These capabilities give researchers insight into designing future antibiotics by understanding its functions and methods, especially in embryonic development and other manifestations of this kind. 

Dr. Light

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On November 18, 2013

In Student Post

Cardiac arrhythmia is a problem with the rate of heart beat that currently affects 4 million Americans. During arrhythmia, the heart may beat too fast, too slow, or have an obvious irregular rhythm. In some cases, this heart condition may be life-threatening with the ability to damage the brain, heart, and other organs due to the lack of blood flow.

Oscar Abilez, a cardiovascular physician at Stanford University has developed the solution to this condition: light. With his team, he is working to create a new biological pacemaker that is able to control the heart with light. The first phase of his research involves optogenetics. This uses techniques from both optics and genetics to control the activity of individual neurons in living tissue. In 2002, German scientists were able to isolate the genes for the proteins called opsins. Before this discovery, algae and few other organisms were the only know carriers of light sensitive cells. These opsins, however, are responsible for cells’ light sensitivity in humans and modify the genetic code of other cells so that they, too, would produce these opsins. 

The next phase of his research involves stem cells. Oscar Abilez hopes to convert the stem cells light-sensitive cardiomyocytes from a person who is suffering from this condition.  These cells that make up the muscle tissue in the heart  would be able to be “grafted” onto a person’s heart. This would then ideally carry out Abilez’s vision, which he hopes will be achieved in the next decade or so, allowing physicians to control the whole heart’s rhythm using light.VPC_1

Can We “Turn Off” a Chromosome?

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On September 27, 2013

In Student Post

What is this crazy idea of “turning off” a chromosome and how will it benefit us? Well, in a recent scientific discovery Dr.Jeanne Lawrence and her team found a way to turn off the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome. This discovery talked about in an article written by Jennifer Wong has opened new perspectives on treating the syndrome. Now now, this is not a cure to Down syndrome, it is way to eliminate the symptoms. Still an astonishing feat! To examine this we must first simply look at what Down syndrome is. Down syndrome is caused by the presence of an extra chromosome- chromosome 21. So we can fully understand chromosome 21 in it’s entirety is here is some more information. People unaffected by this syndrome have 22 chromosomes, however in the case of Down syndrome chromosome 21 gets copied three times instead of the regular two- causing an extra chromosome. This genetic disorder is quite common in our present day. Down syndrome is known for causing intellectual issues, heart problems and early Alzheimer’s disease. To add, this is a great website which explains Down syndrome in further detail.

 

The extra chromosome 21 in down syndrome

The extra chromosome 21 in down syndrome

So what is this ground breaking discovery? Dr.Lawrence, at the University of Massachusetts, tested the idea of “shutting  down” chromosome 21. She and her team had discovered that the gene specifically involved with X-Chromosome  inactivation could be used to “turn off” the extra chromosome. This gene is known as XIST- X-inactive specific transcript. XIST has a non-coding RNA covering. This causes a string of chromosomal changes that mute gene expression. Dr.Lawrence wondered if this gene could be used to shut down chromosome 21. She and her team set up an experiment- to insert the XIST gene into the extra chromosome and see if it causes the inactivation they were hoping for. But doing so is not as simple as it sounds. How do we insert a gene into a chromosome with out fault? The answer to this is an editing enzyme called the zinc finger nuclease- an enzyme that can insert genes into chromosomes while making little to no mistake. To  ensure certainty  the team used doxycycline, a drug that helped to induce an expression from the gene.

After conducting this experiment Dr.Lawrence and her team found that the expression induced by the doxycycline on the XIST gene could effectively inactivate or in other words, turn off, the extra chromosome. This turned it into a Barr body (a condensed X chromosome). The experiment had worked! Dr.Lawrence’s paper on the experiment can be found here. The inactivation of chromosome 21 eliminated the symptoms of Down syndrome. A brilliant discovery sure to pave the way for further exploration of cures to Down syndrome, a syndrome which effects many people in our world today. What do you think of this amazing find and how it will benefit those affected by Down syndrome?

Article Source:

http://www.science20.com/quotsciencequotstruck_bookworm/turning_extra_chromosome_down_syndrome-116789

Picture Credit:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boy_with_Down_Syndrome.JPG

 

 

 

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