Nostalgia and Brain Damage

I suppose it doesn’t make much sense to have some nostalgia before the year even finishes, but at the same time, it is crazy! I’m so glad I got to have this year with all of you guys. It seems like it’s been so long since we were sitting in BSB D310 enriching our third soil sample, trying to figure out why in the world we couldn’t find any phages. But here we are!

On a more scientific note, I came across this article today that talks about how exactly alcohol/other drug stressors can distress a fetus. With a mouse model, they were actually able to isolate the specific gene that fetuses seem to use to protect themselves from these toxins. However, what seemed interesting to me is that the article held a focus to the offspring’s future intolerance of the toxic substance, like alcohol, which is something that I never knew about.

Pretty Cool

Okay, I’m reading this for my chemistry honors paper and I’m getting pretty excited cause it’s talking all about the genomics of Ebola and at least in the first few paragraphs, it’s all stuff that we have worked with in Arthrobacter! Not exactly the same things but it is so cool to be able to understand it!

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/216288-overview#aw2aab6b2b2

Ebola

Isn’t it crazy that given all our technology, all our accomplishments and research, but a little virus can still defeat us? It seems incredible that just because of a difference in genetic code and binding potential, an ebola virus is deadly, while a bacteriophage is just a bacteria lyser.

http://www.ibtimes.com/us-defense-department-spent-140m-ebola-treatment-research-theyre-getting-close-1566666

What do you guys think?

I’ve noticed something lately. As I look through current research on surgical methods and through a great deal on new medical literature, I am noticing that a great deal of the research (ESPECIALLY on the surgical side) and publication is about breast cancer. This has blown up as an issue within pretty recent times and at some point it is unwise to not stop and ask if this is really the best way to spend all of our efforts. (I know this sounds insensitive but bear with me.) With all of the efforts and money that we through at “curing” cancer, is it really the best battle to fight? We cannot “cure” cancer because there is no cure to genetic mutation, damage, and irresponsible lifestyles that sometimes cause these cancers. Besides, I wonder how many people die more quickly and painfully because of the treatments. Maybe there are more important fights?

Based on what is advancing and what is being researched, it is clear that cancer treatment is one of the most prominent issues facing the healthcare system, but I wonder how many of these cancers really need to be treated? Some current statistics (the ones that my Human Physiology teacher said today) say that 2/3 of women and 1/2 of men will be affected by some sort of cancer someday. Where is the balance? When do we start remembering the other fights that need to be fought? I am not saying that this is somehow an unimportant fight (In my family, my mother, aunt, and grandfather have had some sort of cancer and I lost one of my friends growing up to it. I know what it does: I’m not some uninvolved outsider saying that it doesn’t matter) but we need to at least think about this, especially because a lot of us will be the doctors that need to know, someday.

Genome Gap

I think Glimmer just wanted to watch the world burn: it left a 1200bp gap in the genome to fill in with probably thirty possible ORF’s (I know that at least one other group out there understands!). It could have been constructed so many ways.  In reality, though, it is really nice to actually be moving in annotation.

Leishmania RNA virus

Outside of our little world, there are these things call NTD’s (neglected tropical diseases). One of the most common ones is called leishmaniasis, which is contracted by a sandfly bite, which transfers parasites into one’s body. We don’t really have these sandflies on this continent, so we are pretty safe from this, but check it out…in addition to the disease itself, turns out there is an additional infection spread by a virus that has come to latch itself onto the parasites. The Leishmania RNA virus seems to be an amplifier of all the contracted symptoms from Leishmaniasis. I want so badly for there to be a way to make it so this is no longer an issue. The central American strain of protazoans seem to be becoming resistant to the most common treatment, Antimony. Maybe there is a way to engineer a phage that can kill those little protazoa: it could make a huge difference.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22919688

Neurology

Ok, I don’t know what it is, but something about neurology is just absolutely captivating to me. The idea of a nerve working with a charge and being SO precise about it is just dumbfounding to me. I mean, how can nerves be that precise and consistent when they are working with a charge as tiny as -50 milliVolts? I mean in my high school robotics competition, we had voltage gradation for different parts of the robots that made it so they would only work within a 3 or 4 volt range. If the stuff that us humans make can only work within a precision of 3000-4000 mV and that seems stringent, how much more amazing is it that God can make something (and trillions of that something) that works very precisely at changes as small as this. I don’t know, but it’s amazing to me. Take a second to think about how wonderful this all is. I mean, how ridiculous it all is! Just saying, we’ve got amazing stuff we get to learn about and we are some of the only few in the world that will ever get the chance to look into stuff like this as their JOB. Don’t waste any opportunities, guys.

Starting fresh

I’m pumped, I feel like this is where the actual ‘research’ begins, where we get into the real genetics and the true uncovering of something new. I was looking around to find some cool new thing about viruses and I actually found some stuff that really freaks me out

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/07/31/db13-0619

Who knew that the effects of a virus could be related to the onset of type 1 diabetes!? That’s crazy to me; between that and the possible effects that this phage stuff could have on treatment for tuberculosis, I’m really hoping we can find something new or actually discover something really important this semester. We’re going to do some cool stuff, guys!

I also found a pretty cool one about bacteriophages!

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/271113.php

Unfortunately, this one is a bit defaming to phages, as it tells of how a specific phage targets and kills, “preys upon,” a bacteria that is neceessary for fixing atmospheric nitrogen into the soil.

Good semester guys

Even though none of this went quite like I expected, I’ve got to say this has been one of the funnest things. It’s been a fantastic semester, everybody. I’m pumped to dive in deeper this spring.