H5N1 Avian Flu

     H5N1 is a 'highly pathogenic' avian flu. Highly Pathogenic means high chance of disease causation. Avian refers to flu from a bird. There are many 'H' 'N' viruses nationwide. Human flu viruses include H1N1, H1N2, & H3N2 which are A sub-types. The two glycoproteins are essential for efficient virus replication. The 'H' is for hemaglutinin (HA). This substance determines the ability of the virus to attach to other cells.The 'N' stands for neuraminidase (NA) which determines the spreading ability of the virus. HA works by binding to receptors on target cells. This initiates an infection immediately, no matter how small. NA cuts acids from these receptors and inhibitors to properly release the virus and to promote the spread to neighbor cells.
There are many more types of HA and NA, making numerous types of viruses. Avian influenza (H5N1) is probably the most feared virus of all. The probability that this virus infects humans are slim to none, but it does happen.
     Since 2003, six-hundred cases of the virus have been reported for H5N1 nationwide. Living in the United States we are safe from such a virus, so far! It is not contagious between humans and most infected know to have been in contact with infected or dead poultry. Sixty percent of the reported six-hundred passed away from the illness. Asia and the Middle East are the main places this virus has had outbreaks. Symptoms are not very serious and compare to many illness'. These include fever, coughing, respiratory distress, difficulty breathing, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Eventual results of the virus lead to pneumonia, respiratory failure, shock, altered mind. seizures, failure of organs, and death.
     Since 2011, sixty-two human cases have been reported. Thirty-four deaths were from countries Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Egypt, and Indonesia. The U.S. carefully controls our import food products, especially poultry, and has banned any product coming from countries who may have infected bird flu poultry. Recently, Thailand has begun phase 1 clinical trial to test the H5N1 vaccine. This is a reult of international collaboration and is the first step in testing this vaccine in humans. The whole process is expected to be finished by May 2013. flu.gov wikipedia 'H' 'N'

The actual structure of the virus.

Recent out break in Ninh Bihn Provence in August.

Deoxyribonucleic Acid

Exam I

    Deoxyribonucleic Acid, DNA, is the storage of genetic material that makes up most organisms. Something we all have in common, but the very thing that seperates us all. DNA contains four chemicals; adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). When two of the four chemicals combine AT or GC, they create a base.  Along with sugar and phosphate, these three things together create a nucleotide. DNA is a long strand in the form of a double helix. The bases being in the middle of the two long strands of sugar and phosphate. If these are the only things DNA contains, then how does it seperate organisms? The bases are the cause, When adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine are arranged into bases, they are also placed in a different sequence running along the double helixs. Not to mention, some rely dormant, unlike others that are active. For example, humans and chimpanzees DNA are extraordinary similar, but we look and act nothing alike.

   Although it's most important feature is protein synthesis. DNA holds the blueprints to create certain proteins and how to build them. It is the key to the structure of organisms, and their total development.
  
   Another unique thing about DNA is it's ability to replicate itself. To pass the codes down and on for further use. The double helix splits, letting one strand of sugar and phosphate and the other to go different ways, each taking one chemical to the base that connected it. Then from previously created nucleotides, they attach to the polynucleotide that is seperating. Thus creating new DNA strands. When forming new polynucleotides sometimes an error will occur, one things get an A while it shouldve gotten a C, radiation, or something happens like being attacked. This is a mutation.

    A mutation can sometimes effect the organism. On the otherhand it may have no effect at all. Some may be good or bad. There have been cases where the good may be having a resistance to HIV. But others will have the opposite effect, or no effect at all. For instance, a limb forming the wrong way.

   DNA holds the key to how we develope. But scientists, and others, have been looking into altering the codes themselves. To manipulate someone that should have brown eyes, to have blue instead. This is just one of the simple things they could do if they achieve this.


http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/basics/dna
http://www.safety-identification-products.com/dna-history-information.html

Bacteriophage: Bacterias Enemy

Bacteriophage: Bacterias Enemy

Bacteriophage are microscopic virus's that infect and replicate within bacteria. They are composed of proteins and DNA and RNA genome. The genomes of bacteriophage can contain as few as four genes and as many as hundreds of genes. The infection and replication within becatera consists ofa few steps. First, the bacteriophage will attach to the bacteria. Then they will inject the bacteria with their genetic material into the host. Next begins the synthesis of proteins and nucleic acids. Within minutes, bacterial ribosomes start translating viral mRNA into protein. For RNA-based phages,RNA replicase is synthesized early in the process. Proteins modify the bacterial RNA polymearse so it preferentially transcribes viral mRNA. The host’s normal synthesis of proteins and nucleic acids is disrupted, and it is forced to manufacture viral products. Next, bacteriophage begin to assemble within the bacteria, and withing fifteen minutes are released from the bacteria. For more information on bacteriophage, click here.

Animal verse Plant Cells

   All organisms are composed of cells, from the wings on a butterfly to the apple or oranges a person may eat. There are distinct differences between animal and plant cells, that make a plant a plant and an animal an animal, but there are similarities as well. All cells exhibit four basic structural similarities, a nucleoid or nucleus where genetic material is located, cytoplasm, ribosomes, and a plasma membrane. These four pieces of a cell play a pivotal role in a cells structure.
   But what makes a animal cell different from a plant cell? Animal cells have no cell wall, whereas plant cells do have a cell wall. The cell wall surrounds the contents inside the cell. Animal cells instead have a plasma membrane to contain what is inside. The plasma membrane gives the animal cell a round irregular shape, and the shape of plant cells is rectangular because of the presents of a cell wall. Both cells have vacuoles but plant cells vacuoles make up about 90 percent of the plant cells volume, animal cells have vacuoles but they are much smaller and may have more then one. A big difference between the two cells is chloroplast, plant cells have chloroplast to allow photosynthesis to take place producing its own food. Animal cells do not have chloroplast because it is fed by what is digested by the animal. These are only a few differences, animal cells also have centrioles, lysosome, and has a flagellum even though not all animal cells have them.


Above is a diagram of a plant cell, and it shows the cell wall, chlooroplast, and how big the central vacuole is. The shape is also highlighted in the diagram as well, because of the cell wall the shape of the plant cell is ridged and does not change. Below is a diagram of a animal cell and the shape is more irregular and squishy. The animal cell diagram shows the lysosomes, and the centrioles. Both cells are different but if closely looked the similarities are also great. It would be very interesting to see if one thing is changed on a animal cell if it would change the animal all together.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Image:Animal-Cell.png

http://www.biology-online.org/11/1_plant_cells_vs_animal_cells.htm

Muscle Building and Rejuvenation

http://www.naturalnews.com/033957_muscle_growth_proteins.html
http://www.nutritionexpress.com/article+index/authors/jeff+s+volek+phd+rd/showarticle.aspx?articleid=807
Exam 1 blog

This is a model of what a mTOR pathway protein looks like.

When you break down muscle exercising, it is always beneficial to ingest protein after your workout to rebuild the muscles you have just broken down. Proteins serve as a muscle building molecule. They are composed of polymers of amino acids joined together by peptide bonds. The question is what kind of protein is the best for building muscle and rejuvenating the muscle you break down while exercising. The answer has been found with a natural way of fasting and exercising that activates a growth hormone muscle rejuvenation and a BCAA amino acid that is the most abundant out of the three amino acids. The latest science has found out that a special type of protein called mTOR holds the key to muscle building, and Leucine is the most abundant BCAA out there and helps your muscle growth speed up tremendously. Leucine and mTOR are also intertwined together and work together to help build muscle.

The protien mTOR stands for mammalian target of rapamycin. "When mTOR is activated, it causes muscle cells to increase protein synthesis. This leads to skeletal muscle hypertrophy. mTOR integrates cellular information regarding intracellular nutrient status and energy and oxidative stress levels.When it deems that energy levels are high and the muscle cells are stressed, it activates in order to help the cells heal and rebuild in a stronger manner." (http://www.naturalnews.com/033957_muscle_growth_proteins.html) There are two extremely effective ways to activate mTOR activity are to ingest branch-chain amino acids, these amino acids will make your muscles to recover quicker and includes mTOR within them; another way to activate mTOR is to exercise intensely while fasting. It's very critical to exercise intensively after you fasted because this raises your natural testosterone and gives you an anabolic drive. You can actually produce a natural type of human growth hormone by doing this. When you exercise intensively you should exercise for about five to thirty minutes of non stop moving such as sprinting and exercises that keep you moving and raise your heart rate.

People who exercise daily always think about what they can do to have muscle growth. The best way to achieve muscle growth is to directly intake protein after exercising. Taking BCAA's are also an essential way of rebuilding the muscle that you have broken down. There are three main BCAA's; isoleucine, valine, and leucine. The most abundant amino acid of the three is leucine. Leucine is an amino acid that helps stimulate protein synthesis. It also helps turn on the switch within your body to start the process of rebuilding muscle. Leucine is not naturally produced in your body, so we need to take this amino acid to further our muscle growth through dietary supplements such as BCAA's. Leucine is one of the main amino acids that activates mTOR which starts the process of building muscle back up to recover. mTOR starts the production of muscle rejuvenation and leucine is the main activator as I mentioned in the second paragraph about BCAA's being an effective way to activate mTOR. These two protein building molecules are essential to know when you are weight lifting or even just exercising by playing sports and such, because after you perform in such activities you need to start your recovery process to build the muscles you break down.
(http://www.nutritionexpress.com/article+index/authors/jeff+s+volek+phd+rd/showarticle.aspx?articleid=807)

This is a structure of the most abundant branch-chained amino acid called leuicne.

Scientists Vs. Nature

 

Exam 1 blog

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/25/science/designing-life-proteins-1-computer-0.html?ref=biologyandbiochemistry

The supercomputers versus Nature. Who will win?

 

Scientists were put up to a challenge. The challenge was to try and recreate the intricate complex structures that nature does effortlessly in proteins and make their own proteins do what nature does, fold it into final form. The end result became very clear very quickly. What is it you ask? Well it was never even a contest. Nature proved its worth easily over mankind's strongest and most powerful computers that it faced.

 

Some people may wonder why even bother with nature and try to recreate our own synthetic proteins just as well as nature?

Well the answer is knowing the shape of proteins is important for designing new drugs. While scientists have learned the sequences of tens of thousands of proteins, they know the three-dimensional structures of only a small fraction of them. Going directly from the sequence to the correct geometry would amount to nothing less than a biochemical renaissance.

http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/cmbidata/proteome/pdf/0525/04.pdf

As you can see the structure of a protein is beyond complicated

and this is just one of the proteins that scientists are trying to

sythesize to create new drugs for medicine.

 

 

In recent years though mathematicians have come to believe that the general problem of predicting how any given sequence of amino acids will fold is nearly impossible, the kind of problem they call ''nondeterministic polynomial complete.'' An example is the traveling salesman problem: Given a list of cities, find the shortest path that will visit them all. The only way to solve the problem exactly is to try every single route. But as the number of cities increases, the computing time explodes out of control. Likewise, as the number of amino acids in a protein chain increases, the time needed to calculate its final configuration grows beyond hope. And for this reason scientists cannot hope to be able to be able to, at least in the near future, be able to recreate protein structures.

It was estimated that for an average sized protein made of 100 amino acids solving the folding issue would take 1027 (a billion billion billion ) years. This is why nature is winning the battle against supercomputers. Things that would take forever take nature seconds.

 

Oblivious to this argument are very long proteins, consisting of thousands of amino acids, which fold up by themselves in minutes; while shorter ones, with tens or hundreds of amino acids, fold in a second or less. The proteins have somehow found a shortcut through the maze of possibilities, and both biologists and computer scientists are dying to know what it is.



As you can see this protein, compared to the earlier one, is

much much simplier and one like this could be solved by

the scientists in the contest against nature.

 

 



Overall it became clear to all the molecular scientists in this contest. That we are so off the idea of the primary structure that we just cannot compete with it right now, however they can with the secondary structure. My opinion after reading up on this "contest" is that nature clearly has the upperhand and that the scientists should stick to what they can do right now and not go too far ahead of themselves, as it is clearly not capable of being done right now.

 

Below is a complete list of proteins that have been discovered to this date.

http://www.cellsciences.com/PDF/CytokineCenter_Complete.htm#W

How easy it is to create a deadly mutant virus

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/health/amateur-biologists-are-new-fear-in-making-a-mutant-flu-virus.html?ref=biologyandbiochemistry
Amateurs creating destruction

After months of intense worldwide debate, a group of scientists brought together by the World Health Organization recommended last week in favor of publishing the results. But when they do, will it be possible for others to recreate the mutant virus?
One of the most serious concerns of the scientists, against giving out the information, is that new deadly H5N1 mutated virus could be accidently created in the "lab" of some "inventive American" as they said. Over recent decades the amount of amateur scientists has increased dramatically, and some groups are past 2,000 members.

 

As you can see compared to the H1N1 that ran rampant across the world just a few years ago, the H5N1 virus is much deadly and nearly fatal each time it contracts a victim.

 

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/avianflu/news/sep1812avian.html

Here you can clearly see that when the H5N1 broke out in a duck farm in China nearly 50% of the contracted ducks died and the rest infected were killed off for safety measures. If this can do this much damage to a flock of ducks imagine what it would do to the human population had it got loose? My opinion is that the virus needs to be rounded up and its information kept hidden away from the evils of the world so that there doesn't become a mass biochemical warfare weapon of clear mass destruction.

9.2 M Year Old Rhino Skull Found Preserved

Researchers found a rhino skull fossil in Turkey. This information was published the 21st of November in PLOS ONE a science journal involving Pierre-Olivier Antoine and colleagues from the University of Montpellier, France. This rhino is made out to be a large two-horn common in the area during that period of time. It is suggested that the rhino was 'cooked to death' at temperatures of 500*C. The skull was found separated from the body 30 km north of an eruption site. That makes this such a rare find because usually finds near an active eruption site are quickly ridden of by the intense temperatures. sciencedaily.com ANCIENT RHINO SKULL

Drunks more likely to survive injuries

A study from the University of Illinois in Chicago suggests that an intoxicated individual is more likely to survive the same potentially fatal injury that might kill a sober individual. These studies indicate that the same drinks that cause you to be more prone to injury may be protecting you as well. 
"After an injury, if you are intoxicated there seems to be a pretty substantial protective effect," said Lee Friedman, the author of the study and an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at UIC, in  a statement issued by the school. "The more alcohol you have in your system, the more the protective effect." The study says that there is a correlation between the high blood-alcohol content and the survival chance after a serious injury. It does not exactly pinpoint that alcohol is the root of the solution but there is something happening here. livescience.com

Dolly, the cloned sheep

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/science/keith-campbell-cloner-of-dolly-the-sheep-dies-at-58.html?ref=biologyandbiochemistry
Keith Campbell, cell biologist, dies at the age of 58 in Derbyshire, a region of England.

Campbell was one of the most famous cell biologists because of his sheep, his cloned sheep that he created. This sheep became one of the most popular animals of all time because of the way it came to be. This idea of cloning brought upon two sides; the side for it which said this was something before deemed impossible and the scientists are overjoyed to see new work, and the other side which worried that next would be people being cloned. Campbell claimed that the greatest value of cloning lay in the potential to engineer animals to produce medications, and even transplantable organs, for use by human beings.

 

This is the picture of the famous cloned sheep, Dolly, who also normally reproduced 6 lambs. It took 277 attempts to create Dolly as the process was much moer vigorous and complex then a simple cutting as that of a plant. http://www.animalresearch.info/en/medical-advances/151/cloning-dolly-the-sheep/. In this website you can find how Dolly was cloned, what happened to her throughout her life, and the reason to clone sheep and other animals.

My personal opinion on this matter is a slight mix of both views. I feel as though it can and will have its benefits in the future but the fear of being able to clone humans is a very scary thought and needs to be taken into consideration before the idea of cloning begins to run rampant.

 

 

Fetus Suffers When Mother Lacks Vitamin C

The University of Copenhagen has newly published in their scientific journal that lack of Vitaman C in a mother can have serious implications on a child's brain. Once brain damage has occurred it cannot be reversed after birth with Vitamin C supplements. Pregnant guinea pigs and their pups were used to come too this conclusion, the experiment led by Professor Jens Lykkesfeldt. Like humans, guinea pigs cannot produce Vitamin C making them an ideal target. Studies indicate that ten to twenty percent of all adults in the worlds have a Vitamin C deficiency. All in all once the damage is done it can't be reversed, so everyone, especially mother's should think twice about complementing their diet with necessary vitamins like Vitamin C for them AND their offspring.Fetus damage from lack of Vitamin C- ScienceDaily

Class of RNA molecules protects germ cells from damage

Biologists from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine have come too a new theory on the human male's loss of fertility. These molecules called pachytene piwi-interacting RNAs, or piRNAs serve a protective role in the body's passing on of genes to offspring. Without these molecules germ cell development in males comes to an abrupt end. They protect by suppressing the activity of transposable elements or "jumping genes," which are stretches of DNA that can change position and cause potentially damaging genetic mutations. These sequences are also known as transposons. Lack of these certain cells can cause massive DNA damage.
"There are about 50 human diseases caused by transposable elements, so it's important for the body to have a way to try to repress them," Jeremy Wang said. Wang and his colleague authored the entire study and are experts in the field. In experiments with lab mice, in the presence of these germ cells lack of mature sperm was evident. The master role that these RNA cells serve are irreplaceable, and otherwise could lead too many health problems. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. piRNA Article- ScienceDaily