What's in your eye? Is that a fibula?!?

Scientists have determined that a California women has bone fragments growing in her eye because her plastic surgeon used abdominal stem cells...

"Surgeons isolated mesenchymal stem cells from her abdominal fat—cells that can become bone, cartilage, and fat, among other types of tissue—before injecting them into the skin around her eyes."

Read the article and comment in several ways. Biology students can comment upon how this reflects differentiation as one of the characteristics of living things. AP Biology and anatomy students can reflect upon how the use of calcium hydroxylapatite might have affected the mesenchyme cells. Research and see if this causes an epigenetic change.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Another Instant Egghead from Scientific American.

What science that we've covered did you find in this video clip?

Keep those drugs out of the waterways

It is well known (especially thanks to the P2D2 program) that there are too many drugs in the nation's waterways. This article highlights the effects those drugs are having on fish.

Note, as you read this article that the research is based on drugs that have already passed through the systems of humans and entered the waterways through the sewage treatment systems. It's possible that might be the next step for the P2D2 program.

Anatomy and AP Bio students, look at this quote from the article and comment upon it.

To find out more, Rearick compared gene expression in estradiol-exposed and unexposed fish. He found a significant increase in the expression of genes for the neurotransmitter dopamine in estradiol-exposed fish, suggesting that something might be occurring in their developing brains.
Klaper took a similar approach in her investigation of fluoxetine effects in fathead minnows, finding a cascade of gene-expression changes in the male minnows' brains as the dose increased. "I'm in the process now of trying to figure out the [physiological] pathways these might be involved in," she said.

Biology students, read the article and comment upon the scientific method being used, the ecology being studied, and how the effect of drugs on fish affects humans

More about antibiotic resistance

I have had several posts before about antibiotic resistance and now there's more research into it. This time the research focuses on the urine of cattle. That's right, bovine pee! Read the article and see what kind of research these scientists are doing?

What's your opinion of having 80% of all antibiotics in the United States being given to livestock?  Comment on the research and what they could do to expand. What else could they study to learn more about antibiotic resistant bacteria?

Otzi the Sardinian?

from: http://www.livescience.com/24666-otzi-iceman-mummy-life-death.html

The mummified remains found in the Alps of a man named Otzi has been a staple of science books for many years now. Scientists have used a variety of forensic and archeological tools to reconstruct his life. Scientists have now identified which Europeans he is most closely related to according to his DNA sequence and it is the people of Sardinia, shown in the map below. Read through the articles and and come up with a list of the forensic tools used to identify parts of Otzi's life.

from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinia

Giant Roman!

National Geographic recently published an article identifying that the bones of person with gigantism had been discovered. The person was between 198 and 204 cm tall. This would have put them more than 30 cm tall than the average Roman citizen.

"To find out if the skeleton had gigantism, the team examined the bones and found evidence of skull damage consistent with a pituitary tumor, which disrupts the pituitary gland, causing it to overproduce human growth hormone.
Other findings—such as disproportionately long limbs and evidence that the bones were still growing even in early adulthood—support the gigantism diagnosis, according to the study, published October 2 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism."

Using the bold print from the article copied above, identify what the scientists were looking for in the bones that they used as evidence for gigantism.

It isn't terribly strange to have a person that is 200 cm tall at this point in time? What changes have occurred that caused changes in height? 

Plant Defense

We're all familiar with plant defenses such as thorns and toxins. I had a nasty case of poison ivy two years ago that I don't wish to repeat. This article identifies how barley fights off fungus using a protein in the cell that causes cell death. It's a fascinating situation of cell communication and programmed cell death to 'starve' the fungus.

Can organic farming feed 7 billion people?

This blog post/article from Scientific American identifies the benefits and negatives of organic farming vs. conventional farming.

It is identified that organic farming produces lower yields ..."organic agriculture delivers just 5 percent less yield in rain-watered legume crops, such as alfalfa or beans, and in perennial crops, such as fruit trees. But when it comes to major cereal crops, such as corn or wheat, and vegetables, such as broccoli, conventional methods delivered more than 25 percent more yield."

Is it worth it to have lower yields if it comes with a better environment? Does organic farming improve the environment? What are your opinions?


"Conventional farming requires knowledge of how to manage what farmers know as inputs—synthetic fertilizer, chemical pesticides and the like—as well as fields laid out precisely via global-positioning systems. Organic farmers, on the other hand, must learn to manage an entire ecosystem geared to producing food—controlling pests through biological means, using the waste from animals to fertilize fields and even growing one crop amidst another." 


Are modern farmers, or those who will work in the agriculture industry prepared to move to a more organic approach?

Pop = bone loss, flame retardant chemicals, hormone interference. Really?

The Today Health website has an interesting post about 5 reasons that you shouldn't drink a lot of pop, or soda if you're from farther north. Some of the reasons are chemicals that interfere with hormones in your body, accelerated bone loss, chemicals that have flame retardant properties, and some potential (in lab animals) cancer causing chemicals.

Read the article and let me know what you think and whether these risks are the result of people finding fault in minor matters or whether you think pop is a health risk. What studies could be done to find answers more conclusively?

Tumors evolve?

Scientists have determined that there is a significant amount of mutations within the cells of a tumor. They have determined that different parts of tumors are significantly different from each other. This could be very helpful in finding different treatments and hopefully more of a chance for cures.

So many things to comment upon. Have at it!

Marijuana affects memory!

Any student that has ever been in a health class knows that marijuana affects memory. Scientists have determined that the memory loss has less to do with the affect of the THC on the neurons than it does on the neuroglia. Those 'helper' cells have THC receptors and they are certainly affected.

AP Biology and anatomy students, this article is especially pertinent to you as we covered both the receptor molecules and cell signalling in AP Biology and neuroglia was a topic covered in anatomy.

Can PE change my DNA?

While exercise cannot change the DNA a person has, it certainly can have an effect upon what genes are turned on and off. Researchers have found that exercise has an epigenetic effect upon the DNA. Click here for the abstract of the research. Scientific American has a podcast about the same thing

AP Biology students can take this information and expand upon it based on what we learned in class. Biology students should think about how this can be used and what might occur with it in the future.

Exercise yields more mitochondria in the brain?

Researchers have long known that exercise is good for more than just muscular and cardiovascular health. It also can make a person's brain function better. Using mice as subjects they followed this hypothesis. 

Some questions to ponder as you comment: Why are the mitochondria so important in this research? How can the tell the mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA apart? How is this an example of homeostasis? How could this information be used to improve school performance?

Fungus eats plastic!

Yale researchers identified a fungus with a rainforest habitat that has enzymes that are able to breakdown polyurethanes, the main component of plastic. As it is right now, nothing else is able to do this work and much of what fills our landfills are plastic or plastic based products. This fungus is also anaerobic, so it would be able to do its work in the low oxygen conditions of landfills.

What do you think of this? How should scientists procede? Are there any dangers associated with moving too quickly with research of this kind (thinking of biotechnology and genetic engineering)?

Frostbite on Piddy Pads?

Why is it that dogs don't get frostbite on the pads of their feet? That's pretty tough skin, but in the cold arctic winter, or even the relatively mild winters of the Midwest, dogs don't get frostbite or even suffer much if any damage to their pads when outside. Researchers have some up with a reason why they can MAINTAIN HOMEOSTASIS in the exposed regions of their pads. It has to do with a phenomenon called countercurrent exchange. This is something that is relatively common in different animals for heat exchange (like the dog's pads).

Read the article and comment upon the research and what you think they'll find if they look in other species (think both cold climate and hot climate species). Also identify some other ways that organisms use countercurrent exchange. One more, see if humans have used this in any inventions and comment upon that.

Illness - Taking one for the Team!

This Discover magazine blog post explains why humans (and other vertebrates) are not affected the same way by the same virus. I have often wondered why some people would get very sick from a virus that hardly affects someone else. My dad would often say 'because we're from hearty stock', but I didn't really believe it. This article explains it much better!


What this study found was that viruses tend to evolve so that they target mice with specific sets of MHC proteins. Once a virus had evolved to wreak havoc in mice with one set of MHC proteins—possibly by changing its own molecules just enough to avoid notice by those particular proteins, or some other work-around—it had a really hard time infecting mice with a different set of proteins, which, of course, could still sniff it out just fine.

Have you experienced this? What does this reinforce about what you learned earlier this year about viruses and how they infect cells? How can scientists use this to improve medicines?

When is an identical twin, not identical?

Epigenetics is an expansion of the classic Mendelian genetics. I have taught that identical twins have the same DNA, and they do, but it doesn't always express itself in the same way. This article is a good beginning to the idea of epigenetics. Scientists have researched...

a series of experiments that caused nematodes raised under the same environmental conditions to experience dramatically different lifespans. Some individuals were exceptionally long-lived, and their descendants, through three generations, also enjoyed long lives. Clearly, the longevity advantage was inherited. And yet, the worms, both short- and long-lived, were genetically identical.

Science News says... longevity may be because they inherited epigenetic marks — chemical tags on their DNA or DNA-associated proteins called histones — that change gene activity without changing the genes themselves.

This animation does an excellent job of showing what epigenetics is and how it affects genes.

Comments can be quite varied on this one. Explain how epigenetics might be used in medicine, agriculture, pharmaceutical, or other industries. Are there any drawback to learning more about this? How does this affect our knowledge of genetics? 

Permafrost science

We discussed the arctic tundra in class as a biome. These scientists are looking into the permafrost and what possibly could happen if large amounts of it 'defrost' in the coming years. It seems that they are worried about the amount of methane and carbon dioxide that could be produced.

Comment on the the ecology of the biome and how heating up the permafrost could affect the entire ecosystem. AP Biology students might also want to focus on the positive feedback look that is mentioned in the article. Lastly, determine whether this is valid science and worthy of the money invested by the Department of Energy

Stereotypes: Women like fruits and vegetables, men like meat

The American Society of Microbiology has made a huge step forward in the differences in diet between the human genders. They determined that males prefer meat and poultry while females prefer fruits and vegetables. While this seems like identifying that water is wet, it might also be very good for following food poisoning cases. Do you fit in with this study's findings?

Pride and Arsenic? Arsenic and Sensibility?

Was Jane Austen's death caused by arsenic? While classic English literature is usually out of the scope of science class this article identifies how some scientists are investigating the death of Jane Austen. If you comment, also identify your favorite Jane Austen book or movie from the book (if you have one). I watched a movie variation of Pride and Prejudice based in India call edBride and Prejudice. It was interesting.