The Importance of Protein Folding

 

human body uses protein in innumerable ways. They are the building blocks of your body, and it's many functions. Your cells are continually manufacturing proteins; while you sleep, walk or even now as you read this blog.

Proteins make up cellular channels, are structural, act as enzymes, and are part of your immune system. These proteins are formed as strings and can be very long. Folding proteins - just as folding laundry - give them organization, condenses their size, but unlike you laundry it also provides function.

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The human body is made up of cells, and inside these cells are millions of tiny machines made up of folded proteins. These are found in every single living thing.

These proteins are folded into a specific shape to allow them to function.

If you unfold one, you'll find a string of amino acids - like beads on a necklace. These long strings of amino acids only function once they have folded into a specific shape. If the shape is slightly off, the protein will not function.

Once scientists understand how proteins fold, they will be able to develop methods to cure and prevent innumerable diseases.

Types of Vaccines: Whole Pathogen, Subunit and Nucleic Acid (mRNA & DNA)

This past year of the pandemic has brought with it much suffering, but it has also brought an amazing advancement in medical science. It will be the first vaccine that uses a form of nucleic acid, in this case, mRNA (messenger RNA).

Not only will this vaccine bring the world out of the shadow of COVID-19, but it will also open the door to a myriad of other healthcare developments.

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First, an overview of how vaccines work. Your body is naturally good at defending itself against intruders such as bacterias and viruses. In fact, you are exposed to thousands each day. If any make it through your first line of defense, your immune system takes action.

A virus is called an antigen. It alerts your immune system to create antibodies, which kill the virus or render it ineffective. Depending on the virus, these antibodies, once triggered, stay effective for months, years, and often a lifetime.

A vaccine works by tricking the body into creating these protective antibodies, without the body needing to get sick.

Traditional or classic vaccines use a method referred to as Whole Pathogen. They use the entire virus, either inactivated (dead) or attenuated (weakened) form.

Another type of vaccine is called Subunit. It uses only part of the virus.

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The newest form of vaccine and the type used for COVID-19 is a Nucleic Acid vaccine, which uses either DNA or mRNA (messenger RNA). This genetic material tells the cells to manufacture the virus or a portion of it. The COVID-19 vaccine uses mRNA that creates just the spike protein that is found on the coronavirus. Our immune system will create antibodies that then attack the coronavirus since it is covered in these spike proteins.

It is the first nucleic acid vaccine ever approved and in use. It is certainly laying the groundwork for many other vaccines to help rid humanity of other diseases.

Without this worldwide health crisis bringing focus and a global collaborative effort, it may have taken many years or even decades for Medicine to have advanced to this point.

History of Prosthetics: From Ancient Egypt to Today

 

Prosthetics originated in the Near East around 3000 BC, with the earliest evidence appearing in ancient Egypt and Iran. The first known example was a big toe on the foot of a mummy found in 2000 in the Egyptian necropolis near ancient Thebes.

In the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder recorded the story of Roman general, Marcus Sergius, who lost his right hand in the Second Punic War and got an iron replacement so he could hold his shield in battle.

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Improvements in amputation surgery and prosthetic design came in France during the 1500s from Ambroise Paré. Among his inventions was a kneeling peg leg, which had an adjustable harness, a fixed foot position, and a locking function.

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Through the years Prosthetic devices have been an asset to people in the armed forces. Countless field workers who have lost limbs in battle have had their lives transformed by the benefits of prosthetic technology. The Iraq war led to rapid advancement and development in prosthetic technology and now over 1,000 Iraq war veterans use prosthetic limbs.

Today, prosthetics can be made by hand or with the help of computer programs that create designs and analyze the items using 2-D and 3-D graphics. Advancements in robotics continue to improve prosthetic items and in the future, it is not inconceivable that replacement limbs will be as effective as organic ones.

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Neurigenetics

 Neurogenetics is the study of the nervous system as it pertains to genetics. Using phenotypes, or observable characteristics and traits, neurogenetics attempts to reach conclusions about individuals of one or more species on the basis of hereditary.

Seymour Benzer, considered by many as the father of neurogenetics, made his first discovery in the field of neurogenetics when he pinpointed a link between the circadian rhythm and genes. He found that animals go through cycles of sleeping and waking naturally and not by anything learned or developed. This led him to further investigations in the traits and behaviors of individuals as they relate to genetics. Benzer went on to make groundbreaking discoveries in neurodegeneration when he discovered similarities between fruit fly and human genes. This helped him isolate neurological diseases in humans.

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Advances in molecular biology and the species-wide genome project have made it possible to map an individual's entire genome. While this information is key to understanding neurobiology, a comprehensive picture of an individual’s traits and behaviors can only be achieved by taking into account additional factors.

The classic debate of nature vs. nurture clarifies that one’s genes are not the only determinant of a given biological outcome. Science reveals that traits and behaviors are due to a confluence of many genes, as well as regulatory factors like neurotransmitter levels and one’s environmental influences.

New developments in genetic engineering are being used to alter genetic material to potentially negate or suppress the effects of genetically linked diseases. Innovations in technologies, such as CRISPR, allow genetic material to be added, removed, or altered at particular locations in the genome.

 It is possible that one day genetic editing could be used to cure neurogenic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's. Research on this front, however, is still ongoing.

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Plastic is Deadly

Young Northern Fur Seal tangled in a nylon rope and dragging nets, cables, and fishing wires, doomed to die of hunger.

While plastic items in our daily lives are designed for one-time use, they have a long life span, usually up to 1,000 years.

Plastic is also deadly. People consume thousands of plastic articles each year, which damage our health, especially our immune systems. Plastic particles are even in the air we breathe, floating in the remotest places from fields to mountains.

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For many animals plastic is lethal. Sea birds get caught in plastic fishing line and starve to death. Small mammals choke and die in 6-pack plastic rings. Dolphins and whales swallow plastic particles that block up their bodily systems. Sea turtles suffocate in plastic bags and floating debris prevents them from surfacing for air.

Luckily, as awareness grows, people are working to clean up plastic in the environment. New types of safe, biodegradable plastic are also coming on the market. We have a very long road ahead, but with more awareness and countries working towards a common goal, we have a more hopeful future.

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Origins of Modern Chemistry

How did we get from discovering fire to using nanotubes in labs?

The concept of atoms was first conceived in ancient Greece by a group of philosophers known as the atomists. In 330 BC, Aristotle opposed this theory. He was a proponent of the elemental theory, positing that all matter was composed of the elements earth, fire, water, and air. He even added an element, aether (or ether).

The elemental theory continued into the middle ages through the study of alchemy. Alchemists added sulfur, salt, and mercury to the list.

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Finally, in 1661, Robert Boyle published the book "The Sceptical Chymist", presenting his hypothesis of particles in motion and asserting that only experiments using the "scientific method" could be considered true.

Another milestone in chemistry was the discovery of electrochemistry. Alessandro Volta invented the first battery in 1800, using piles of copper and zinc discs. They were separated by cloth soaked in brine. When wires were attached to the top and bottom, electricity flowed through the wires.

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Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier established the Law of the Conservation of Mass, also called "Lavoisier's Law", in 1789. His book "Elementary Treatise of Chemistry" is considered the first modern chemistry textbook. It contained a list of elements, or substances that could not be broken down further, including oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus, mercury, zinc, and sulfur.

Lavoisier, unfortunately, lost his head to the guillotine during the French Revolution, but not before beginning his own revolution in science and becoming the father of modern chemistry.

History of Flight: From Kites to Space Travel

There are over 100,000 airplane flights a day, with almost 10,000 planes in the air simultaneously. It's taken humanity thousands of years to get to this point, starting with the invention of the humble kite in China in 475 BC.

The popularity of kite flying in China began people thinking about making human flight a reality. Soaring through the air untethered to the ground. Before, it has been the realm of mythology, such as Icarus, Alexander the Great, and Pegasus.

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On the way, there were many failed attempts over the centuries. At first, many inventors tried to replicate the wings of birds, even using feathers or lightweight wood. But, a human's arm muscles are not like a bird's.

Leonardo DaVinci made over 100 drawings of his theories of flight and flying machines. None of which were built in his lifetime.

It took until 1783, Paris, France before man reached this goal. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes flew in a balloon created by the Montgolfier brothers.

Balloon travel brought us blimps, zeppelins, and airships. Over time the hot air balloon was refined and morphed by inventors, eventually bringing us to gliders. This development brought us a big step closer to a true airplane. George Cayley designed version of a glider that use the movements of the human body to control it.

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Samuel Langley, who was the Smithsonian Institute Secretary came close to unmanned flight in 1891. He built a model called the Aerodrome, which was powered by a steam engine. It flew for 3/4 of a mile. But, when he scaled it up to fit a person, it never flew successfully. After one test flight over the Potomac River, a journalist said, " It slid into the water like a handful of mortar."

While Langley was concentrating on propulsion, the Wright Brothers, bicycle mechanics by trade, in Kitty Hawk, NC, were focus on balance. They did their research without the help of a large institution, looking into the history of flight so far, and building models and even a wind tunnel.

Finally, on December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright successfully flew the first powered aircraft. Their plane flew 852 feet. In another 11 years, the first scheduled commercial flight took off, transporting people between St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida.

Planes become critical during WWI. The Germans used airplanes such as the Fokker Eindecker as well as Zeppelins to drop bombs on the allies.

In 1927 Lindbergh completed the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually, commercial air travel would become commonplace.

Today gigantic cargo planes with wingspans of 290 feet can carry 640 tons.

Humans are never satisfied, so we keep pushing flight further. First to land on the moon and who knows where we'll travel next.

Vaccines: How They Protect Us

Although vaccination has been a hot topic in recent news, the study of vaccination goes back to around 1,000 years ago. Early records of smallpox immunization, called variolation, can be dated back to 1000 CE in China.

Variolation was a practice that involved taking material (usually part of a scab) from a patient that was infected with smallpox and exposing a healthy individual to this material. The doctor would often insert the infected material underneath the healthy person’s skin to achieve proper exposure. The hope was that the healthy person would get sick, their immune system would successfully fight the virus, and they would then be immune to the disease once they recovered. Not surprisingly, some patients died from an intentional infection of smallpox, but the ones that did survive were indeed immune to future infections.

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Luckily, we have since discovered a less risky method of immunization, but the general concept is similar. The body is exposed to the germs of a virus to elicit an immune response, which is a fight from the immune system to attack the organisms, kill them, and protect the body from being infected. If the body is exposed later on to the same virus in its active form, the immune system recognizes it and knows how to fight it off. But instead of using full-force, potent forms of the virus, we now use killed or weakened germs from a virus to provoke an immune response.

Physicians use attenuated (weakened or altered) forms of the virus because they signal the immune system to learn how to fight the disease without hurting the body. The ‘germs’ they use in the vaccination are samples of microbes or proteins that make up the virus.

Through all of the research and discoveries surrounding vaccines, we’ve been able to prevent a long list of diseases, such as cervical cancer, measles, hepatitis B, whooping cough, pneumonia, mumps, and polio.

Recent outbreaks of measles have occurred in the US and Europe in insular communities where groups of people resist vaccination. The CDC confirms 880 cases of measles occurring across the US this year, the greatest number of cases reported since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000.

Historically, the link between outbreaks of diseases and a concentrated lack of vaccinations holds true. Both Britain and Japan developed anti-vaccination trends in the 1970s, mostly caused by skepticism about the whooping cough (pertussis) vaccine. The World Health Organization reports that 100,000 children were infected with whooping cough in Britain and 38 died. In Japan, the number of infected individuals went from 393 cases to 13,000 cases, and the number of deaths went from 0 to 41.

With such a long history, vaccines continue to shape the knowledge we have about our bodies, immune systems, and how easily viruses and bacteria can affect our health.

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• npr.org
• who.int
• historyofvaccines.org
• cdc.gov

Don't Sweat It: How Mosquitos Find Us

Scientists recently came one step closer to figuring out how to stop mosquitoes from biting us.

Mosquitos have plagued humans and other warm-blooded mammals for eons. Aside from ruining an otherwise beautiful summer evening with their itchy bites, they transmit some of the worst diseases known to man. Malaria, zika, yellow fever, dengue, West Nile Virus, encephalitis, and chikungunya are some of the deadliest.

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Many of these have no cure and may cause congenital disabilities or death.

In the United States West Nile virus, eastern equine encephalitis, western equine encephalitis, St. Louis encephalitis, La Crosse encephalitis, dengue, and yellow fever are all transmitted by mosquitoes.

The good news is that scientists continue to discover precisely how mosquitoes find us? It will help us figure out how to stop them from biting us.

The recent finding confirms that it is the acids in our sweat that attract them. Genetically altered mosquitoes that couldn't sense these acids were not drawn to us.

For now, the best method is still to use repellent with DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) or another chemical that masks the smell of our sweat.

The future is looking brighter than ever for us to prevent mosquito bites and thereby eradicate many diseases.

The Women of Coding

In 1833, Lady Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron, became the first computer programmer when she created a machine for computing called the Analytical Engine. Her partner, Charles Babbage, designed the hardware, while Lovelace focused on the machine’s inner workings or what we now call “software.” Bringing the machine to its absolute limit, Lovelace published the first computer algorithm in 1843.

Lovelace’s legacy would continue into the 20th century, as women entered the workforce. While men were busy fighting WWII, a group of female computer scientists, including Betty Holberton, Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Fran Bilas and Betty Jean Jennings programmed the ENIAC, one of the first general purpose computers. Although they were called “subprofessionals” by their peers and “refrigerator girls” by historians, Hoberton and her team used ENIAC to make crucial calculations on the trajectory of ballistic missiles for the US and its allies.

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The military would give rise to another great coder when Grace Hopper, a professor and computer scientist, joined the navy reserve and developed one of the earliest programming languages, COBOL. Hopper went on to create the first compiler, a device for synthesizing written language into code. By the end of her career, she had risen to the rank of rear admiral and even got a US destroyer named after her.

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In the 1980’s women’s participation in coding suddenly dropped. While the reason is unknown, Sara Kiesler, a social scientist, believes the advent of personal computers was chiefly responsible. Kielfer argues that when computers entered the home, parents made them the domain of boys and not girls. The culture surrounding tech became male-dominated and many women decided to opt out of the field completely. Female participation in programming was cut in half, and today only 18 percent of computer science graduates are women.

If you have a daughter or niece this Women’s History Month, encourage their interest in computers! Tell them that a career in coding is a girl thing too and that they can make history!

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• nytimes.com
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How the Stars Got Their Colors

After seeing hundreds of dazzling galaxies and nebulae in print, one might have a preconceived notion of what it’s like to look through a telescope. The reality, however, is somewhat different.

Celestial objects such as galaxies, star clusters, and planetary systems are some of the most beautiful treasures in outer space. Unfortunately, they’re so far away that they mostly appear faint to the naked eye, even when viewed through a telescope. The problem is that, unlike a camera, our eyes cannot adjust their exposure time in order to soak up more light from these distant objects.

For astrophotographers to get the vibrant colors of a nebula or galaxy, they need to rely on a number of techniques, including long exposures, color compositing and sometimes editing in post-production.

Eagle Nebula, Messier 16. SS2596669.

The famous Eagle Nebula pictured here is actually three monochromatic images mapped to different color wavelengths combined to create one image. Some might say that this makes it fake or embellished but the truth is more complicated.

The colors that astrophotographers use to create images like this reflect the chemicals in the celestial objects themselves, so they are drawn from real scientific data. Nevertheless, it’s still unclear how accurate the colors actually are.

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Of course, visual perception is always subjective, limited by our eyes and brain, so it’s worth considering how accurate our image of reality ever is.

What do you think?

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One Hundred Years of the Flu

100 years ago one of the deadliest natural disasters hit humanity, killing approximately 4 percent of the earth's population. Even people in remote Pacific Islands and the Arctic met their demise due to this virus. This shocking number of deaths was caused by the flu, although these days most healthy people take the flu lightly.

That particular strain, the H1N1 influenza virus, commonly known as the Spanish Flu, claimed many young as well as many previously healthy adults. Additionally, since it arrived on the heels of the Great War, many people were malnourished, living in overcrowded medical camps with little access to good hygiene.

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Government censorship may have played a role in the pandemic. To appear strong, many governments didn't reveal how devastating the flu was, giving no warning to the public to protect themselves. In Spain this information was not censored, giving the world the false impression that the Spanish were harder hit than the rest of the world. Thus the common moniker of the H1N1 strain in 1918 was the Spanish Flu.

These days you can walk into the corner drug store and within a few minutes walk out inoculated against the flu. Each year scientists update the formula to keep up with the ever-mutating virus strains.

In addition to the vaccine, we now know to take more steps to minimize infection. These precautions include washing our hands frequently, not touching our faces, standing at least six feet from anyone with the flu, nor touching an infected person’s phone, keyboard or other personal items. In a more general sense, we know to keep our immune systems healthy by getting enough sleep, eating right and regulating stress factors.

How can you tell if someone has the flu, not just a bad cold? Ultimately, without a medical test it is impossible to tell precisely, but here are a few guidelines.

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Common cold:

• comes on gradually

• rarely have a fever

• mild aches

• sore throat and runny nose are common

  
  

The Flu:

• sudden onset

• high fever with chills

• body aches

• fatigue

• headaches

• sore throat and runny nose are rare

Most people recover from the flu on their own and suffer no complications. But one of the main reasons to avoid contracting it is to avoid passing it on to family and friends who are elderly, very young or otherwise susceptible to disease.

Late autumn is the perfect time to get your flu shot. It only takes a few seconds and you'll be covered until the next flu season.

• webmd.com
• cdc.gov