Author Archives: cherrylo

Cellulose, Why Does It Matter?

Posted on November 27, 2013 | Leave a comment

Imagine a world without cellulose, what would you see on land? Nothing. There would be no plants, meaning there would be no oxygen in the atmosphere and therefore nothing on the planet would survive. Cellulose is an organic compound, which means that it contains carbon and oxygen, bound together through a strong cell-cell interaction between the oxygen molecules. This interaction is so strong that the human body cannot break it down if ingested. Furthermore, cellulose is used in many different products, such as paper, clothes and food.

Arabidopsis thaliana plant at its flowering stage. Image taken from Flickr.

Dr. Miki Fujita and her team investigated the effects of a certain mutation in plant has on the cell wall crystallinity, which can have huge implications for all of us. Although published this year, the research initiated in Australia seventeen years ago. The research group at Australian National University obtained the genetically engineered plants and conducted the biochemical studies. Dr. Fujita carried out the microscopy work and cellulose analysis of crystallinity at the Biology Imaging Facility shared by the Botany and Zoology Departments at the University of British Columbia. This work was done at these two different locations.

Racks of Petri dishes of Arabidopsis thaliana growing in a growing chamber. Image taken from Miki Fujita.

To produce the transgenic, genetically modified, plants to work with, Miki Fujita and her team introduced and inserted genes from another organism to the Arabidopsis thaliana plant, which was used because of its ability to grow quickly. Using the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) machine, the specific sequence of the gene that will be inserted is amplified, creating a vast quantity of the sequence. The first step is to amplify the Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA fragments are mixed with an enzyme solution in a tube, and placed in a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) machine. This technique allows scientists to create a great quantity of a specific sequence of DNA. The PCR machine starts with a denaturing step where samples of DNA are heated for several minutes. The temperature on the PCR is then cooled for several minutes, allowing the left and right primers to base pair to their complementary sequences. Lastly, the temperature on the PCR is raised again for one minute, allowing polymerase to attach and synthesize a new DNA strand. The recombinant DNA produced by the PCR machines is put into plants to make transgenic plants.

Dr. Fujita using the specialized microscope at the Biology Imaging Facility. Image taken from Miki Fujita.

This research has great implications, whether economical or environmental, cellulose can make life better. Enhancing the cell wall crystallinity will increase the amount of cellulose, which will lead to an increase in the availability of our everyday products, such as paper, clothes and eventually biofuels.

The significance of this research is highlighted in the audio podcast below:

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For more information about the experiment, please watch the video below: YouTube Preview Image

Prezi in-class presentation.

By Amna Awan, Steven Cheema, Cherry Lo (Group 4)

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Outreach Project

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Schadenfreude. Your pain, my gain?

Posted on October 28, 2013 | 1 comment

Have you ever stifled a laugh when you witnessed someone do something embarrassing? Although it feels a bit wrong to do that, it can’t be helped sometimes. It is called schadenfreude—the feeling of pleasure from others’ sufferings. It is a German word that literally translates to “Harm-Joy”, the opposite of empathy. Empathy is a trait humans possess that allows humans to sense and sympathize with the emotional states of other people.

Laughing at other’s misfortunes. Is it normal?

In a recent study done by professors at Princeton University, they investigated the relationship between schadenfreude and envy. They came up with three conditions that predict schadenfreude: “(1) when the misfortune benefits the observer, (2) when the misfortune seems deserved, and (3) when the misfortune befalls on an envied target.” They proposed that envied targets are the greatest victims of schadenfreude as people feel better about themselves after witnessing someone enviable fail. Their classification of enviable targets consists of the rich and people of high status.

To test this claim, the researchers presented the subjects with photographs associated with different stereotypes, such as rich professionals, drug addicts, and the elderly. Participants were asked how those images made them feel. Obviously, the subjects did not want to reveal their envy; therefore, researchers used an electromyogram to record electrical activity of facial movements when the subject smiled, capturing the “malicious glee” of the subjects’ responses to negative happenings of the envied targets.

Interestingly, the proposed phenomenon is not pathological, but a normal human response. Thrown in competitive environments in school and work places, it is difficult not to be envious of others of higher status. While wanting to achieve a greater standing, one may have become preoccupied with bringing other people down instead of improving themselves. Furthermore, the indifferent attitude may causes discrimination and conflicts within societies. Therefore, we need to be careful not to take things too far the next time we have an urge to laugh at someone else’s misfortune.

 

Reference:

Their pain, our pleasure: stereotype content and schadenfreude

Electromyography 

Empathy

by Cherry Lo

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science

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Are chicken nuggets chicken?

Posted on October 7, 2013 | 3 comments

Thankfully, the answer is yes. I’m sure most people have seen the picture of the pink slime that was said to be the ‘meat’ of chicken nuggets; however, Dr. Casey Owens has proved it to be a false claim.  So what is the problem with chicken nuggets? It is the meat content that raises concern.

Image: Yipski

As I was reading an article published a month ago, I, an occasional chicken nugget consumer, felt a little bit cheated on by the fast-food chains that serve chicken nuggets. The researchers, who wrote this article, performed what they called “autopsies” on chicken nuggets of two different fast-food chains in Jackson, Mississippi and examined the stained samples to determine the types of chicken cells in the nuggets. Only muscle tissue from the breast and thighs were considered meat. In the first type of chicken nugget, around 50% of meat was found in the sample; the rest were fat, blood vessels and nerve fibers. In the second type of chicken nugget, around 40% of meat was found and the rest were fat, bone fragments and connective tissue. Researchers concluded that the chicken nuggets contained mostly fat.

The head researcher, Dr. Richard Deshazo, said that fast-food companies turned the lean-protein-rich white chicken meat, considered to be the healthier parts of the chicken, into something unhealthy by “adding in a mixture of chicken parts, battering it and frying it.” Being high in calories, fat, salt and sugar, fast-food chicken nuggets are a danger to people’s diets and waistlines, especially in a generation of high obesity, heart attack and diabetes rates.

Although this study does make me realize how unhealthy chicken nuggets are, it does have a relatively small sample size. Some fast-food chains do advertise that they use 100% white meat for their nuggets. More research on claims made by fast-food chains will benefit people’s health.

YouTube Preview Image

References:

The Autopsy of Chicken Nuggets Reads “Chicken Little”

“Pink Slime” in Chicken Nuggets?

by Cherry Lo

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Science in the News

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Drinking milk during pregnancy will promote growth in children?

Posted on September 16, 2013 | 1 comment

A pregnant woman. By Swangerschaft (Swangerschaft on Flickr.com) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

In a recent study published around two weeks ago, researchers proposed that the amount of milk consumption of pregnant women may affect the height of their children when they become adults.

The researchers selected 809 pregnant Danish women for the study in 1988. The pregnant mothers were asked to document their daily dairy portion size and consumption frequency. After birth, the weight and length of the newborns were measured and kept on file until twenty years later. In 2008, the researchers contacted the offspring and asked them to participate in a web-based questionnaire regarding their current weight and height. The researchers gathered all the data and reported that the mean adult height of the offspring of mothers who drank more than 150 milliliters of milk during their pregnancy was 1.2 centimeters greater than the offspring of mothers who drank less than 150 milliliters during their pregnancy.

Being a little vertically challenged myself and having a lactose intolerant mother, the article intrigued me as I scanned the page. I personally think that 1.2 centimeters, approximately half an inch, isn’t significant enough to create a correlation between mothers drinking milk during pregnancy and their children’s adult height.

We may think that ‘oh, maybe the children’s growth is dependent on their own intake of milk.’ However, in another study a few years back in 2005, it may not be the case. Researchers found that milk consumption of children ages 5-11 had little effect on the children’s adult height. They found milk consumption during the  adolescent years to contribute to a 0.3 to 0.7 centimeter increase in adult height. Again, a 0.3 to 0.7 centimeter increase is not a significant  enough of an effect on adult height; it is even less than the effect of the milk consumption of pregnant women.

In the media, milk consumption is advertised as the factor that promotes growth. I agree that it is true in a sense that the studies do show an increase in height of children after milk consumption. Though, I do not believe that it should be considered the greatest factor as there are many other factors that may have been overlooked, such as genes, sex, and ethnicity.

References:

 

by Cherry Lo

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Posted in Biological Sciences

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