Category Archives: Biological Sciences

Can Sharks Help Us Cure Cancer?

Posted on March 3, 2019 by | Leave a comment

There are very few things in this world that are more terrifying to humans than sharks are. After all, with their intelligence, size, agility and ideal anatomical features, they really are the perfect predators. They have dominated the ocean for over 400 million years, instilling fear in other animals and humans alike. But what if these fierce hunters actually hold the key to surviving some of our deadliest diseases?

A great white shark in Dyer Island. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (Olga Ernst).
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_white_shark_Dyer_Island.jpg

Recently, scientists at the Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Research Center characterized the full genome of a great white shark, essentially the genetic blueprint that maps the structure and function of the animal. Their studies revealed that sharks are just as resilient on the inside as they look on the outside.

Their research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, found that sharks can repair and alter their DNA, the material in our bodies that carry genetic information, in order to fight diseases and heal wounds efficiently as they age. Their built-in resistance to DNA damage increases their genetic stability and health, which is how they are able to thrive for millions of years.

A 3D-model of DNA strands.
Courtesy of Flickr Commons (Helen Carmody).
Source: https://flic.kr/p/R8JhxZ

Healing progression of a lemon shark over a three year period. Courtesy of YouTube (Ramon Llaneza Technical Diving). Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lrn5AHipp8. 

Our cells, the building blocks of our body, along with our DNA, which provide the layout for the cells to function, breakdown as we age. This damage, termed genomic instability, is what makes humans so vulnerable to serious age-related diseases like cancer.

By studying the shark genome, the scientists hope to understand the mechanisms behind how these animals are able to preserve its stability, information that may potentially help us fight cancer and other serious human diseases. It may also help improve current flesh-healing treatments.

There is still so much to learn from sharks, both from a biomedical perspective and from an environmental perspective. Hopefully, this newfound research will heighten our appreciation for these evolutionary superheroes instead of feeling the need kill them.

– Justine Law

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The Fall of Sea Stars

Posted on March 3, 2019 by | Leave a comment

1986-014-01: Sunflower seastar

“1986-014-01: Sunflower seastar” by August Rode is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Once an abundant species of sea star, the sunflower sea stars have become harder to find on the West Coast of North America. A recent study co-led by the University of California, Davis, and Cornell University claims that the combination of ocean-warming and an infectious wasting disease has led to the declined population of these large sea stars.

The sunflower sea star is one of the largest sea star species, they can grow as big as manhole covers. Commonly found in the northwest Pacific, they were once regularly found from Southern California to Alaska and some of the largest sunflower sea stars could be found in Puget Sound, British Columbia and Alaska.

In 2013 and 2014, a disease called sea star wasting syndrome affected around 40 different species of sea stars, including the sunflower sea star, to die off along the North American Pacific coast. Symptoms of the disease would be lesions and tissue decay, which the body structure of the sea star would start to breakdown. For example, their arms may twist and fall off and the sea stars would become limp. Eventually, the sea star would disintegrate and melt away into a white, mushy blob and no longer be a sea star. It is unclear where this disease originated from but researchers believe ocean-warming might be the reason why this disease continues to affect the sea stars and why the sea star population is not recovering fast enough.

Dying sea star

“Dying sea star” by Oregon State University is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Ocean-warming is an effect of global warming. The ocean absorbs excess heat from the atmosphere which contains greenhouse gas emissions, which leads to rising ocean temperatures. Increasing ocean temperature can affect many marine species and ecosystems. Warming of the oceans have been linked to the increase and spread of diseases of marine species.

The sunflower sea star species has been detrimentally affected by sea star wasting syndrome. The study conducted by Dr. Harvell and her colleagues collected data over eleven years to show how the population of sea stars have diminished due to this disease. In addition, scientists also found that the ocean water has warmed almost 4 oC within a four-year span in some areas. Results of the study showed the population crash of sunflower sea stars from Southern California to Alaska whilst tracking patterns of unusual warming in the Pacific Ocean. The sunflower sea star is shown to be highly susceptible to this wasting disease because they do not have a complex immune system. As a result, the data showed an 80 to 100% decline over the period of the study.

“Sunflower Star Imperiled by Sea Star Wasting Epidemic” by Hakai Institute

If the sunflower sea star dies off, this should be an important indicator of the effects of ocean-warming and its impact on marine ecosystems. Sunflower sea stars are voracious predators in the deep and shallow waters of the northwest Pacific, and if these sea stars were to go away we could see an unbalanced ecosystem in our waters.

– Katherine Lam

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Recording the Cell? New technologies further uncover mysteries surrounding the cell.

Posted on February 4, 2019 by | Leave a comment

Does anyone really know what life is like inside of a cell? Sure, we can all say that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, and we’ve learned mitosis more time than we can count, but do we really know about the intricacies of day to day cellular processes? Historically, answer has been an overwhelming no, but that is something the researchers behind CAMERA are hoping to change.

CAMERA, or CRISPR-mediated analog multievent recording aperture is a tool developed by David Liu and Weixin Tang of Harvard university to record the molecular interactions within a cell, all of which are stored on the cell’s DNA. This new discovery allows scientists to observe and therefore clarify the processes that contribute to such things as the emergence of cancer, aging, environmental damage, and even embryonic development. CAMERA is only one of the many developments based off of the gene cutting technology known as CRISPR-Cas9.

Thyroid Cancer Cell Line. Courtesy of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre and Flickr Commons. 

What is CRISPR-Cas9 you ask? Well, it’s basically a really small pair of scissors, so small that it can even cut DNA. CRISPR-Cas9, or CRISPR for short, is a technology based off of the natural defence mechanisms found in bacteria that have been reengineered for editing genomes. It has the ability to cut the double helix strand of DNA allowing for researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene expression. Some of the major implications of this include the possible correction of genetic defects, and the treatment and prevention of cancer and other diseases.

Video recreating a CRISPR-mediated genome editing. Courtesy of McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT .

So how did scientists develop a cellular recording device from this cutting tool? When CRISPR cuts a DNA strand to alter the sequence, the strand will naturally repair itself but in doing so can occasionally add in errors that make the targeted gene inactive. These random errors can sometimes be used as markers, mapping out the cell’s pattern of differentiation. Liu and Tang took this information and set out to regulate it thereby creating a more detailed, continuous record of a cell’s life, documenting not only its responses to external factors but the severity of the response and how long it lasts.

Flowchart of CRISPR mediated gene alterations. Image courtesy of Flickr Commons

At this point in time, CAMERA, is able to document cellular responses to light exposure, antibiotics, viral infections, and internal molecular interactions in as few as 10 cells. As well, it can record multiple events at once making it an impressive candidate for future medical technologies involved in screening embryos for a wide variety of mutations during development. Despite these impressive feats, Liu and Tang are still working towards pinpointing the recording down to one cell, allowing scientists to one day observe the processes of each cell individually and efficiently isolating any mutations. Another big step is proving it works to the same detailed extent when placed in the body of a living mammal as it does in a small cell group in a petri dish. There is still a lot to be done before we can confidently say we know how cells operate but CAMERA is a step in the right direction.

-Tenanye Haglund

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Microwaves: Do They Really “Give You Cancer”?

Posted on January 28, 2019 by | Leave a comment

 

“Don’t stand in front of the microwave! You’ll get cancer.” Growing up, we hear this at home repetitively over and over again. In contrast to this widely believed myth however, microwave ovens do not “give cancer” to people. The mechanism that a microwave functions by is not so complex, but the assumptions made around it are questionable.

Much of our world today revolves around convenience. We often see people choosing convenience over cost, quality, conscience, and sometimes even safety. In this context, microwaves are fantastic to use in daily life – the energy efficiency, ease of use, and rapid processing time make them increasingly popular.

But how exactly do microwaves work? This is a question that needs to be addressed before we discuss anything else. Simply put, microwaves produce radiation that is absorbed by water molecules in whatever is inside the microwave. These water molecules then vibrate and produce heat, causing the food to cook. This mechanism is what allows microwave ovens to heat our food in such a short span of time, while the chemical structure of the food components are not altered in any way.

In The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a study found that when microwaved, broccoli retained its minerals all except for vitamin C. What does this imply? Nothing much at all. It is actually easy to lose vitamin C in any type of cooking process, because of its volatility. Microwaves are not the only ones at fault. Luckily, we have raw fruits and vegetables that are abundant in vitamin C to compensate for this deficit.

So what about being physically near a microwave when it is functioning and emitting radiation? The fabrication that microwave ovens cause cancer comes from the suggestion that the energy given off by microwaves is enough to damage one’s DNA. However, Peter Valberg found little evidence to support this relationship between microwave exposure and cancer causation in his study conducted in 1997. He concluded against the existence of a relationship, and very few studies have been carried out after Valberg’s review.

Microwave ovens do not destroy all the nutrients in our food, and neither do they literally cause cancer in humans. It has never been proven that microwaves are actually harmful, whether indirectly or directly. It’s time for the public to recognize the stale saying that “microwaves give you cancer” as ignorant and untrue.

– Sarah Choi

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Global Warming and Mountain living species Extinction. No place to live!

Posted on January 27, 2019 by | Leave a comment

Scientists believe that the global temperature will continue to rise for future decades due to climate change and global warming, which will impact the whole ecosystem severely. One big issue that scientists found in recent years is called “Elevational Range Shift”. Each species that lives in a different range and altitude of mountains, together form a balance in mountain ecosystem. As the temperature continuously increase, many species, especially those living in the mid and high elevation of mountains, seek to escape from the warming original habitats and move towards higher ground. However, the living space in mountaintops is limited. What will happen to those creatures that have already lived at the highest levels and cannot go any higher? The only ending is the extension. In recent several years, more evidence have shown that species’ geographic range shift had arose and constituted an elevational extinction to species that live in mountains.

In November 2018, Dr Benjamin Freeman, from the University of British Columbia, published an article showing evidence about impacts of recent temperature warming on high-elevation birds species abundance declination and extinction in Peruvian Andes Mountains. Peruvian Andes is a tropical mountain located in the western edge of South America, with an average height of about 4,000m and host abundant types of species. Tropical species, especially birds, born and live within one particulate section of woods and don’t migrate.

A scarlet-breasted bird lives at high elevations on the Cerro de Pantiacolla in Peru. Source: BBC News

“It is only got a little bit warmer in the tropics and tropical animals seen to live a bit higher now than they used to,” told by Dr. Freeman to BBC News report.

The research team conducted a survey in 2017 of bird species that lived on a mountain peak by using same methods and at same time of year as a pervious survey carried out in 1985. They compared the results and found that the average living range had shifted upwards of the slope and most bird species that are found at the highest elevation had already declined in population and range significantly. Of the 16 species of tropical birds that had been recorded living at high elevation of the study area in previous survey, 8 had disappeared in the new survey in 2017.

Comparative species richness patterns for recent and historical. Source: PLOS

In contrast, scientists found that low elevation living bird species of the mountain get benefits from climate change by expanding their habitats range as they shift their upper living limits upslope. But current increasing in abundance still cannot guarantee that these birds will not face to the problem of run out of habitats.

What about the non-mobile species, like plants? Scientists believe that plants may be unable to shift according to the data showing that about 88% plant species show weak to no evidence of range shift. The main reason is due to plants’ dispersal limitation. Plant need other species, such as birds, or external force like wind to disperse seeds, which may not be quickly enough to keep peace with climate change.

In conclusion, the escalator to extinction will be even worse in the future if temperature continuously rising. “The way to deal with it is to maintain protected habitat corridors that stretch across large elevational gradients.” told by Dr. Freeman to BBC News.

– Jingyi Cheng

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No Snow On Date Night

Posted on January 22, 2019 by | Leave a comment

A speck of white twinkled as it fell across the night sky, silent as it danced in the cold wind. She smiled in willful ignorance, praying what she had seen was impossible. Her head tilted, shoulders twitching in anxiety, hoping the one across from her had not noticed. Meanwhile, he felt the itch too, terrified as he glanced at the light fluff drifting onto the table before returning an anxious gaze. The winter was cold, snow was inevitable, but alas… no snow was forecasted for the next week. This is the tragedy of two consenting more than friends trying to figure it out, and their mutual but private battle with an affliction affecting 50 percent of all humans. This is dandruff.

What is Dandruff

Although these white flakes are most noticeable in your hair and on your clothes, dandruff isn’t really a hair condition but is actually due to your scalp. Naturally, your body produces skin cells constantly, and as they travel to the surface of the skin, the epidermis, the old cells fall off. For most, these cells are too small to be noticeable, but for others, when these cells clump together they can be rather large. These larger clumps of dead skin cells are commonly referred to as dandruff.

A woman struggling with dandruff @artem_goncharov

What Causes Dandruff

Dandruff affects about 50% of the population and the exact cause of it is actually unknown. Although, in recent studies, the yeast, Malassezia, is found to play a role in producing dandruff. When reducing the population of Malassezia in the scalp, amounts of flakes have been found to improve. But what is Malassezia and what does it do? Malassezia is a fungus that lives on the scalp where it, unfortunately, happens to be an ideal environment for it to survive. Here it releases enzymes that metabolize fat molecules, this produces oleic acids that are found to irritate the scalp. As a defense mechanism, your scalp can increase the rate it produces skin cells, sometimes causing a months worth of skin cells to appear on the surface in time frames as short as seven days.

Treatments for Dandruff

Many shampoos advertise being good treatments for dandruff but the ideal shampoo should contain anti-fungal or anti-yeast ingredients. A few common examples, found in Selsun and many other anti-dandruff shampoos, are zinc pyrithione and selenium sulfide which have the property of slowing down the growth of yeasts. When used in shampoo’s these ingredients are found to aid in reducing the increased production of skin cells by slowing down the metabolism of Malassezia for people that are dandruff-prone. 

The video, “Dandruff | How To Get Rid Of Dandruff (2018)” by AbrahamThePharmacist, below basically sums up everything I’ve gone over with the exception of stating that Malassezia is the main cause of shampoo as literature states that there is limited research stating such. 

 

Conclusion

Although we don’t have either confident cause or a concrete solution to dandruff, in using shampoos with anti-fungal ingredients this embarrassing condition can be minimized.

-Nelson Bulaun

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I agree to all terms and conditions … Or do I?

Posted on January 21, 2019 by | Leave a comment

In this day and age so much of what we do is shared on different platforms of social media that the notion of privacy is limited to having a private account. We open an account by providing a name and a picture and once we are in the system, one by one we begin adding more insight into who we are and what we do. We snap a picture of our outfit, take google recommendations for where to dine out and post a story of the meal we eat. Our urge to participate so actively on social media isn’t solely rooted in our desire to share but stems from us being innately social creatures who are inherently curious.
It didn’t take long for corporation to cultivate our curiosity and take data collection to a whole new level. Genealogy and ancestry companies, in the name of providing us with medical information and lineage tracing, now have access to what’s most personal to us, the code to our being.
It has now become posh and trendy to pay $100 to companies such as 23andme to find out what diseases we are prone to and where we have originated from. What we get as a result may not necessarily add much significance to our lives, but it provides those companies with pools of golden data. I stress the word “necessarily” as tendencies do not translate to definite diagnosis and a long list of places we get, does not provide us with much insight of where we originate from. On the other hand, companies like 23andme now have access to data that once took researchers years to gather.

How it works by 23andme

One might argue that having a DNA bank has in fact facilitated research by providing more detailed data. Additionally, DNA banks have revolutionized solving of murder and rape crimes. It is also illegal in Canada for such companies to sell this data to insurance and employment companies. However, the controversy does not lie in what is done to the data once collected, but whether or not the selling of it is considered an invasion of our privacy. We might have quickly scrolled down to check the “agree with the terms” button; or have even read the terms fully and agreed- which I highly doubt- but does that provide them with jurisdiction to use such personal knowledge in a research I did not consent to? How does DNA sequencing deidentifies a subject and how is my anonymity preserved? I can delete my Facebook account, get a new credit card, change my name, but I can never reclaim my DNA data.

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How Does Caffeine Keep You Awake?

Posted on January 21, 2019 by | Leave a comment

Many people enjoy having a cup of coffee in the morning for its mood-enhancing and stimulatory effects. According to Methods Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES),  most caffeine (70%) is consumed before noon and it’s commonly believed that caffeine makes up for lost sleep. However, the belief is slightly different from how it actually works.

How Caffeine Is Introduced To the Body:

When you drink a coffee, caffeine is first absorbed in the small intestine within an hour and becomes available through the blood and most parts of the body, including your brain. Then, as it starts entering your brain, it starts competing with a compound called adenosine.

What Is Adenosine?

Adenosine is a very well-known sleep-regulating molecule that makes you get sleepy as the day comes to an end, and it is constantly monitored by the nervous system through receptors. So, when its levels drop and reach a certain low-level in your spinal cord and brain, your body signals you to start relaxing to prepare for sleep.

How Does It Work?

The way that caffeine works is by tricking your body to think that it’s not the time for sleep yet by acting like adenosine. Normally, once adenosine interacts with the adenosine receptor, the interaction results in muscle relaxation and sleepiness. However, when caffeine is in your brain, caffeine competes with adenosine and prevents adenosine from binding to adenosine receptors, which is what gives you the sense of wakefulness you get from drinking coffee.

How Long Do the Effects Last?

Although the effects vary from person to person, caffeine generally gives you more energy and lasts for about 5-6 hours. After that, caffeine molecules start to move away from the receptors and change into various substances (such as paraxanthine and theobromine) through different enzymes. Then, as a result, significantly fewer caffeine molecules end up occupying the adenosine receptors, allowing adenosine to start interacting with adenosine receptors again and promote muscle relaxation and sleepiness. This process is what makes you feel sleepy again.

In conclusion, even though caffeine does not make up lost sleep, it is true that it gives you more energy.  When it is consumed, it works toward your body’s adenosine receptors and mirrors the effects.

-Janet Lee

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Recording the Cell? New technologies further uncover the mystery of the cell

Posted on January 14, 2019 by | Leave a comment

Does anyone really know what life is like inside of a cell? Sure, we can all say that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, and we’ve learned mitosis more time than we can count, but do we really know about the intricacies of day to day cellular processes? Historically, answer has been an overwhelming no, but that is something the researchers behind CAMERA are hoping to change.

CAMERA, or CRISPR-mediated analog multievent recording aperture is a tool developed by David Liu and Weixin Tang of Harvard university to record the molecular interactions within a cell, all of which are stored on the cell’s DNA. This new discovery allows scientists to observe and therefore clarify the processes that contribute to such things as the emergence of cancer, aging, environmental damage, and even embryonic development. CAMERA is only one of the many developments based off of the gene cutting technology known as CRISPR-Cas9.

Thyroid Cancer Cell Line. Courtesy of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre and Flickr Commons.

What is CRISPR-Cas9 you ask? CRISPR-Cas9, or CRISPR for short, is a technology based off of the natural defense mechanisms found in bacteria that have been reengineered for editing genomes. It has the ability to cut the double helix strand of DNA allowing for researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene expression. Some of the major implications of this include the possible correction of genetic defects, and the treatment and prevention of cancer and other diseases.

So how did scientists develop a cellular recording device from this cutting tool? When CRISPR cuts a DNA strand to alter the sequence, the strand will naturally repair itself but in doing so can occasionally add in errors that make the targeted gene inactive. These random errors can sometimes be used as markers, mapping out the cell’s pattern of differentiation. Liu and Tang took this information and set out to regulate it thereby creating a more detailed, continuous record of a cell’s life, documenting not only its responses to external factors but the severity of the response and how long it lasts.

CRISPR mediated DNA splitting. Courtesy of Flickr Commons.

At this point in time, CAMERA, is able to document cellular responses to light exposure, antibiotics, viral infections, and internal molecular interactions in as few as 10 cells. As well, it can record multiple events at once making it an impressive candidate for future medical technologies involved in screening embryos for a wide variety of mutations during development. Despite these impressive feats, Liu and Tang are still working towards pinpointing the recording down to one cell, allowing scientists to one day observe the processes of each cell individually and efficiently isolating any mutations. Another big step is proving it works to the same detailed extent when placed in the body of a living mammal as it does in a small cell group in a petri dish. There is still a lot to be done before we can confidently say we know how cells operate but CAMERA is a step in the right direction.

-Tenanye Haglund

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Wired and Tired: Detrimental Effects of Blue Light on Sleep

Posted on January 14, 2019 by | Leave a comment

You have to wake up early tomorrow, however, you don’t feel tired, so you go on your phone to quickly check Instagram or Facebook and suddenly its 2 or 3 a.m. before you can finally fall asleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, 95% of people in the U.S. admit to using an electronic device within the hour before slumber. This not only causes you to sleep later, but also substantially lowers the quality of sleep, leaving you feeling tired throughout the day. This can interfere with various aspects of your life including work, school, or driving. Poor sleep has also been linked to obesity, growth hormone imbalance, chronic illness… the list goes on and on.

Brain Activity Credit: Saad Faruque

Using your phone, watching television, or using any electronic device before bed delays the circadian rhythm, which is a 24-hour internal clock that cycles between sleepiness and alertness. Dr. Charles Czeisler from Harvard Medical School showed that daylight helps to keep your body’s circadian rhythm aligned with the environment. Therefore, when exposed to the blue light emitted from these electronic devices, your body perceives it as daylight, and as a result, your body will suppress the secretion of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin and remain in a state of alertness. This shifts your circadian clock later and later, making it harder and harder for you to fall asleep.

Phone before Sleep Credit: Courtesy Photo

According to researchers at Harvard Medical School, blue light is the most effective at altering the body’s circadian rhythm. However, it was found that other sources of light, such as green light, can also alter the body’s circadian rhythm under certain conditions. This is because the photoreceptor system in the human eye is responsible for resetting the internal circadian body clock through the detection of light. These photoreceptors are very responsive to blue light; however, new research shows that the another set of photoreceptors in the human eye, which are sensitive to green light, also have an impact the internal circadian body clock. The researchers found that when exposed to dim light, green light is equally as effective as blue light in delaying circadian rhythm, however, the effects of green light die off more quickly and hence blue light suppresses melatonin for about twice as long as green light.

Morning Alarm Credit: Pixabay

To conclude, blue light exposure before bedtime can negatively harm your sleep and health by being physiologically and psychologically stimulating. So next time you are lying in bed and can’t fall asleep you should think twice about checking your phone.

-Jonathan Raj

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