So, I've signed up to take Entomology in the spring, and I have to say, I've become a bit obsessed with bugs. Truthfully, it is pretty disturbing since I would have cringed at the thought about a year ago. So, when I came upon this article when looking for my last blog topic, I HAD to post about it. 

This article discussed a pretty gnarly little bug that takes over the brain of an ant then bursts out of the ant's head upon maturation, ripping the ant's head from its body. Pretty cool if you ask me. These bugs were discovered over 20 years ago when an entomologist from the University of Texas was studying potential natural enemies of fire ants. He found that South America doesn't have the ant problem that we do in the United States, and found that the ants there were battling flies. The flies were so small, though, that he doubted they really could impact the ant populations just based on their battling. That is when he discovered that the ants had pupae in their heads. These flies were laying eggs in the ants and the maggots made their way into the ants' heads. Then the fly larvae take over control of the ant's brain. They keep the ant inside the ant colony to be safe and to eat plenty of food.

Once the maggot is ready to pupate, it forces the ant to leave the colony and travel to a highly humid place so that the maggot can continue its development. The pupa eventually decapitates the ant and matures before leaving the head. 

Quite amazing if you ask me. You all should really read the article, as it's description of all this is really cool. 

When Women Take Over the World... Kind Of..

So I thought this article was really interesting since Dr. Choudhary always talks about this sort of thing in his genetics class. The article reminds us that there are only two significant genes which are contributed by the Y chromosome. The question, then, is whether or not the Y chromosome is still necessary. With recent research, genes were taken from infertile male mice with only the two contributed Y-linked genes and injected the immature spermatids into oocytes in a lab setting. In the infertile male mice, the genes were still expressed, but the gametes were never fully developed. The embryos were then transferred to surrogate females and offspring were produced. This was also repeated using additional Y-linked genes to test whether the addition of such genes resulted in even greater success. The addition of genes increased the amount of viable offspring. All offspring were also fertile. This shows that the Y chromosome itself is simply the vessel which carries these genes. Hypothetically speaking, this may mean that the X chromosome, if ever to obtain and carry these genes, may one day take the place of the Y chromosome. This was all conducted using advanced technology, though, so it’s still a long ways off. Talk about changing the textbooks, though! Can you imagine if this were to occur in a few generations (which is super unlikely, but humor me) how students would have to be taught that the Y chromosome USED to determine the sex of a mammal?! We also couldn’t joke anymore that everyone started out as a female, since it would still basically be true! 

A Suicide Soapbox

First of all, this blog post is in no way relevant to what we typically discuss; I simply would like to discuss something that is important to me in hopes to maybe help someone at some point in time. I am hoping to help bring awareness to this topic so that if ever faced with a similar situation, you all could potentially help to save a life.

Tomorrow marks one year since my cousin’s premature death. AJ was 22 years old who loved our country, life, and those people he shared it with. AJ took his own life one year ago. This event was the fifth attempt at taking his life, and he was pronounced brain dead a few hours after the event. Despite being his fifth attempt at suicide, this was unexpected to our family. The first time AJ attempted to take his life was as a senior in high school. That time, he took a bunch of pills and wrote notes. He ended up vomiting a lot of the pills back up, and the rest were pumped from his stomach since he was quickly found after this attempt. A second attempt at his life was made about a year or so later when he slit his wrists. Again, he lived through the attempt and went on living life. Each time, AJ was provided help and counsel and once he was “better” everyone went about their business. Each time, we didn’t know why he was doing these things. Each time, he lived and perhaps we took that all for granted.

Last year, we received a call from my uncle just a few days before Thanksgiving. He told us that AJ had died. While our family had been quite disconnected in recent years, this did not take away from the situation at all. Later, we learned of the other two attempts at suicide, but again, no why. To this day, we still do not know why AJ chose to take his life and we probably will never know. If you had met him, you would have never guessed these things about his past, or that he would end up taking his life. He was the life of the party, he lit up the room whenever he entered, and he was one of the comedians of the family. While we were not particularly close, with the age gap between up and the distance between where we grew up, AJ was still my cousin. Growing up, all of us were close and they say that cousins are your first friends in life. AJ’s death really hit me, and it still is saddening to this day.

If someone you know has voiced contemplating suicide, do not take it lightly. Even if they get mad at you for helping or saying something, don’t sit back and possibly let it happen. React, no matter their reaction, because you just might save their life. I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason, but maybe your helping someone and saving their life has a reason greater than of them taking their life.  There are numerous websites, programs, and hotlines that could be of great use. Also, you never know when just talking to someone could make a difference.

Thanks for reading my story and taking it seriously. Even if you don’t think this is relevant to you, you may unfortunately face this situation one day. If this helps even one person, then there was a greater reason for writing this post. 

Antibiotic Resistance is on the rise

Antibiotic resistance is on the rise! As if we didn’t already know that. Scientists have shown though, that antibiotic resistant bacteria are found in the gut microbiome of children as young as six months old. This study sampled children from 6 months of age to 19 years. From this, over 2,500 resistance genes were found to be present in the normal gut flora of bacteria. That is a 30% increase in the number of known resistance genes. This is a growing problem since children receive so many antibiotics in this age range, so these healthy flora are repeatedly being exposed to these drugs. Also, the fact that children as young as six months were found to have resistant bacteria in their gut microbiome is pretty disturbing. Infant guts are colonized over time from their exposure to those individuals around them and by things they touch and ingest. If these children who are barely old enough to start eating soft foods have resistant bacteria in their guts, that means that antibiotic resistance is really all around us. Scary stuff, since MRSA has been found to kill more people in the U.S. annually than HIV.  

Baby Bias

A recent study has shown that some doctors are making varied recommendations to their pregnant patients based upon the method of conception. If women underwent assisted reproductive technological (ART) conception, the doctors were less likely to recommend that certain tests be conducted on the baby. Women who become pregnant over the age of 35 are often more likely to have their babies tested for Down’s Syndrome and other disorders/diseases, but women of this age group who did not conceive naturally were not as highly referred to these tests.

These invasive procedures could put the baby at risk, so I can understand how parents who had difficulty with fertility would be uneasy with these procedures. I can’t understand, however, why doctors would not recommend these procedures. As a doctor, why wouldn’t you recommend such routine tests and just make sure the parents are well aware of the risks involved, then let them make that decision? Some of these tests are so routine now that there isn’t even an age range in which they limit the testing to. To me, this seems as though the physicians are letting emotional or psychological factors influence their job. Like I said, I understand the parents’ being uneasy, but why wouldn’t the doctor want to educate their patients to the best of their abilities?

While the results of the tests and how the parents choose to face such results are negligible for my argument, I want to know how you would feel if you were a patient. Regardless of what the tests tell you, would you still want your doctor to recommend such tests if you had conceived via ART instead of naturally? Guys, you include your input too! Just because you don’t carry the baby, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a say-so. (At least for the sake of this blog!) 

Wanted: Dead or Alive?

So, as I’ve blogged about several times, I really appreciate being on the Metagenomic research project.  When one of the papers from this research is published, I have to blog about it, right? Right!

Initially, this research was very different from the sampling methods I've previously described that we currently use. The cadavers that were studied were sampled at two times during decomposition: pre-bloat and post-bloat. The purpose of this was to identify bacterial shifts during significant changes in the decomposing process.  It was found that there are clear shifts in the bacterial community, but the data presents itself as just a portion of what may one day be a large data set of information.

A very interesting point that is brought up in this research is the idea of the decomposing human body as an ecosystem. Although the organism is dead, the body is actually very full of life in the form of microorganisms and bugs.  My question to all of you, is how do you view the cadaver: living or dead? And why do you think that way?

"Wild" Genomic Engineering

As I searched for an interesting blog topic (no news-related topic this week, I feel like I've lived under a rock while studying), I came across what I believe to be a controversial scientific advancement. Scientists are “creating” novel genomes in bacteria.

These scientists are completely recoding E.coli to have an entirely new genome. Through this, the bacteria are able to produce proteins which are not naturally produced by E. coli. For this portion of the project, all 321 instances of a particular codon were replaced with a different codon that encoded a different amino acid than the one originally encoded.

In a second project, the scientists removed every instance in which 13 codons occurred in 42 different E. coli genes. These codons were replaced with similarly functioning codons from different organisms. In total, 24% of the DNA in these genes had been changed, but because the codons were similarly functioning replacements, the bacteria produced the same exact proteins as it did originally.

So the second project, not so controversial. It seems as though this sort of information could be useful through a broad spectrum of scientific applications. The first project, on the other hand, seems to be more questionable to me. If this sort of thing fell into the wrong hands, mass “superbug” outbreaks could occur or genetically altered bacteria could be used in bioterrorism. (Even moreso than bacteria have already been used in biological weaponry.)

On a completely unrelated sidenote, a high school kid found a baby dinosaur skeleton in 2009. I am insanely jealous as I am completely geek-ily obsessed with dinosaurs. They nicknamed the skeleton “Joe.” How lame! ( I mean I am jealous so..) I would've named it something cool like Mike or something! Haha!