This Week's Sci-light!

I'm blogging!  For those of you who read last week's blog, my microchange is working (confused...last weeks blog will clarify!).

Today's post features Science 360, a site showing funded National Science Foundation research that will be sure to engage the Sci-Curious!  The site is packed with information and contagious excitement.  The daily highlights include a video, a news story, a picture of the day, science radio, headlines, and featured articles from journals like Science.

I'm going to pick my personal favorite for today that features a brain in a dish (their words, not mine) as it is an example of how knowledge from one discipline in science is creatively applied in another.  First, skin cells from an individual are taken and chemically coaxed into stem cells that another set of chemicals develop into neurons.  As if this were not imaginative enough, the scientists wanted to "watch" the brain cells fire. 

Can you think of how this was done?  Environmental microbiology is key to this process.  A gene from bacteria that makes a light-sensitive protein is given to the neurons so that when the cells fire, they fluoresce.  Scientists such as Dr. Adam Cohen of Harvard University can film the neurons at up to 100,000 frames a second and distill their patterns and pathways.

If nothing I've said so far has made you curious, allow me to close with some topics from today's home page that may catch your attention:  Can general anesthesia trigger dementia?  Peering through the sun at the Halloween monster sun spot.  Researchers break through nano barrier to engineer the first protein microfiber.  And the picture of the day--Blue footed boobies. 

It seems I've found a great place to remain Sci-Curious!

Of Blogging, Wolves, and Conferences!

I've been away from blogging for a while, and I must say I miss it!  Perhaps you've missed it, too.  I certainly hope so!

In catching up, I wanted to highlight a session that I am co-chairing for the 2014 SACNAS National Conference "Creativity, Vision and Drive: Toward Full Representation in STEM" to be held October 16-18, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  Before you read any further, watch this 4 minute video.

A trophic cascade is a change at the top of the ecological system that causes many changes throughout the system.  The session, "The Power of Microactions:  Active Preparation for Advanced Degrees" is similar--looking at the impact of small scale changes on larger scale outcomes.

An article, Evidence-Based (Simple but Effective) Advice for College Students:  Microaction and Macrochange prompted the session.  According to the author, Dr. Sung Hee Kim, individuals struggle to make the changes they desire in part because they aim too high.  What you need is a significant, doable change that can be incorporated into your lifestyle on a daily basis.  For example, if you want to walk more, commit to parking in the back of the parking lot instead of the closest space.  The benefits most immediately--you're not fighting for a space and more steps for your wristband pedometer--and in the longer term--walking may improve your body's overall health!  

The real strength in a microchange is that it becomes habit with minimal effort, and it allows macrochange in the longer term.

Sci-curious?  Here's a few suggestions for your classroom experience.   

• Keep a planner
• Bring both a pen and a highlighter to class
• Exchange emails with someone in your class
• Get on a list serve for interships, research experiences or jobs
• Say thank you to the professor when you leave class

Having long-term goals is key to success, but microaction enables you to take the small steps needed to reach those goals.  Here's a small step for me--I'm on several list serves that send me science news.  Let's see if that can prompt me to blog every Friday!   

Stay Sci-Curious!

This Week's Sci-Light!

This Week's Sci-Light!

Computer generated image of human chromosomes

Source: Guardian Liberty Voice

Since the sequencing of the human genome, the regions known to be protein coding have been steadily decreasing. When Craig Venter first sequenced the human genome in 2001, it was estimated that there were anywhere from 26,000-30,000 protein coding genes. Recent data from seven different studies, including tests carried out by the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, suggests otherwise. As summarized in the article Human Gene Set Shrinks Again by Jyoti Madhusoodanan, the number of predicted coding genes has decreased by 17,000 making the overall number of protein coding genes 19,000! This discovery is especially astonishing because it reveals how little we understand about the human genome - an area worth investigating further.

These stunning results were gathered from proteomic experiments - experiments designed to look at the entire set of proteins being expressed - from 50 different tissue samples. From looking at the expressed proteins, researchers were able to better estimate how many protein coding genes exist in the human genome. Scientists then compared the human coding region genome to other animals. As reported in an article titled Human Genome Found to have Fewer Genes Again by Margaret Lutze, no proteins were identified that differentiated humans from primates. Additionally, co-author of the study David Juan stated "the number of new genes that separate humans from mice [those genes that have evolved since the split from primates] may even be fewer than ten."

If this has got you sci-curious, click the link to see how many genes humans have compared to worms, you may be surprised!

Written by Jacob Steenwyk

This Week's Sci-Light!

This Week's Sci-Light!

A key component of being sci-curious is contemplating the unknown. To be sci-curious, you can revisit answered questions where details were forgotten, delve into unanswered questions or ask novel questions. Developing techniques and systems to answer these questions is, in essence, the mission of a scientist. Among the sci-curious pioneers is a team led by a Penn State University research associate, Bodo Linz. Bodo Linz and her colleagues characterized the interaction between the human immune system and invading bacteria to uncover how the bacteria were able to elude the immune system in the article Burst of Mutations During Initial Infection Allows Bacteria To Evade Human Immune Response.

Electron Microscopic image of H. pylori. H. pylori was recently 

discovered to have a high rate of mutation during the initial phase of infection. 

Credit: Yutaka Tsutsumi, Fujita Health University School of Medicine

During the chronic phase of infection, the mutation rate of Helicobacter pylori, a common stomach bacteria, had previously been established. Though this data has proved useful for understanding infection, no one had yet to investigate the rate of mutation during the initial acute phase of infection due to experimental difficulty. The research team took two different approaches to characterize H. pylori's mutation rate during infection. One method involved isolated bacteria from volunteers and sequencing its genome - this genome served as a baseline. After removing all H. pylori from the volunteers via antibiotics, they were re-infected with the same H. pylori that was removed from them. After 20 days and 44 days of infection, the bacteria was isolated and its genome was sequenced again. The bacteria was then removed from the volunteers using another antibiotic treatment. From this, the genomes could be compared. It was found that the rate of mutation during the acute phase of infection was 30 to 50 times greater than during the chronic phase of infection. Researchers surmised that H. pylori used the higher rate of mutation to promote speedy evolution and avoid the immune system all together. 

If this article has got you sci-curious, find out the other method the researchers used to characterize the rate of mutations during the acute phase of infection by clicking the link! 

Written by Jacob Steenwyk

This Week's Sci-light!

I found myself in the dentist's chair not long ago, subjected to needles, drills and controlled jets of water.  I didn't use to be very concerned with my teeth, until somewhere in my twenties it really sunk in that I was stuck with the teeth I had and their health for the rest of my life!  This is when I decided to keep those 6 month cleaning checkups regularly.  But today's research may relieve me of my regret over not brushing my teeth more diligently as a child.  Curious?  Read on!

Chart detailing adult human tooth anatomy.

Credit: Bite Point Dental Blog

Since the 1960s, the medical laser has been a part of a doctor's medical repertoire. Low-level light therapy, or photobiomodulation has been used to trigger biologic processes including hair growth and skin rejuvenation. Oddly enough, that same therapy has been used to eradicate unwanted tissues such as laser hair removal. These contrasting results for the same therapy is partly due to a poorly characterized molecular mechanism. However, recent work published in Science Translational Medicine details a technique and mechanism for the use of photobiomodulation to stimulate the growth of a tooth tissue known as dentin.


A team of Harvard researchers, led by David J. Mooney, developed this noninvasive laser treatment to promot the regeneration of human dental cells. As summarized in the article by Kristen Kusek, Researchers use light to coax stem cells to repair teeth, Mooney's team of researchers took laboratory rodents, drilled holes in their molars, treated the vessel containing adult dental stem cells with a low-dose laser treatment, applied a temporary dental cap, and waited twelve weeks to assess the affect of the laser treatment. After the twelve week period, Mooney was able to confirm that the laser treatment stimulated greater dentin tissue formation.

Are you curious?  Wanting to understand more about how this takes place?  Read the article to learn about the key regulatory cell protein in this biologic signaling cascade! 

This is how you stay, "Sci-Curious!"

Written by Jacob Steenwyk & Cynthia Joseph

Edited by Cynthia Joseph

This Week's Sci-light!

With the United States experiencing a colder than normal winter, vicious tornadoes ripping throughout the South, drought conditions plaguing the West and South West, and the North East soaked with flooding downpours, the topic of climate change filled the airwaves this week as President Obama sat down with Al Roker of NBC News' TODAY.

While climate change affects the planet, this SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) web page focuses on the research being done by indigenous and minority cultures to address the problems of climate change. 

Plug into the pod casts and electronic magazines at the SACNAS website and see what you can learn!

This Week's Sci-Light!

High-speed time-lapse photos of a fruit fly banking away from a shadow threat coming from the bottom right and outside of the frame. Photograph credit: F. Muijres, University of Washington

Last week's Sci-Light was about the evolutionary development of Zebra stripes. To recap, Zebra stripes have evolved as a response to annoying biting flies. And just like Zebra's, we have developed our own technology to deter flies. For those of us who choose swatting away flies, have you ever been curious how a fly is able to dodge our efforts so well? Well you are not the only one, a bioengineer of Washington University was sci-curious too! Dr. Michael Dickinson has detailed the aerial movements flies employ to avoid our, and other animals, swatting. The characterized agile fly movements were published on April 10th in a paper entitled Flies Evade Looming Targets by Executing Rapid Visually Directed Banked Turns.

By recording Drosophila hydei (fruit flies) movements with a high speed camera capable of capturing 7,500 frames per second, Dickinson and his team of scientists could understand the 'blink of an eye' maneuvers these flies use in flight. To discover what Dickinson observed read about his research in the National Geographic article Mystery Solved: Why Flies Are So Hard to Swat. 

After that article, click the next link and discover what else you can learn!