Greetings everybody,
Happy Good Friday to you all! Whatever you guys get up to today I hope you get the most out of it and have a great time! Now onto today's post. Not sure if you guys happen to remember but I did a Friday Facts: Immunology style that was chocked full of some awesome facts about our very own immune system (seriously check it out) and that was all inspired by a Future Learn course I was doing online.
It lasted for three weeks, and I kept all my notes logged on a padlet! This was a major step for me guys, never really used padlet before. Anyways, you lucky people get to have an exclusive glance at my padlet on how Cancer Immunotherapy is fast becoming the big gun for fighting against cancer.
P.S- start from the bottom of the padlet and work upwards. Enjoy!
Greetings everybody,
I bet you are all thinking 'wow Biobunch has not done one of these Biology Behind posts for a while' and you are so right I haven't! But I got to thinking have you ever wondered why you cannot help but come back to Biobunch every Friday? I'm afraid it may be because you are addicted to the website, have no fear though! because I am going to help you understand the biology behind your Biobunch addiction.
There are many ways of thinking of addiction however, a great scientist once broke it down into three distinct stages, with each stage exploiting certain sections of your wonderful brain anatomy in order to make you feel the way you do.
Stage 1: The Bingeing/Intoxication stage
Characteristics of this stage include overstimulation of our brains reward system, eventually this leads to loss of control over the thing that we are craving, and ends in bingeing. There are three parts of our brain exploited during this system.
Basal ganglia: Involved in processing rewards and the formation of habits
Nucleus accumbens: The section of our brain that receives dopamine released from the ventral segmental area. The nucleus accumbens helps to control our satiety, inhibition and inner desires.
Ventral Tegmental Area: Otherwise known as one of our brains primitive structure, and is located near the top of our brain stem. It is also our dopamine factory, and produces all the brains dopamine (responsible for giving us that feel good feeling).
Stage 2: Withdrawal symptoms and the 'negative moods'
Habitual exposure to the addictive substance or behaviour eventually leads to a reduction in the number of dopamine receptors present in the Nucleus accumbens.
Nucleus accumbens: The reduction in the number of dopamine receptors present on the surface, places a demand on the brain to engage with more of the addictive behaviour or substance, just to reach a similar level of feel good feeling.
Amygdala: Changes within this structure triggered by addiction have been twinned to the emotions and behaviour suffered by people going through withdrawal such as irritability, anxiety and stress.
Stage 3: Anticipation
People that have become dependent on a behaviour or substance carry around these uncontrollable cravings to repeat this addiction.
Frontal cortex: Circuitry thought to be messed up by drug misuse. This structure is made of two parts that play a role in addiction: The prefrontal cortex is important for thoughts and actions and the orbitofrontal cortex plays a part in controlling behaviour.
Hippocampus: This structure aids in fixing our desires whether they or not they have negative consequences. They do this through the consolidation of our memory.
The exploitation of our reward system:
As previously mentioned the Ventral Tegmental Area of the brain is responsible for the production and release of dopamine when stimulated. Dopamine is linked to the feeling of pleasure and euphoric experiences. However, the release of dopamine can be inhibited or controlled by the GABA neuron that is also present in this area. Check out the diagram of the reward system below:
Alcohol, Opioids and Cannabis: These substances suppress the inhibitory action of the GABA neurons, allowing for unregulated release of dopamine.
Amphetamines and Nicotine: These drugs directly activate the release of dopamine into the brain.
Cocaine: This drug works by blocking the process through which dopamine is removed from synapses (a gap between two neurons), this ensures a continued state of euphoria.
The genetic link between our metabolism and addiction risk:
There are many social and psychological factors that are thought to increase the risk of some individuals to addiction, however, we are looking more at biology so I am going to bring you into the world of genetics! Yay! Some of the strongest genetic risk factors for developing an addiction such as alcoholism are those linked to our bodies metabolism.
Genes encoding for the metabolism of alcohol as seen in the above picture plays a role in the development of addiction. Acetaldehyde is toxic to the body and is quickly converted into acetate. However, the gene ALDH2 causes the toxic acetaldehyde to linger and build up in our system, this causes the onset of hangover like symptoms (nausea, temperature). The presence of this gene makes even light drinking semi- unbearable, those individuals expressing this gene variant are nine times less likely to suffer from alcoholism, as a cause of this. Interestingly, genes encoding for slow alcohol metabolism (such as the ALDH2) are found most commonly in the Asian population.
Interestingly, where the presence of that gene variant reduced the risk of developing an addiction it is the opposite for those predisposed to cigarette addiction. The presence of a gene called CHRNA5 more than doubles your risk of becoming addicted to nicotine. Smokers often remember their first smoke as being an un-pleasureable experience due to a heavy nauseous feeling. CHRNA5 expression in individuals was found to reduce this initial negative effect, even though the mechanism of how this happens remains unclear it may be linked to the CHRNA5 coding for a section of the acetylcholine receptor (receptor involved in pleasurable experiences) in our brains.
The long road to recovery:
OK, I know what your thinking, addiction really messes with our brain so, how can we possibly recover from that? It's most definitely an uphill battle for recovery from addiction as many of the changes are long lasting. HOWEVER! what should we always remember when it comes to our anatomy? Your body is amazing. That includes your brain, given the time a majority of the physical damage can be undone.
Brains of people who suffered from alcohol abuse disorders often shrink, given time and sobriety the brain can regain some of its original mass.
Additionally, functional recovery also gets underway. It may not be able to restore all the damaged pathways but it begins to find alternative routes avoiding damaged parts of our brain, much like how the voice on your GPS screams out 'Rerouting' or 'Calculating alternative route' when you miss that turn on the road. AMAZING #teambrain
Alright guys, that marks the end of the post! I think what we have learned here is that you may be addicted to Biobunch but that is OK! because I think that addiction is completely healthy. In fact, I would recommend you continue your weekly dose, however feel free to increase your dose as required there are 90 posts on this blog. Have you read all of them? If so which was your favourite, be totally honest. Till then, as always have an awesome weekend.
Biobunch,
Over and out.
Greetings everybody,
It is the end of the week finally! Not sure if you guys saw my tweet a couple of days ago, but I have enrolled myself on to a free online course introducing Cancer Immunotherapy. Ever since the beginning of this course, my passion for immunology has been booted up again, I mean our immune system is crazy awesome! So, I decided to dedicate an entire Friday Facts post on Immunology, so enjoy it guys.
Wasn't it awesome! have you learnt something new about your immune system, or therapeutic treatment? How about those DNA patents hey how do you feel about this? If you find this extremely interesting TEDx have an amazing video on DNA patenting and it is all about the BRCA1 gene. Totally recommended!
Guys as always have an amazing weekend, whether you are going for an awesome let your hair down, put you heels on kind of night or are preparing for the ultimate relaxer weekend, have an amazing time!
Biobunch,
Over and out
Greetings everybody,
Hope you are all as happy as I am that today is finally Friday. Not sure what your plans are, whether it be going out on a night or perhaps going to watch the awesome new Deadpool movie (watched it yesterday it is awesome!!) whatever it is... right here and right now we are going to learn about my chosen Family Of The Week which just so happen to have a whole exhibition at Kew Gardens (where all the pictures below are from!)
Geographic range: Cosmopolitan distribution (Occurs in almost every habitat apart from glaciers).
Conservation status: remains variable amongst different species, but ranges from least concern to endangered.
This family of flowering plants are the masters of deceiving their pollinators to carry out their bidding with no reward for the poor, confused pollinator. How do they manage such sly tactics? That is what we are going to explore for this families characteristics.
Some where during this families evolution several orchid species ended up realising that instead of placing valuable resources into nectar production, they could on a far more misleading approach. Today a third of all orchid species have perfected their visual, aromatic and tactile deceit, all in the name of pollination.
Orchids carry out deception in many ways, one of which is sexual deception that leads to the act of pseudocopulation. Pseudocopulation translates into false copulation, or, false sex. These orchids provide no reward for their unfortunate pollinator, instead the orchid mimics the body of and even the sexual pheromones of the pollinators female counterpart! Cheeky!
Sexually deceptive orchids often mimic the females of the hymenopteran family (wasps, bees and ants). They lure a male hymenoptera to land and copulate with the flower, well pseudocopulate, during this time the orchid uses a sticky glue to stick its pollinia (sack of pollen) on to the back of the male insect. And BAM! The orchid has successfully pollinated itself at the expense of a now very frustrated pollinator.
Ultimately these beautifully complex orchids owe their successes to their pollination tactics that can only be achieved through their remarkable labellum morphology. The labellum is the one that is shaped in a myriad of ways in order to decide the pollinators sight. These pollinators are not complete fools, after realising they have been falsely led on for a sexual encounter they often fly far away from the flower and do not fall for the same flower twice. This may sound like a disadvantage at first, but actually there is hidden genius behind it. The pollinator is so utterly repulsed at being sexually exploited, or cheated out of a meal as in the case of the hornet that they will carry the pollen of that orchid far, far away thereby eliminating any possibility of self pollination or inbreeding.
Yes, they are crafty plants. But look through their deceiving ways and you can only regard orchids as one of natures most scandalous but most impressive creations.
As I mentioned before Kew has an amazing expedition celebrating the rich diversity of South Americas orchid species. You lucky guys have had a bit of a teaser trailer, because every photo used in this post was taken from the expedition. I had the most amazing mother daughter day out with my mum last week when we visited the exhibit! It's a lot of fun and not something to miss! You have two more days, go, go right now if you can!!
Thats Biobunch,
Over and out.
Hope you are all as happy as I am that today is finally Friday. Not sure what your plans are, whether it be going out on a night or perhaps going to watch the awesome new Deadpool movie (watched it yesterday it is awesome!!) whatever it is... right here and right now we are going to learn about my chosen Family Of The Week which just so happen to have a whole exhibition at Kew Gardens (where all the pictures below are from!)
Orchidaceae:
Number of species: 27,000+ - this number remains fairly dynamic as new species are added every year.Geographic range: Cosmopolitan distribution (Occurs in almost every habitat apart from glaciers).
Conservation status: remains variable amongst different species, but ranges from least concern to endangered.
This family of flowering plants are the masters of deceiving their pollinators to carry out their bidding with no reward for the poor, confused pollinator. How do they manage such sly tactics? That is what we are going to explore for this families characteristics.
Characteristics: Deceptive pollination tactics
Some where during this families evolution several orchid species ended up realising that instead of placing valuable resources into nectar production, they could on a far more misleading approach. Today a third of all orchid species have perfected their visual, aromatic and tactile deceit, all in the name of pollination.
Orchids carry out deception in many ways, one of which is sexual deception that leads to the act of pseudocopulation. Pseudocopulation translates into false copulation, or, false sex. These orchids provide no reward for their unfortunate pollinator, instead the orchid mimics the body of and even the sexual pheromones of the pollinators female counterpart! Cheeky!
Sexually deceptive orchids often mimic the females of the hymenopteran family (wasps, bees and ants). They lure a male hymenoptera to land and copulate with the flower, well pseudocopulate, during this time the orchid uses a sticky glue to stick its pollinia (sack of pollen) on to the back of the male insect. And BAM! The orchid has successfully pollinated itself at the expense of a now very frustrated pollinator.
Other than sexual exploitation, other orchids have decided to go down a path a little less promiscuous. Dendrobium sinense is pollinated by the hornet Vespa bicolor, this orchid uses its floral aroma to attract the hornet for pollination to occur. However, this is no normal floral aroma, this orchid produces (Z) - 11 - eicosen-1-ol, a compound that is found in the alarm pheromones of the Asian and European honey bee. Why would hornets be attracted to this chemical? Well, believe it or not but hornets actually harvest honeybees to feed their larvae, I know, weird. Basically this orchid triggers the predatory instinct within the hornet, so this hornet arrives at the plant (the source of the alarm pheromone) lands on the orchid and is planted with the orchids pollinia.
Ultimately these beautifully complex orchids owe their successes to their pollination tactics that can only be achieved through their remarkable labellum morphology. The labellum is the one that is shaped in a myriad of ways in order to decide the pollinators sight. These pollinators are not complete fools, after realising they have been falsely led on for a sexual encounter they often fly far away from the flower and do not fall for the same flower twice. This may sound like a disadvantage at first, but actually there is hidden genius behind it. The pollinator is so utterly repulsed at being sexually exploited, or cheated out of a meal as in the case of the hornet that they will carry the pollen of that orchid far, far away thereby eliminating any possibility of self pollination or inbreeding.
Yes, they are crafty plants. But look through their deceiving ways and you can only regard orchids as one of natures most scandalous but most impressive creations.
As I mentioned before Kew has an amazing expedition celebrating the rich diversity of South Americas orchid species. You lucky guys have had a bit of a teaser trailer, because every photo used in this post was taken from the expedition. I had the most amazing mother daughter day out with my mum last week when we visited the exhibit! It's a lot of fun and not something to miss! You have two more days, go, go right now if you can!!
Thats Biobunch,
Over and out.
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