Greetings everybody,

I have wanted to do this post for quite a while to be honest. During university, every student had their 'go to series' in order to distract you from any form of academics, for my housemates and I it was 'The Walking Dead'.

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I am always one for a bit of post apocalyptic drama so I fell right into it, however, I couldn't quite switch my science mind of. Then I realised it, I was using 'The Walking Dead' to revise! It was small things I assure you, like using the rules of group selection theory to explain the zombies that gather in hoards compared to 'lone walkers'. My housemate and I even unravelled the flaw in how our poor characters are killing the 'Walkers' based on the episode where the gang see an MRI scan of how this zombie pathogen takes hold of the mind. It is in this episode, where two things are confirmed. Zombies once turned have no capability of drawing up memories, feelings or emotions simply because those aspects of the brain are dead. Secondly the only parts reactivated after death were the brain stem and parts of the medulla oblongata. 

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But why those two parts of the brain? Quite genius really. Our brain stem and medulla oblongata are responsible for controlling the bear necessities, heartbeat, movement and hunger so- perfect zombie behaviour! OK, so what this means is that the only true way of killing the zombie is not by hacking them in the part of the brain that is already dead, no you need to target your aim to the base of the skull and keep hacking. 

Moving along .... thats not what I really wanted to share with you guys. I was hoping that 'Fear the Walking Dead' would explain how this whole apocalyptic world originated, however, it appears this is not in the cards. Therefore I have taken it upon myself to tell you guys about my hypotheses 'On the Origin of The Walking Dead' be warned a bit of this inspiration was helped along by my favourite zombie movie 'World War Z'. So with that lets think it through!

1. Definitely not a virus even if it behaves like viral meningitis:  

Viruses always want the healthiest host! Yeah I know considering they do not benefit the organism they infect you think they would be happy with what they get, afraid not. What this means is that the remaining population after this outbreak should be those with terminal ailments whether it be an infection or malnutrition, similar to that seen in World War Z. As far as we know, this outbreak has been indiscriminate. So, virus? unlikely.

2. Possibly fungal?

Fungi- the glorious kingdom of fungi. Fungi are largely underestimated they happen to be responsible for some of natures weirdest and often scariest moments. Probably one of the best fungi to tell you guys about is the case of the 'Zombie Ant'. Meet Ophiocordyceps unilateralis  and its poor victim the ant. This fungal pathogen completes its life cycle by infecting the perfect host. It all starts when an ant comes across one of the fungal spores, the fungi infect the ants body and slowly begins its path right up to the ants brain. When there, it gets to making the perfect chemical cocktail... you know the deadly kind. This mixture of chemicals hijacks the central nervous system of its victim causing it to climb to a very high spot on a tree and clamp down. To finish it all off, the fungus grows a spore releasing stalk that explodes out the back of the victims head and the process begins all over again!

Yes, definitely nature at her best and worst. From looking at this life cycle there is a clear fault in trying to pin down the walking dead as being caused by a pathogen of some sort whether it be fungal, viral or bacterial. It lacks the transmission incentive. Think about it, every pathogen shares this in common with the other, that evolutionary drive to spread and infect more. The zombies in the walking dead, simply want to kill and eat, but why would a fungus let alone any pathogen want their host to kill and disembowel a potential other host? It wouldn't. So, it could be safe to say pathogen is off the table.

3. My theory!

OK guys this is the one that I have been excited about since Second Year of Biology. What if this zombie apocalypse is down to our genomes? Lets cast our mind back to the age of the dinosaurs or the age of the wooly mammoth both of which were brought to an abrupt end by mother nature who decided 'your time is up'.  

Now, stick with me guys this may get complicated. The era we live in has been named as the 'Anthropocene' this is because as a race, man kind has manipulated the earths geological and atmospheric processes. In addition to this, we have been the driving force behind many species extinctions and thanks to human induced climate change we are pushing more species closer to the edge. What if Nature decided that this is it? this is our time up? How best to get every single person on the planet? Well, what is the one thing that we all have regardless of colour, religion and sexuality- our genome. Imagine mother natures version of a 'kill switch' hidden inside everyone of our genomes, the same thing that we owe our evolutionary success to, the very thing that led us to be the dominating species on the planet- used against us. The global scientific community is continually providing evidence for the inevitability for the worlds sixth mass extinction event, and the species likely to go extinct... but, what if this mass extinction is reserved for us? 

Our atmosphere has been greatly altered through the exploitation of fossil fuels and release of pollutants, it is no great surprise that this presents us with novel environmental conditions. Is it completely out of the question that the trigger point for the apocalyptic world we see in the series was caused by a combination of the environment and other factors. Similar to the concept of the perfect storm, all these factors coming together just right, to activate that portion of our genome. Varying expression of genetic traits based on internal or external stimuli is not an unheard of science, in fact, quite the opposite it is called the field of epigenetic' and it is amazing! An activation point in our genome, or the expression of a certain gene or genes lead to the dramatic downward spiral of our civilisation. This would explain why everybody has it, as well as the bodies change in its internal environment (i.e. chemicals present) being the final trigger for the full expression of the disease whether it be through a bite or a natural/grizzly death. 

Interestingly, an article recently found that our genome is not 100% made up of 'human' DNA but contains fragments of viral codes! What does this mean? Well, in short - we all have a dormant archaic virus within our genome like a ticking time bomb. Suddenly my crazy hypothesis is not so crazy.

Alright guys you have just had a sneak peak into my mind, and yes science is on it all the time! You think it would get quite tiring but... It doesn't!! Guys as always have an amazeballs weekend!

Biobunch,

Over and out

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Greetings everyone,

It's happening, the darkness of the night is slowly consuming the daylight hours more and more, the cold is beginning to seep into our houses, your senses are becoming more alert to every creek and every thud. You begin looking around your house seeing the rooms becoming more sinister and suddenly you are becoming ever so curious as to what dwells in those unopened attics and basements, and as you lie in bed you here a deep rumbling howl piercing the darkness then you realize that there in the sky lies a full moon... it can all mean only one thing. Its Halloween week.

For those of you who are on the ball you may notice that we have made a new series called 'Biology Behind:' this will be posted up every Tuesday and will be looking at all topics from a biological viewpoint we hope you enjoy!!

Now to get down to this post, firstly when we think of fear we picture; racing heart, sweaty palms, accelerated breathing, and increasing amounts of energy pumped to our muscles. These characteristic symptoms of fear are a result of our autonomic nervous system more specifically our sympathetic nervous system (a branch of our autonomic nervous system.) Other than the effects previously mentioned when in full drive the sympathetic nervous system leads to pupil dilation, our smooth muscle relaxes in order for oxygen to enter the lungs and lastly the veins in the skin constrict to send more blood to major muscle groups (this is why the character about to face their grizzly doom, become unmistakably pale).

So why do we love horror movies?? 

Well it turns out that when it comes down to this question there are alot of explanations floating around. Curiosity is an incredibly powerful emotion,  you go into the cinemas not knowing what to expect and we love it. (unless your like us who scream at woman in black even though we have watched it many times). The horror genre is all about the thrills and the satisfaction we get at the end saying that we have survived something dark and unexpected, there is also the idea that by watching horror we are able to have a greater understanding to the violence around us. Really?? we can honestly say that we have not been tormented by a malevolent force in our house but hey the week is young... Probably one of the best ones is the interesting idea that our DNA actually loves horror movies and hates Zombies, this is based on human evolution as we have become hardwired to be repulsed by rotten flesh it helped primitive man to avoid food poisoning.

We think that possible food poisoning coming from this guy is the last thought in our mind

One of our favourite explanations for this craving for horror movies is the 'Excitation transfer process' this idea was proposed by Glenn Sparks  a professor and associate head of the Brian lambs school of communication at Purdue university. Basically this theory states that the appeal towards horror movies is how you feel after you have watched it. During the film your body is charged from the sudden adrenaline rush, this then becomes a physiological arousal that we are not aware of at all so the positive emotions you experience like having fun with scaring yourself with your mates becomes intensified. The reversal also applies if you are on a date and it turns out to be really bad after the movie, your negative feelings are intensified so instead of it being bad it become the WORST DATE IN HISTORY!

This all comes down to our brain specifically the Amygdala...

The Amygdala is involved in fear conditioning , modulation of attention and memory for fear-related stimuli, fear recognition, induction of fear related stimuli and fear related behaviour. So it is a pretty big player in our fear.  In a paper published in Current Biology  a patient named SM suffers from Amygdala lesions the patient was placed in many different situations that were designed to induce fear in this patient, the idea was to see whether or not SM is able to display any of the fear characteristics despite not having a fully functional Amygdala. SM was shown 10 of the scariest film clips and the patient described feeling excited and entertaining but never scared! The one that got us is that she got taken to Waverly Hills Sanatorium during Halloween (one of the most scariest places on Earth) SM was greeted by monsters, ghosts and deranged murderers and the patient greeted them all with a smile, laughing and even trying to talk  to them!!

If this isn't the cure to fear we don't know what is!! so when your sitting there watching Saw, Haunting in Connecticut or any number of the horror movies coming on in this glorious week just remember that everything your feeling is partially caused by just one part of your brain!!! 

Well guys that ends of our first post for our new series!!! Such exciting times. We do hope you have enjoyed taking a closer look at such an intense emotion such as fear. Make sure you come by for a visit tomorrow for another Halloween themed article, trust me you don't want to miss it... its awesome! Till then have a fearsome evening and we will see you tomorrow.

Biobunch.
Over and out.

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