Writing in Biology - Section 1

This was also conducted on male mouse which show body weight fluctuations less obviously than women. The results of the study could have shown different results if it was done with female mice. Energy is very important for the function of our body, especially the brain. For example, if there is not enough glucose then action potentials cannot fire. Now what happens if you have an excess of energy, we would want to activate aMSH. If we are in the opposite situation, we would want to inhibit AgRP. Leptin is expressed in proportion to the amount of fat that you have. It has the ability to activitate aMSH or inhibit AgRP. ob/ob mutants are not able to activate the aMSH but also not inhibit the AgRP. Now lets say this was done to a Pomc neuron. This would cause the Pomc neuron to die and now the aMish neuron would not turn off satiety. Therefore they would never feel satiated. There was an increase in the amount that they ate but their phenotype in body weight changed much more slowly.

If you administered hDTR, known as deferiotoxin, to a mouse they would not respond. This is because the mouse is not responsive to human virus. The best way to get the virus into the mouse, would to package it into a virus shell and inject it into the mouse. The result from this injection would be the expression of Agrp, which would become infected with this toxin. For some background, Agrp inhibit the MCAR which shuts down the satiety neuron, which drives hunger. The phenotype of this injection would be lead for the receptor The hDTR would not connect to Agrp neurons and cause them to go through apoptosis. This would lead to a decrease in body weight. AgRP shuts off satiety neuron, which tells you that you’re full. This causes the mouse to stop eating and die of starvation. They feel satiented the whole time as there is not a receptor to shut it off. Within five days their food intake drops to 20% of the amount that they initially consumed. 

There are three ways the hypothalamus responds to sensory signals and maintains homeostasis. Humoral response stimulate or inhibit release of hormones through the pituitary. Visceromotor responses adjust the balance within the autonomic nervous system and the somatic motor response which stimulate behavior through the somatic system. There are many gene techniques to access the brain some of which include; are cre-expressing mouse lines and delivering viruses to anatomically to specific locations. These processes let us artificially manipulate the genes in the brain to see how they express themselves. In addition, we can do tract tracing by delivering engineered genes into the brain. In this way, we can activate neurons and turn them off to see how they affect behavior. We can then analyse the behavior that comes from this modification. Neurobio used to be based on just ecological literature but now we can add both the literature and these experiments to come to a clearer conclusion. Body weight regulation starts with looking at certain genes which are very rare. Mutations of the leptin gene lead to inability to control body weight. Deb gene is a gene that affects body weight. Diabetes is not only a genetic disorder but it is polygenic, multiple genes associated with each other. These genes need external influence to become completely expressed.

Mollecularly, cancer is typically associated with gain of function mutations in oncogenes as well as loss of function mutations in tumor-suppressor genes. One gene in particular has been associated with a wide variety of cancers, PIK3CA. PIK3CA is a gene responsible for PI3K, a downstream protein in RTK signaling that converts PIP2 to PIP3, thus continuing the signal transduction pathway. However, in double PIK3CA mutants, PI3K acts independently of RTK signaling, converting PIP2 to PIP3 leading to hyperactive downstream AKT, activating the signal pathway with no ligand present in the RTK. This hyperactivation leads to increased and unregulated cell proliferation and survival¹. This double mutant PIK3CA is a common mutations in many cancers, especially breast cancer.

The use of birth control via oral tablets is an effective, yet inconvenient method for contraceptive hormone administration. Patients may forget to take their pill, or might be unable to take it at the correct time. A solution to this would be a long-term birth control treatment. There are many methods of long term contraception available, but many have significant drawbacks that cause patient hesitation in adopting these treatments. To increase access to long term, reliable birth control, Li et al. developed a microneedle skin patch to administer the contraceptive hormone levonorgestrel for about a month¹. The microneedles themselves detatch from the pad and embed themselves in the skin after a minute of manual pressure applied to the patch. The needles are made out of a biodegradable polymer, and therefore produce no sharp hazerdous waste. In creating this treatment, Li et al. hope that "an effervescent microneedle patch could facilitate greater access to long-acting contraception"¹.

(1) Li, W., Tang, J., Terry, R. N., Li, S., Brunie, A., Callahan, R. L., … Prausnitz, M. R. (2019). Long-acting reversible contraception by effervescent microneedle patch. Science Advances, 5(11). doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw8145

The cell is the foundation of all life. This fundamental unit has given rise to a vast array of organisms, some unicellular and some multicellular. But what if we changed this view, instead considering these life-carrying elements as small machines? Jason Kelly, CEO of Ginko Bioworks, seeks to make this kind of thinking into a reality. Kelly views cells much akin to that of a computer, with a coding language made out of adenine, cytosine, guanine, and tyrosine. As Kelly puts it, "synthetic biology is programming cells like we program computers, by changing the DNA code inside them"¹. Ginko has already implemented this methodology in a variety of fields, such as fragrances and flavorings. Kelly states that the next target of this technology is the fertilizer industry, replacing nitrogen-based fertilizers that create runoff and greenhouse gas emissions with simple seed treatments. Through synthetic biology, Kelly hopes that his company will innovate and provide novel solutions to the most environmentally unfriendly and expensive problems we face in society.

(1) Weber, J. (2019, November 6). Ginkgo Bioworks CEO Wants Biology to Manufacture Physical Goods. Retrieved November 8, 2019, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-11-06/ginkgo-bioworks-ceo-w....

The poster is very colorful but the dark color in the background is capturing too much attention away from the text. The layout is balanced appropriately. The headings are level 1 headings, but for introduction, method, discussion and neuroimaging study are not centered. The font for the body is too small. The flow of information is organized very well. It has the title, authors, a figure legend for the results and discussion. The blue background is rounded around the corners. The information is all placed in places that are easy to find. Important information was bolded. Each section is appropriately focused. There is no indentation for any of the paragraphs, but they paragraphs are indicated by leaving space in between. There are no grammatical errors and the language is appropriate. There is not an overwhelming amount of information. The  data is presented in the form of graphs with descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation). All vectors objects are crisp and sharp.  The references are cited, giving credits to others. The poster is informative and persuasive. 

The design of this poster is dynamic and colorful. It has an attractive design with a clear green theme throughout. The flow of the poster is easy to follow and it organized in separate columns. All of the objects are lined up consistently and each column looks the same size. The color throughout the poster is captivating and flows throughout the layout. The font size is too small in comparison to the images and it makes it difficult to read all of the text. The font itself is easy to read and a good choice. 

The writing in this poster is organized in paragraphs and in simple sentences. There are no grammatical, spelling or typographical errors that can be observed. The language in this poster is simple yet informative. There is a nice ratio of data points to text in this poster. The word count in this poster is not overwhelming. It is dispersed throughout the poster and not clustered in one location.

The content of this poster is easy to understand and informative. The Introduction paragraph gives the reader enough background needed to understand the rest of the poster. There are also sentences beneath every image to give the reader the context of each image. The data is presented in measures of central tendencies and descriptive statistics. These can be observed throughout the poster. There is no raw data present in this poster. The bitmapped graphics were high resolution and easy to see clearly. The vector objects were also crisp and sharp. The materials copyrights were managed neatly and are easy to observe at the bottom of the poster. The poster is persuasive as it is informative, clearly organized and formatted well.