Drafts

Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, as the literal translation from the Hmong language is epilepsy, is a story of the misunderstanding in medicine due to intercultural differences proving to be deadly. But on this medical route, Fadiman moves to the town of Merced in California and speaks with the local Hmong immigrant community. In this way, she manages to tell the heartbreaking story of Leah Lee, a little girl with a severe form of epilepsy. Fadiman portrays how diverging views on health and illness, between the Eastern philosophy of Lia’s parents and her Western doctors, condemned Leah to death.

Notes for poster presentation:

For poster quality, Pdf files are the best and most recommended. Tiffs carry sufficient information for a high quality image, PNGs are slightly worse. JPGs are extremely not recommended . R pdfs are made of objects that are well grouped and when edited using a pdf editor, nothing is shifted/moved and words, axises, and graph sections remain a signle object that can be edited. This does not occur in other pdf files whwere, when edited, every signle letter and object is singular and shifts slightly when ungrouped for editing. Using text boxes is best for putting text into poster so as to avoid formating and font issues carrying over from a word or google document. Thirty point font is a good basis to maintain for all necessary words on the poster. Do not use a monospace font, use a proportionally spaced font. Using the university seal is not recommended for informal occasions like a class poster. The "Be Revolutionary" water marks are best for use, being sure to download and not copy from the website as to maintain high resolution images.

 In summary, although the last decade has produced many studies on social electrocommunication in weakly electric fish, they have been biased towards proximate research and to some extent wave-type species. Species recognition in the wave-type fish A. leptorhynchus is mediated by stereotyped EOD frequencies and in the pulse-type fish. M. rume it is determined by a species-specific IDI (Fugère & Krahe 2010, 213; Dunlap et al. 2010, 2234; Worm et al. 2018, 1). JAR seems to be unique to wave-type species and has been hypothesized to have an intrasocial function in Apteronidae, Eigenmannia, and Dystocyclus, but seems absent from Sternopygus (Worm et al. 2018, 1; Stamper et al. 2010, 368). Ritualised aggression in weakly electric fish is often negotiated via modulated EOD frequencies, EOD lengths, and IDI patterns that signal the dominance of one fish over another, and in the males of some species, dominance strongly correlates with levels of 11-ketotestosterone (Gebhardt et al. 2012, 623; Fugère et al. 2011, 197; Salazar & Stoddard 2009, 399; Cuddy et al. 2012, 4; Raab et al. 2019, 1). Sexual dimorphism of EODs is evolutionarily labile, as A. leptorhynchus shows sexual dimorphism in EOD frequency and chirping while many other wave-type genera are sexually monomorphic (Smith 2013, 2428; Batista et al. 2012, 398). S. nattereri is a unique case where electrocommunication is sexually monomorphic but different male morphs vary in their EOD frequencies (Ho et al. 2013,337; Fernandes et al. 2010, 660). Lastly, pulse-type fish of the Marcusenius genus also show differences in sexual dimorphism, as M. pongolensis males show a life-long increase in their EOD length while male M. altisambesi only show increased EOD length during the breeding season (Machnik et al. 2010, 699). Overall, these studies show that weakly electric fish use electrocommunication in a variety of contexts and explore how electrocommunication takes place but explanations for its evolution remain largely in the hypothetical realm. Answering ultimate questions about electrocommunication would be facilitated by studies into: (1) how differences in selection pressures have affected species differences in electrocommunication, (2) the evolutionary history of electrocommunication in Gymnotiformes and Mormyriformes to understand how these groups diverged and became segregated to South America and Africa respectively, (3) the environmental and evolutionary factors that contribute to sexually dimorphic electrocommunication.

Gene Duplication: a spontaneous event such as a mutation or other factors may result in DNA polymerase or other mechanisms mistakenly duplicating a gene. Further mutations in the regulatory or coding region of one of the duplicated genes alters when, what, and how much of that gene may be expressed. These two copies of the same gene (found within a species) are called paralogs.

Regulatory mutation: mutations in the regulatory region of a gene will alter when and how much of a gene will be expressed. The genetic code of the gene itself will not be altered, preserving the phenotypic expression of the gene. However depending on the level of expression caused by a mutation in the regulatory sequence the phenotypic expression of the gene may also be altered.

Coding sequence mutation: Since the regulatory sequence remains the same, gene will be expressed at the same time, place, and level. However depending on the type of mutation in the gene it may be a nonsynonymous or synonymous. A nonsynonymous mutation may result in a loss of original function of the gene, but gain function in another pathway. If the protein is promiscuous it might not completely lose its original function, just alter one of its many active sites. 

Crotamine likely evolved from beta defensin genes through a combination of gene duplication, regulatory mutation, and coding sequence mutation. Gene duplication must have occurred first because the initial gene, beta defensin, is a gene critical to an organism's function therefore that gene must be conserved. When an ancestor had two copies of the beta defensin gene, one of the copies then had a spontaneous mutation in the regulatory sequence, expressing beta defensin in the fangs at higher concentration. This evolutionary step might have happened before, after, or at the same time as a series of mutations in the coding sequence of the copied beta defensin gene in order to code for a poisonous protein instead.

The resultant species must have a deep beak like the geospiza magnirostris because it must rip the bark from trees. The deep set beak will help the bird tear off the bark. Furthermore the bird will likely inherit the length of the geospitza conristris so that it may probe for insects. A sharp long beak will help it pick out the insect. Therefore, the beak will be deep set and long so that it may peel back the bark and pick at insects. I would expect the bird to express both Calmodulin and Bmp4 early on and at high amounts. An early and high expression of Calmodulin will lead to an elongated beak. Similarly, an early and high expression of Bmp4 will result in a deep set beak. 

Evolution may occur overtime through a succession of mutations or a gene that might be used for a different purpose than originally expressed. With that in mind, mountain goats with horns may have evolved from an ancestral population without horns through the following process. A goat that had a mutation for slight nubs where horns are located and due to genetic drift or selection that goat passed on that trait. Again another mutation might occur where the nubs grow more into smaller horns and that goat may pass on that trait due to drift or selection. This repeats until goats have full horns. Again this trait may be selected for due to mating reasons, influencing natural selection and making the trait have higher fitness. The trait may have also been influenced by genetic drift and been under no selection.

    Another possible theory in terms of genetics is that there could be a mutation in the promoter region specifically that codes for small horns resulting in over expression. Again the theory could be overexpression increased over time due to mutations until the fitness decreased when a goat had horns that were too large.

Ibuprofen is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). It works by reducing hormones that cause inflammation and pain in the body. One of these hormones, prostaglandin, is inhibited when taking the medication. The synthesis of prostaglandin results in dilation of afferent arterioles. Because ibuprofen inhibits the formation of prostaglandin, our afferent arteriole’s begin to constrict without a signal to dilate due to the absence of the hormone. As a result, there is a decrease of blood flow in the kidney and therefore filtration is also reduced.

When we exercise, our vessels constrict in the kidney and slow down blood flow so that our bodies can focus more pumping blood to the muscles as we are using them when we exercise. From the information just learned, taking ibuprofen for a cramp during physical exercise would only have negative effects on the body. This would increase stress on the kidney inducing further constriction and reduced blood flow to the arterioles.

Chirp structure and EOD frequency differs across wave-type fish and can be sexually dimorphic, though to different extents. In Apteronotids, EOD frequency - males often have lower EOD frequency than females - and chirping can be sexually dimorphic, but appears in a number of different ways (Smith 2013, 2422; Ho et al. 2013, 335; Ho et al. 2010, 1050). For example, A. albifrons males have lower EOD frequencies than females while A. leptorhynchus males have a higher EOD frequency than females (Smith 2013, 2422). Additionally, in A. leptorhynchus, males chirp more than females and in A. bonapartii and A. devenanzii chirp complexity is higher in males than in females (Smith 2013, 2428; Ho et al. 2010, 1059). However, another Apteronotid Sternarchogiton nattereri shows no sexual dimorphism, as males and females show no discernible difference in EOD frequency, chirp rate, and chirp form (Ho et al. 2013,337). Instead, S. nattereri shows differences in EOD frequency that are dependent on male morphology, with toothed males showing higher EOD frequency than toothless males (Fernandes et al. 2010, 660). In the wave-type Gymnotiform Gymnotus omarorum, and unlike in many of the aforementioned Apteronotids, electric signalling is sexually monomorphic (Batista et al. 2012, 398). Sexually monomorphic electrocommunicative behaviour has also been observed in other non-Apteronotid genera such Eigenmannia and Sternopygus (Smith 2013, 2422).

Figure 3 shows the same pattern as those seen in our experiment. The two markers that the researchers that were used to measure cell proliferation are Ki67 and BrdU. Ki67 is a protein that is highly expressed in cells that are proliferating. Ki67 labels cells that are in M, G1,S, and G2 phases. However, because the only cells that do not express the protein are cells in G0, there are many cells that would be positive for this marker. BrdU is extremely similar to EdU in how they mark cells that are proliferating. Unlike Ki67, BrdU and EdUmarkers only mark's cells that are undergoing S phase, as a result, it is more specific. However, BrdU is an antibody compared to EdU which is a click it reaction and incorporates thymidine analog into the DNA.  In hyperthyroid conditions, A2B5 was upregulated in the mitral cell layer compared to the control, and also had a positive cell in other layers of the olfactory bulb. There is a decrease in MBP protein expression in the optic nerve of hypothyroid rats. The conclusion that I can draw about the effect of thyroid hormone on oligodendrocyte progenitors and mature oligodendrocytes is thyroid hormones regulate something upstream of pre oligodendrocyte and mature oligodendrocyte. This conclusion can be drawn because the thyroid hormone is increasing preoligodendroctyes in hyperthyroid conditions which indicates that there are more preoligodendrocytes in hyperthyroid conditions. The decrease in MBP protein suggests that there is a decrease in mature oligodendrocytes.  From these two pieces of information, no conclusion can be drawn since they are in different parts of the brain and indicate two different types of cell regulation. However, since the paper mentions that there is an increase in MBP protein in hyperthyroid condition and a decrease or no change in hypothyroid condition, as well as that A2B5 is not observed in hypothyroid brains. Using this information, I can predict that the thyroid hormone regulates something that is upstream of pre oligodendrocyte. However, using the information that is just given, no conclusion can be reached because a decrease of thyroid hormone should have an opposite effect and that is not seen as clearly here.  

The goal of this study is to determine whether the effects of T3 on progenitor cell proliferation and oligodendrocyte maturation are causally related or instead are independent. O-2A are biopotential glial progenitor cells. A2B5+ marker for presence of O-2A (biopotential glial progenitor) cells. GC+ is a marker that is expressed by mature oligodendrocytes.Table 1 shows the percentage of glial progenitor cells and mature oligodendrocytes that are present in the cell cultures that has the T3 added and the control.  The control numbers mean that when there is no T3 present, there are around 75% glial progenitor cells and 6.8 mature dendrocytes 6 days after incubation. The T3 numbers means that 6 days after the T3 was added there were 24 percent glial progenitor cells and 57 mature oligodendrocytes, indicating that the presence of T3 causes the cells to mature into mature oligodendrocytes. Table 2 indicates that T3 blocks proliferation. The data is showing that T3 blocks the proliferation by marking the glial progenitor cells that have taken up BrdU. Because the percentage of BrdU in A2B5 labeled cell was twice as much in control as compared to the T3 treated cells. This indicates that the amount of A2B5 that are going under S phase, and as a result also indicates cell proliferation. Because the proliferation is twice as high in the control, the data is demonstrating that the proliferation is lower in the T3 cells. Because all other factors are kept constant, this table shows that T3 is what is causing the cells to stop proliferating.