Drafts

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.

Alzheimer's disease is a very impactful disease that has been extensively researched because of its dramatic effects on those with it and its high virulancy. Even then, research is ongoing and continuously discovering more. The beta amyloid accumulation in neurons of alzheimers patients shows to cause neurological dysfunctions that may be attributed to the disease, although the symptoms may also be due to mitochondrial errors. the function of the mitochondria relies heavily on its interactions with other organelles in the cell. Mitochondria–ER contacts are used for mitochondria and ER to share membrane bound proteins. An experiment with dysfunctional amyloid betas was done and it found swelling in the eR and mitochondria issues in the test subjects. This mechanism could be driving some of the Alzheimer's symptoms from over accumulation or not working amyloids.

Among all bioindicators, lichens have been identified as a useful plant to monitor the level of pollution in the environment. The purpose of this study is to observe the species diversity of lichens in different settings and use it as an indicator for air pollution. They can be used in two ways to monitor air pollution: 1) grouping the species of lichens present in a specific area 2) measuring the morphological changes or the accumulation of pollutants in the lichens. Ultimately, lichens are very significant to our everyday world as they provide a means to convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through photosynthess into oxygen, which humans need to survive. For this study, our specific aim is to compare the air pollution when lichens are present among different levels of urbanization.  The first method will be applied to correlate the diversity of lichens to the air quality. It is imperative to pay close attention to the environment now more than ever, and so any step to detect and control a problem must be taken to find and implement a solution. 

    In eukaryotic cells, the smooth ER is a major site where membrane lipids are synthesized (Cooper). Membrane lipids must be synthesized on the cytosolic side of the ER membrane, or outside of the ER membrane (Cooper). After the lipids are synthesized they follow a similar pathway to proteins where vesicles transport the lipids to their final destinations. The smooth ER more specifically synthesizes three important membrane lipids: ceramide, cholesterol, and glycerol phospholipids (Cooper). Ceramide undergoes further processing in the Golgi to become sphingomyelin. Therefore the smooth ER produces a variety of lipids that either act as precursors that require more processing or are final products (Cooper).

The main function of the rough ER is to synthesize, process, and transport proteins. This biological process begins in the cytosol where a ribosome initiates the translation of an mRNA strand. The ribosome may translate a short signal sequence on N-terminus that marks the polypeptide as destined for the ER. A signal recognition particle, or SRP, will recognize this sequence and bind to the polypeptide (“Molecular Biology”). Figure 3 reflects the process of translation in two different scenarios: when a polypeptide expresses an ER signal sequence or no signal sequence. With the SRP guiding, the complex is then localized to a translocon on the rough ER membrane. As the ribosome creates a protein strand based off of the mRNA transcript, the channel protein allows the polypeptide chain to enter the ER lumen where protein folding commences. This process where the still synthesizing polypeptide enters the ER is known as co-translation (Cooper). Within the ER lumen are a variety of chaperone proteins that help fold polypeptides. These chaperone proteins contain an ER retention sequence so that they remain within the ER (Cooper). Other proteins that have entered the ER to be processed contain only a temporary ER signal sequence and exhibit another signal sequences for a different cellular location. In that case, proteins will be packaged into a vesicle, a membrane bound sack, that buds off of the ER. This vesicle travels along microtubules, the “backbones” of the cell, until it fuses with the membrane of the Golgi (“Transport from the ER”). The Golgi acts as the final step to process and transport the proteins to their ultimate location in the cell. Figure 4 reflects the general pathway that proteins follow depending on the individual protein’s signal sequence.