Drafts

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is teeming with great faculty, which is what makes it such a great university. All of the great faculty made it difficult to choose one person to write about. However, after searching through the MCB faculty list, I found Dr. Sandra L Peterson. Sandra Peterson is a Professor of Molecular Neuroendocrinology of reproduction at UMass. Sandra Peterson got her BS in Biology at Rutgers University in 1977. She then went on to get her MS in Neuroendocrinology at Oregon State University in 1980. Finally, she followed that up with her PhD in Neuroendocrinology at Oregon State University in 1984.

In addition to being a professor, she is a director at the STEM diversity institute. The STEM diversity institute’s main purpose is to facilitate the diversification of the STEM workforce. They help underrepresented groups enter and rise in the STEM field. Sandra is also a director at the Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education program (NEAGEP). Similar to the STEM diversity institute, the NEAGEP works to recruit and mentor members from minority groups and help enable them to pursue PhDs in the mathematics, engineering, and science.

Shh is an extracellular signalling protein which modulates expression of a number of genes. The Hh protein binds to a transmembrane protein called Patched (Ptch). This binding stops Ptch from inhibiting another transmembrane protein called Smoothen (Smo). When Smo is active, it is able to induce the Gli transcription factors to being transcribing genes. While many of the genes regulated by Hh/Gli are known, further experiments continue to identify new genes.

In “WHOSE BODY IS IT, ANYWAY?”, Gawande discusses the thin and often blurred line between a patient’s autonomy and a doctor’s ability to mediate or even make decisions for patients when they believe the patient is making a mistake. Gawande discusses many situations where a patient’s decisions and what he as a doctor recommends are at odds. Gawande admits it is not always clear what to do in these situations, but states that the current view in the medical world is to allow the patients to decide (212). One situation that Gawande describes involves the patients referred to as Lazaroff, who has an incurable cancer in his spinal cord. The cancer has caused Lazaroff to lose control and ability in his left leg and may progress to paralysis. Lazaroff has only a few weeks to live according to the doctors, however, he still speaks about soon returning to work (209). Perhaps Lazaroff is making light of the situation, but much more likely in his situation, he misunderstands his situation and that his lease on life has been cut short.

There are two main hypotheses regarding the lactose persistence mutation. Firstly, the “culture-historical hypothesis” states that alleles for lactose persistence were low until humans domesticated dairy animals in the early Neolithic and then rose sharply due to the selective advantage it conferred and natural selection. The “reverse cause hypothesis” states that dairy animals were utilized in populations with preadaptive high lactose persistence. Researchers have discovered that lactase persistence likely arouse through convergent adaptation. Scientists studied 470 Tanzanians, Kenyans and Sudanese in a genotype-phenotype association study which focused on three SNPs associated with lactase persistence “These SNPs originated on different haplotype backgrounds from the European SNP and from each other...These data provide a marked example of convergent evolution due to strong selective pressure resulting from shared cultural traits—animal domestication and adult milk consumption. (Sarah Tishkoff et al., 2007)” This case of convergent evolution with African and European populations is strong evidence that human populations are evolving. Mutations likely arose independently in these two populations that allowed for lactase persistence. Since the mutations conferred a selective advantage, these alleles were favored by natural selection and increased in frequency.

In the beginning of December, New Horizons (one of NASA’s space probes exploring the universe) took an image of a group of stars called the “Wishing Well” as well as objects from the Kuiper Belt which is the farthest from Earth that an image has been captured (almost four billion miles away). Assuming the lenses in the camera used by the spacecraft were very high­tech, it should contain both converging and diverging lenses. These lenses work together to create a real, inverted, negative magnification, clear image. In the future, New Horizons is set to explore more of the Kuiper Belt and other objects out in deep space. Many do not know the inner workings of telescopes and how we build telescopes to be able to magnify images of distances more then four billion miles away. Lenses are in our every day lives, they include classes, phones, televisions, and more. Each designed differently for their different purposes, but all taking to account reflection, refraction and the reation of an image. 

In this section, the factors that caused the differences observed are discussed. In the first paragraph, the factors that caused the formatting of the entire multipanel figure are described. The second paragraph focuses in on the specific individual figures, including figure A, B, and C of each of the two multipanel figures and describes the factors that caused the observed differences.

In this section, the differences that were observed are described and documented. In the first paragraph, the differences of the overall structure and formatting of the two multipanel figures are discussed.     In the next paragraph, the specific differences seen in both of the Figure A’s, the picture of the entire plant, are discussed. Lastly, the final paragraph discusses the differences seen between Figures B and C of the two multi-panel figures.

The difference in what objects were visible in panels A and B of the figures result from the lack of specificity of the angle in the methods. If the angle from which the original pictures were taken were included in the methods, more of the objects in the replicate pictures would have been more like those in the original. This is why there is more ground in Figure 1A than in Figure 2A along with more roof in figure 2A than in Figure 1A.  

There is a higher density of flowers in Figure 2B than Figure 1B because it is not specified in the methods which exact flowers on the trees should be photographed. This is why pictures of different flowers on the tree were taken for both figures. If the exact flower or flowers on the tree and the location was specified in the methods, Panel B in both figures would be more similar if not exactly the same.

Panels A and B from both figures have sunlight in them since they were taken around the same time of day. The differences in exposure and shadow are due to the different cameras used. Different cameras were used because the type of camera is not specified in the methods. If the exposure and shadow were the same in both pictures for both figures, the panels would not have different shades of colors from one another.

The difference in Panel C in both figures is due to misscoloring of the native origins by the person who followed the methods. This is because the coloring in Figure 2C matches the coloring in Figure 1C but it is not within the outlines of the native regions as it is in Figure 1C. If the matching coloring of Figure 2C matched that in 1C, the maps of Figure 1C and 2C would be the same.

The label fonts of the panels are different in both figures because the methods does not specify the type of font. The location of the panels are different in both figures because the methods does not specify where to put the panels in respect to being above or below the labels. The methods only specifies within the left or right of directions of the labels. This is why the panels in Figure 2 are to the right of and below the panel labels. This is unlike the panels in Figure 1 which are only to the right of the panel labels. The figures would be more identical if the location of the panels had more clarity.

The panels in Figure 1 are more narrow than those in Figure 2 since the methods does not specify exactly what the length and width of the panels should be. The methods only specified the length and width of the map image in Panel C. If the length and width of the panels were specified, the figures would look more identical overall regarding the layout.   

The main factors considered for creating the methods to facilitate replication of the figure include time and location. The plant was found in the Durfee Conservatory on campus which is open only from 10am - 4pm on weekdays. Other factors consisted of the type of camera, from where exactly the pictures should be taken, and what objects were in the pictures. This was to get the most identical pictures possible from the person following the methods. The location of the labels were considered along with which pictures should go where in the figure. In attempt to get same exact looking native origins map, the type of map, width and length of the map, and the filling color of the countries were taken into consideration.

In Spring 2018, as part of the Writing in Biology Course at Umass Amherst, students had to complete the Methods Project. The students had to partner up to follow each others’ methods. The methods were the steps needed in order to create a figure with three panels. The panels had to include an image of a flowering plant, a close-up of the flower or flowers of the plant, and a map of the native origins of the plants. I chose to do the figure on a flower called Camellia Japonica. The reasons for the choosing the selected flowering plant include its location and appearance. The plant was easy to access because of its location on campus which was the Durfee Conservatory. The plant was easy to find within the conservatory due to its bright pink flowery look that stood out to the eye.