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Mechanisms of Diabetes

Diabetes can lead to major health complications such as nerve damage, kidney damage, and cardiovascular disease. The three mechanisms which influence these diabetic complications are: blood pressure, glucose control, and lipid control.

Nephropathy, a disease/damage to the kidneys, is characterized by the development of proteinuria and a decline in glomerular filtration rate. High glucose levels and high blood pressure are the main causes of nephropathy. The high levels of glucose in the blood cause an increase in glucose reabsorption which then leads to both hyperfiltration and increased intraglomerular. This extra pressure on nephrons over time weakens their ability to filter, ultimately leading to kidney damage and leakage of proteins into the urine.

Retinopathy, described as lesions within the retina, is also caused by high blood pressure and poor glycemic control. Hyperglycemia causes changes to the blood vessels in the retina by damaging or killing pericyte cells (The cells that line blood vessels and help regulate blood flow) which then alters the blood-retinal barrier and vascular permeability. Damage to the retinal blood vessels eventually results in ischemia. In response to ischemia, neovascularization takes place which is the formation of new blood vessels. The new fragile blood vessels that grow in the retina are prone to leaking blood into the back of the eye. The leaking of the fluid into the macula (Area responsible for clear central vision) causes the macula to swell, thus leading to vision loss.

     Within the small plastic container is a small organism that seems to move by muscle contractions. The muscle contractions move along the body laterally allowing it to inch across the container. The organism stays on the perimeter of the container and when put in the middle it inches back out to the edge. The organism is a tan color and seems to be mostly see through. There are rings on the body that go around the entire circumference of the body. They seem to be evenly spread out. Also there is something that goes from the tip of the body all the way to the tail. It looks as though it may be a neural cord of some kind or it could be a digestive track. On the front of the body there is a black section at the very tip which may be the sensory system of the organism. There are two brown spots on the back of organism.

Within the small clear plastic container is a single light beige grub. The animal is approximately one cm in length and has a darker brown stripe running down the length of its back. At the front end the body narrows and forms a set of small black mandibles. The rear end of the animals body is wider and flatter than the front. On the rear of the abdomen are two small dark brown spots. These spots likely function as false eyes and allow grubs to sometimes evade predation due to a would be predator mistakenly attacks the rear of the animal and leaves the head intact. In total the organism is composed of 12 individual body segments. The creature is most likely the larval stage of some form of insect, the identity of which is currently unknown. Some behavioral features include a sensitivity to light. Upon shining a bright flashlight in its face the animal immediately recoiled and faced the opposite direction. When the container is shaken the grub appears to shorten its body as much as possible and contract all its body segments making itself more rigid.

The object in the container is a living worm or shrub. It has a soft yellowish brown body color with a brown face. There are multiple lines on its back that represents the numerous segments that make up the body. The worm is eating some particles of food but does it have teeth? How does it ingest nutrients? Another observation is its legs, which appear to be in pairs. How many are there in total? The legs are essential for movement, especially in search for food. Looking closely, the legs near the front of the head are slightly longer and pointed. Further towards the back of the body the legs are shorter and more stubby. The shape of the body follows a bilateral symmetry as one side resembles a lot like the other side. On each side, there are about eight brown spots with one spot on each segment piece of the body. The worm moves in a wave-like movement. It scrunches parts of its body to lift and then shift forward. It produces a cascade of motion within its segments in the body to move.

The object in the container is a small, worm-like organism. It is no longer than the length my finger nail. The head is more narrow than the rest of the body, that gets slightly bigger and bigger until the end. It moves a lot and appears restless. Elongations of the body from the back to the front propel this creature. It looks slinky-like. It does not appear to have any legs. The head remains down during motion, and pops up when it stops moving. Every once and a while the organism takes a small break that lasts a couple of minutes. The organism appears to have a clear, yellow-tinted colored shell. Inside of the hard looking outer shell there is a look of squishy tissue. The tissue is a white color. When flipped upside down, the organism clings to the floor and does not fall unless shaken.

The worm is approximately half an inch in length with one end smaller than the other, similar to that of a cone. The end that is smaller has a darkened tip which appears to be the head. On the larger end there is a dark end with two dark end spots. The two dark spots are dorsally placed when the worm is moving. The worm moves by inching forward starting with the head. The skin of the worm is transparent, which makes it possible to see inside. Inside the worm is a white fluid that moves when the worm moves. The worm has 10 segments. When shaken, the worm stays still for a few minutes. When the container is flipped upside down and then back up, the worm was able to stick to the surface for a few seconds before falling. The worm just moves forward in one direction. The way the worm moves just changes its direction, it doesn’t appear to be intentional. There are side bumps that may assist with movement, when it doesn't have a perimeter for it to follow, the worm rolls when it moves. it takes 1 minute for the worm to travel around the container. The worm shrinks when you shake the container.

It looks like a worm. It wiggles and waves it’s way around the container that it is placed in. It never looks to travel inwards in the container, just stays on the outer edge sometimes peeking it’s head up the side of the container. It has a black mouth that looks as if it is sensing it’s environment. It moves in waves, going up and down not side to side. It is see through in some places and becomes more opaque as you view from the head down the rest of the body. Sometimes the worm stops moving and reverses just for one “wave”, almost as if it has forgotten the direction it was traveling. If the container gets shaken the worm shrivels up and appears to be lifeless, I don’t know if this is a defense mechanism or the worm is so scared it doesn’t know what else to do rather than go limp. The worm seems to have a lot of complexity for such a simple organism. It is broken into segments that contract and expand as the worm moves. The way that it moves reminds me of an accordian, filling with air and then pressing it out. Sometimes the worm stops moving as though it has lost it’s life force. It seems hungry frantically looking around for food, but I would have no way of knowing that I am just assuming that.

    The organism appears to be a small caterpillar esque invertebrate that can shed, and looks similar to a c elegan as well. It is pale in color, a shade that is a grayish yellow. Its color is uniform and does not change across its entire body. The organism has no legs or hair, and is able to move around by scrunching up its body and then extending it. Its body is sectioned off into 8 difference pieces, with the first 7 at roughly the same size while the last section tapers off and is smaller than the rest. The smaller end has its end black as well. It is unable to adhere to its surfaces very well, and will quickly fall off whatever surface its on if the surface is tilted past 80 degrees. It has no visible facial features to the naked eye.
    It is a little over an inch in length. Its back end (the side without the small black tip) has two small black dots that look similar to eyes, but is more or less likely to just be fecal matter. Its width is about 2 to 3 millimeters, with a cylindrical/tubular body. It may be more accurate to call it the diameter of its body, rather than its width. Its mass is most likely around a gram, if not less and it exhibits radial symmetry.
    The organism has the ability to wriggle its body side to side, and can curl either ends of its body to go up or down. It’s very active and is constantly moving, but does stop to rest every once in a while. Its overall behavior is difficult to patternize, as it seems that it just moves in one direction or another randomly. Although it demonstrated its ability to move across the container, it seems to have an affinity to simply move in circles around the circumference of the circular container.
    After violently shaking the container a few times, the organism still demonstrated the ability to move around and behave normally. This most likely indicates that its central nervous system is not that complex and is well protected as well. Otherwise, the organism would have demonstrated no ability to move around after being violently shook. The organism also scrunches up after being violently shaken, and contracts its body. The longer the shake the longer the organism stays in shock until it demonstrates the ability to move around again. After about 5 seconds of violent shaking, the organism was in shock for about 4 minutes before being able to regain its ability to move around again. The test was not redone for a longer time in fear that the organism may actually die if the shaking duration lasts longer.

There's a larva-like organism in the small, clear container. The organism is off-white, almost tan, in color with brown flecks along its side. It has a small, brown and red face at oe end of its long, segmented body. The organism travels around the perimeter of the container on many small feet on its underside. Waves of motion starting from its back end propel the organism forward. Its face presses up against the sides of the container, and its stops to rear its front body up and scratch the walls with its front feet. These front six feet don't have much traction. The organism flips over easily when I tilt the container. 

There is an organism, a larva of some sort ressembling a catapillar or maggot. It is 2cm in length and 4mm wide. The grub's body consists of 12 segments, off-white and yellowish in color. THe organism moves slowly with alterations between contracting and elongating movements, with seven or eight pairs of legs to assist. Movement reveals the body's soft tissue, which is connected to a firm head with two large eyes and a mouth, brown in color. Tiny clear hairs pertrude from the body. The body's segments also devide into smaller segments. There are darks spots on the organism along the sides, eight pairs of specks total. The skin can slightly be seen trhough. A dark line down the center of the insect extens from the head to the end of the body. This could perhaps be the spine, but after light is shined through the body, the line appears to be luminescent.