angelinamart's blog

The migratory pattern in North American Birds tend to move in north-south direction. It is known that most migratory birds breed in the south and returns to the north. In general, it is found that birds living in the southern hemisphere will not migrate to the north as much as the northern birds travel. Some bird population only travel in the day, another in night, or even both. There is no direct pattern of what type of family travel when, however, this difference in time is advantageous for birds. It can be reduced competition or running away from predator. Birds can flight high up to 2000 to 4000 in the sky as well. Every bird has a different altitude they travel in.

The experiment of unboiling an egg was performed to reconstruct the UC Irvine’s egg experiment. The fascinating idea of unboiling an egg mesmerized my research group to repeat the procedure provided by UC Irvine with some modifications to visually understand the denaturation and renaturation of proteins through an egg. The experiment was carried out for about a month renaturing the protein by using a chemical called Urea. The boiled egg did dissolve into solution, and had reversed its state into a raw egg. Then the egg was placed into the gel electrophoresis to separate the protein and the molecular weight to compare it with the raw egg that has never been cooked yet.

The difference between something that is cooked, and raw depends on the state of the protein. When something is cooked, proteins inside the cell are denatured from the proteins. Heat is a major component used to denature proteins to change the physical state of a compound. Because heat is usually released into the environment, it is almost impossible to renature a cell because the lost heat cannot be absorbed again. However, UC Irvine found a new approach to renature a protein to reverse the direction of the physical state. Urea, a chemical used for renaturation is a compound found in livers, that are soluble and produce ammonia to deaminate amino acids in the body. It is a waste product, but the characteristics of urea allows the denatured protein to renature.

Figure 1. Penguine feather morphology is different during their juvenille stage and adult stage. Baby penguin is called a nestling and they have a soft fur-like feather that is much fuzzy than the adult penguine's feather coating. The length of the feather is longer than adult feather. Due to this feather morphology, nestlings do not have a streamline shape of body, raher it has a round fluffy body shape. This feather is suitable for nestlings to maintain body teperature in the cold artic weather. Available at https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4014/4696423445_4705431d8f_z_d.jpg by Ron Hopkins

Chediak-Higashi Syndrome is a rare genetic disorder caused from a mutation in the chromosome. Patients affected with this disorder have barely no immune system due to the defect in the neutrophil, a type of white blood cell responsible to consume bacteria through phagocytosis. The whole immune system including lysosome, an organelle in the cell, and the neutrophil is incapable to dissolve the consumed bacteria, so as a result, patients have a higher rate of susceptibility to infections. Another distinguishable symptom is a physical characteristic of albinism. Patients lack not only a sufficient immune system, but also pigmentation. They have fair skin, close to creamy white, and silver streaked light hair. Since they do not have enough pigmentation, they must take extra care to be exposed under UV light. If patients with Chediak Higashi Syndrome are diagnosed early and receive proper treatment, they can live an ordinary life. However, if the treatment fails, the patient will face a stage called the acceleration phase where the disorder becomes lethal within 30 months.

Chediak-Higashi Syndrome patients must cope with coagulation and difficulties in mobility. Since the immune system does not function properly in this disease, blood clotting occurs frequently in the patient, which results in bruising, and weakness in the limbs as well as trouble walking and maintaining stability. Usually when an individual bleeds, the platelets and fibrins in the blood would form a “gel-like mass” (Wedro) to stop the blood. However, the function of the immune system, mainly the white blood cells, are mutated in Chediak-Higashi Syndrome. Therefore the platelets and fibrins are also defective, because these substances are part of the immune system. With defected platelets, blood cannot be stopped properly, so patients will have bruises appear all over their bodies. Or, in some cases, the bleeding itself does not stop. A blood clot varies in severity based on which part of the body it occurs. If it is in the limbs, the results are numbness, pain, swelling, or change in color. Complications with the limbs does not correlate with death. However, when lungs, the heart, and other primary organs are affected by the blood clot, then the patient will demonstrate serious seizures, and this can potentially lead to death if the treatment is too late (Wedro).

It is the primary unit when discussion biological diversity. Every specie exists in their own form, shape, region, and behavior. To classify each individual organisms as the same specie, they must match the one criteria which is the ability to reproduce. When two individuals are capable of inbreeding, itis considered as the same specie. It is said that in birds when it comes to mating, each bird has a different behavior, songs, and patterns so other specie will not be confused with each other. Because their behavior is different, not many birds that are distant of each other will interbreed. In addition, not only the morphology but the DNA sequence can show how each specie has their own sequence to make them different from another.

The most severe symptom in Chediak-Higashi Syndrome is the defect in the immune system, including white blood cells, platelets, and red blood cells. It is a defect in the LYST gene which is mostly related to the lysosome that is related to the immune system. Chediak-Higashi Syndrome is caused from this defect in the immune system. In other words, patients cannot endure infections as well as individuals with a properly functioning immune system. The first time an individual is diagnosed as Chediak-Higashi Syndrome, they are usually infants. The symptoms first appear in mild forms that are not life-threatening. But as the infant ages, the risk of developing the accelerated phase increases. When the number of lymphocytes is created superfluously, the chance of entering accelerated phase becomes high. As the article, Chediak Higashi Syndrome by NORD says “Patients can develop symptoms such as fever, swollen lymph nodes, enlargement of the liver and spleen, anemia, low WBC count, and low blood platelet count” (Tomer). All these conditions can appear at any age. When they do appear, they must be treated immediately since the immune system in the patient cannot cure itself. If the treatment is too late, then eventually the accelerated phase progresses and induces neurological symptoms to occur (Tomer).

We said News Punch is not reliable or trustable resources because it is a journal website with many ads. When there is a sponser to a website, articles can be biased or favoring one opinion more than the other. The fact that the journal does cite some primary resources and the link to it, I think you can use that link to go to the original article and cite from that to have valid evidence. However, for some statements, this journal does fail to cite where they got their source from. Therefore, this website can only be used as a first step to reach out to primary resources.