Drafts

Introduction

For the course writing in biology students were instructed to create a figure representing an interspecific interaction. The goal of the assignment was for each student to write a methods section that could be followed by a peer in the class. The peer was ultimately attempting to replicate the original figure based solely off of the methods section. The replicate figure was compared to the original and analyzed for the purposes of writing a scientific paper.

For selecting an interspecific interaction subjects were observed around the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In the North East area of campus an interspecific relationship was observed between a dog and the dogs owner. This was a clear example of an interspecific relation, this relation would be the one documented. The observation of the relationship was controlled by designating an area of observation. Another control was time of day, the relationship was observed in daylight, a necessity to capture photos of the subject.

Prezygotic and postzygotic are important when attempting to understand how it is possible for two species that may live in the same area to coexist without mating. If two species do happen to mate and produce offspring, isolation still occurs. Postzygotic isolation occurs after an egg has been fertilized and an offspring has been produced. There are two major forms of postzygotic isolation: hybrid inviability and hybrid sterility. Hybrid inviability refers to the extremely low fitness of an offspring from two different species. This low fitness often leads to the death of the offspring, inhibiting the continuance of this potential new species. Similar to hybrid inviability, offspring is still produced with hybrid sterility. This offspring, however may have high overall fitness, but cannot mate because of sterility. This type of isolation can be seen in mules, the offspring of a horse and a donkey. While mules can survive perfectly fine, two mules cannot create an offspring.

Prezygotic and postzygotic isolation are two separate ways in which species are disallowed from mating with one another and producing a fertile offspring. Prezygotic isolation refers to the prevention of the fertilization of eggs while postzygotic isolation refers to the prevention of the production of fertile offspring. There are multiple different ways species are isolated before the egg can even be fertilized. Habitat isolation is one of the most significant forms of prezygotic isolation. If two species do not live in the same habitat, there is no chance that an egg of one species will be fertilized by another. A similar prezygotic measure is mating season isolation. A species that mates in the spring will have no chance of mating with a species that mates in the winter. Mating season isolation ties in closely with behavioral isolation. The time of year that a species mates is certainly a behavior, but behavior is not limited to mating seasons. If a species has certain pre-mating rituals, another species may not be familiar with this ritual, making it very difficult for the two species to agree to copulate. Still, two species might have similar enough behaviors and similar enough mating times that there may be a chance that the two could mate. In this event, between certain species, there is something known as mechanical isolation. Mechanical isolation refers to the physical inability of two separate species to mate. For example, spiders have penises shaped specifically for spiders of the same species, similar to a key and a lock. It would be physically impossible for a spider of one species to mate with another.

Similarly, PARP proteins (poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase) proteins are involved in multiple DNA repair processes and have been targeted through inhibition for the treatment of ovarian cancer. The PARP inhibitors that have been approved by the FDA have been shown to prevent breaks in single-stranded DNA (which have been affected by the BRCA mutation causing the onset of cancer) so that the enzyme PAR encourages the mitochondrial release of AIF; therefore leading to apoptosis of the cells affected by the cancer mutations. This therapy has been hypothesized to be combined with Bcl-2 inhibition, which is a family of proteins involved in regulating apoptotic pathways. The therapy hypothesized therapy focuses on PARP inhibition in conjunction with the increased inhibition of anti-apoptotic proteins from the Bcl-2 family, specifically BH3. The Bcl-2 inhibition therapy currently under clinical trial is the ABT-263 monotherapy, and has shown clinically significant results in competing with BH3 proteins for binding with anti-apoptotic proteins and preventing those proteins from inactivating pro-apoptotic proteins. In vitro, the combined therapy displayed increased caspase activity and encouraged the Bax/Bak apoptosis pathway (Yokohama, 2017).

Anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family proteins have been the subject and target of multiple ovarian cancer therapies. BH3 mimetics, small molecule inhibitors, have been designed over the years for the inhibition of anti-apoptotic proteins in an effort to induce apoptosis of cancer cells. The most potent of these inhibitors that have been successfully used are Bad-like BH3 mimetics such as ABT-737 and ABT-263. These antagonist drugs bind with high affinity to Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL in order to upregulate apoptosis.

There were some photographic differences between the two figures. Figure 2A showed more of the tree and foreground than shown in figure 1A. Figure 2B also showed more bark than in figure 1B, and the lichen in figure 1B occupied half of the photographed space, while the lichen in figure 2B occupied only one tenth of the space. Figure 2C also showed the full width and more length of the tree trunk compared to figure 1C. Additionally, in figure 1C the lichen is centered horizontally and vertically, while in figure 2C the lichen is located in the lower right region of the photograph. Figure 2C also has a red car in the background, along with an overall blue tint throughout the whole photo.

In terms of the figure layout, the dimensions and relative locations of the photos are identical. The white boxes in the upper left corners of each photo are also identical, except for a difference in font between the letters.

The Methods Project has three goals: to practice writing the Methods section of a research paper, which is used by scientists to replicate the research described, to differentiate observations from inferences by writing the Results and Discussion sections, and to identify controls needed for an experiment. For my figure, I will depict the interspecific interaction between a tree and a lichen, an example of commensalism that is often overlooked in everyday life. The specific tree and lichen I will portray are on a busy street in Amherst Center, one that is walked past by students frequently.

In order to maintain strict consistency between the photos in both the original and replicated figures, I will have to set several controls described in the methods. I will control the time at which the photos are taken, in order to keep the lighting uniform, and the relative distance at which the photos are taken. I will also control the instructions for combining and labeling the photos to create the final multi-panel figure, specifying dimensions and coordinates.

    For everyone, the meaning of home changes as they get older. As a child, home is where your parents and siblings are. As a young adult, it becomes the place where your significant other lies--and when you get older, the definition can lie basically anywhere. It doesn’t matter where or who or what, but inevitably we all have a place we can go back to. Yet what dictates the feeling of home? Why is it that we have that saying, but there isn’t a single word emotionally that can describe what that feeling of home is? Sure it’s warm, it’s happy, it’s safe, but most importantly none of these words completely encompass its feeling. Its location changes as we get older, and the people or person that it involves changes over time as well. Is it possible to have a home that doesn’t change, to the point where it’s stable and no matter who it is, can look at this said hypothetical thing and say “yes that is a home”.

Certain species that defy expectations of sexual gender are important in helping biologists understand reproductive mechanisms. Not all species fit perfectly into the definitions of specific species concepts like the morphology or biological species concepts. The reproductive mechanisms for numerous species of lizards, fungi, and microbes differ drastically from mammalian mechanisms of reproduction. Certain species will reproduce sexually but do not fail to produce offspring even in the absence of the opposite sex. This is common in lizards that will lay eggs with no need for fertilization from the male counterpart. The viability of the offspring are high. Other traits that defy the biological species concepts include hybrids that are able to produce fertile and viable offspring with other hybrids but somehow, unable to cross with the parental species. These are instances in which the expectations from sexes and reproductive success are unable to fit perfectly into the human made concepts to understand nature.

The goals of this project was to be able to construct a methods section was to be able to create our own multipanel figure on our own, be able to create a methods section to explain how the figure was created, and compare our create figure with another figure created by somebody else following our methods. By analysing the differences between the two figures we will be able to find what parts of our methods are unclear when replicating. The subjects of that I chose for my figure were the trees covered in Ivy branches along the West side of North Pleasant St. I chose this interaction since both were plant species there was very little chance for there to be a significant change resulting in the same example not being able to be photographed for the replicate figure. Also even if there had been some sort of problem resulting in the specimen not being there for the replicate, there were many other examples alongside the road that could also be used. When selecting my specimen, I wanted to make sure that it had a thick layer of Ivy that covered a large area of the tree to make sure it was very noticeable in the figure.