Caitlyn's Corner

So, just to let everyone know, one of my favorite shows is Grey’s Anatomy. On one of the episode of this latest season, one of the doctors had a brain tumor. As most people are aware, brain tumors are not easily removed. However, because this a made-up show, this tumor was obviously easily removed. Anyway, when this doctor woke up, something strange happened. This English-speaking doctor woke up speaking in fluent French.   Like I said, this show is made-up, so I didn’t really think anything of it. This all changed when Coral and I googled weird and rare diseases. I stumbled upon Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). Upon further research into this syndrome, I found a more recent case that was reported in 2016. A young soccer player in Atlanta ended up in a coma after being kicked in the head. Once he finally woke up from his coma, he began to speak Spanish fluently. In both the made-up show and this real case, both the kid and the doctor knew little of the now fluent language. ...

So, I decided to do a second blog post this week because of a very interesting lecture Dr. Thompson gave my class on Thursday. I am in Dr. Thompson’s Instrumental Analytical Chemistry class. He was explaining to us Electrophoresis, which is something we are all very familiar with. Electrophoresis is a method that was originally used to separate proteins. Next, scientists used electrophoresis to figure out the sequences of the protein, they did this using gel. Later, they used electrophoresis to separate DNA and then finally they used it to sequence DNA.   However, before he went into detail of this process, he decided to give us a little background which I found very interesting. The reason I found this lecture so interesting is because it included a relationship between small pox and electrophoresis. This background included the researcher who first used electrophoresis for separating proteins. He was not the first researcher to USE electrophoresis, but he was the first to us...

I would just like to start this blog off by kindly saying; Can y’all PLEASE post y’alls blogs BEFORE 10pm on a Friday so I can comment?! Okay thanks! So, speaking of procrastination, I came across this article, “This Wacky-Sounding Procrastination Cure Is Actually Backed by Science”.   As I was reading this article I really did not find much science background until it began to discuss a journal published by a molecular biologist, named Nikolai Shevchuk. They used this study to prove that taking a cold shower could help with procrastination. Taking a cold shower may lead to you becoming more alert and overall more productive. However, because they did not do their own research I am going to talk more about the work done by Shevchuk. Shevchuk did a study on the correlation between a cold shower and depression. Depression is a mood disorder that is one of the most common sources of disability. Depression has been linked to be caused by any combination of genetic, biologica...

So, as I was searching for what to talk to y’all about this week, I came across an article titled “CReM Scientists Turn Human IPS Cells into Lung Cells”. I found this very interesting, so I clicked on it, the first thing I noticed on the page was ““Bronchospheres” may pave way for personalized cystic fibrosis treatments”. Before I start discussing this cool find, let me first tell you a little about cystic fibrosis. The majority of my blog is going to focus on the article I found, but you first need to know a little background on cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis is an awful genetic disease that is caused from mutations. These mutations are in the CFTR gene. This gene is responsible for sending instructions for making a protein called the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator. This protein is responsible for the functioning of the cells that produce mucus, sweat, saliva, tears, and digestive enzymes. The mutation in this gene causes numerous things including abnormal ...

Since my group seems to always be the target of this question, and I highly doubt Dr. Randle will ever let us move on without correctly answering his questions; this week I am going to talk about Okazaki Fragments. For a quick definition, Okazaki fragments are short, newly synthesized DNA fragments that are formed on the lagging template strand during DNA replication. However, for this blog, I want to talk about the people behind this discovery. First, let’s start by discussing a pretty cool guy named Reiji Okazaki. Mr. Okazaki was a was a pioneer Japanese molecular biologist. He was known for his research on DNA replication and for describing the role of Okazaki fragments along with his wife Tsuneko. That’s right people, credit can be given to a woman scientist who was just as smart as man scientist back in the late 60’s. Tsuneko was pretty amazing. She won the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2000. She was also elected as a Person of Cultural Merit in 2015. B...

In the spirit of Halloween, this week I wanted to share with ya’ll a rare disease known as Cotard’s Delusion or Cotard’s syndrome. In 1882, Dr. Jules Cotard first described this very rare mental condition. Cotard’s syndrome comprises any one of a series of delusions that range from a belief that one has lost organs, blood, or body parts to insisting that one has lost one’s soul or is dead. For this reason, many people refer to this mental condition as Walking Corpse Syndrome. Dr. Jules Cotard noted the first case of a woman described as Mademoiselle X, who denied the existence of her body and therefore the need to eat. This woman was convinced that she was damned to eternal damnation and therefore decided she would die of starvation. Cotard's syndrome is usually encountered in people afflicted with schizophrenia , neurological illness , mental illness , clinical depression , derealization , or a brain tumor . It sounds crazy, but recent cases have been reported. A 53-year-o...