Caitlyn's Corner

So, for my last bog post I decided to get a topic idea from the syllabus that our professor gave us. One subject he suggested for our blog post was “The Life and Work of [insert your favorite molecular biologist here]”. Well, for this blog post I am happy to present to ya’ll, The Life and Work of Dr. Christopher Randle.   Dr. Randle is a well-rounded and respected professor of biological sciences at Sam Houston State University. His official title is Associate Professor of Molecular Systematics. Dr. Randle grew up in Ohio. He received his PhD at Ohio State University. It was also at Ohio State University, where he met his wife, Dr. Sibyl Bucheli. She is also a professor here at SHSU. Dr. Bucheli is an Associate Professor of entomology. Together, this brilliant couple has one daughter and a little dog. Dr. Randle has worked on a tropical lineage of plant parasites for about 16 years. His research primarily focuses on the connections between molecular and organismal evoluti...

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...

This week I really had no idea what to talk about. However, that all changed when I tuned into my favorite show, Grey’s Anatomy. The episode I am referring to was called   “Super Freak”. In this episode, a man comes into the hospital with a rare condition. This poor man was covered in growths all over his body that looked like tree bark. This rare disease is known as Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (EV).  Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (EV) is a rare, autosomal recessive inherited skin disorder. The wart like lesions that resemble tree bark can appear anywhere on the body. These lesions are caused by infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV). EV patients have an abnormal or impaired immune response to HPV or wart viruses.  As stated before, EV is an autosomal recessive disease which means that two abnormal EV genes from each parent must be inherited to have the disease. In studying the gene, it has been found that mutations in the EVER1 or EVE...

On this week’s Caitlyn’s Corner blog, I am going to talk about a special little virus called Influenza. Influenza, aka the flu, is a contagious respiratory illness. We all know that the flu can bring on symptoms of a high fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pains, headache, coughing, and feeling tired. However, I bet I will be able to inform you about a few facts you did not know. The symptoms that you get do not begin until about two days after being exposed to the virus. These symptoms typically only last about a week or so. Influenza viruses are of the family Orthomyx-oviridae. They are enveloped negative-strand RNA viruses with segmented genomes containing seven to eight gene segments There are 3 main types of the influenza viruses; Type A, Type B and Type C. The main difference between the 3 types are that they differ in host range and pathogenicity. Type A has only been known to cause the flu in humans. Wild aquatic birds are the natural hosts for a variety of inf...

This week’s blog post in not light hearted or funny like my other posts in the past. However, this week I want to share something that is both interesting and serious. Back in the early 50’s, if someone went missing, or came up murdered, the technology used to capture the criminal was not nearly as amazing as what we have today. Specifically, there was a case in 1948 where a woman was brutally raped and murdered in a small English community. There were no witnesses, no one knew anything about that tragic night. However, the cops were able to find one thing left behind that would help them solve this murder case. The murder left a fingerprint behind on a glass bottle found at the crime scene. After gathering over 45,000 fingerprints, the murderer was finally found and convicted. Fingerprints are very unique, and no two people in the world have the EXACT same prints. This is why fingerprints are one of the first things looked for in a criminal investigation.   But what happ...

We can thank Paul Hebert for my corny title of this week’s blog. In 2003 Paul Hebert's research group were the first to introduce DNA Barcoding. So, what exactly is DNA Barcoding? Well its exactly what it sounds like. DNA Barcoding is a system used to identify species. It allows identification by using a short section of DNA from a standardized region of the genome. The gene responsible for this amazing discovery is a 648 base-pair region in the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 gene ("CO1"). CO1 has been proven to be very effective, which is good because it is cheap and can be sequenced quickly and easily. The only fault the COI barcode has is in regard to plants. However, an alternative has been found and scientist can use two gene regions in the chloroplast, matK and rbcL for plant barcoding. DNA Barcoding can be broken down into four main components. These four components include the specimens, the laboratory analysis, the database, and the data analysis. DN...

The ability to clone anything is a huge step in the science world. Twenty Five years ago, cloning seemed like just a fictional idea. Geneticists and molecular biologists have done numerous experiments in regard to cloning. The biggest story that we all know is little Dolly, the sheep that was cloned by Scottish scientists. Dolly was born on July 5, 1996. She was the first animal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer. The donor for Dolly was a cell taken from a mammary gland. Dolly only lived to be 6 years old at the Roslin Institute. However, during her six shorts years of life, she was able to give birth to 6 lambs. Sadly, on February 14, 2003 Dolly had to be put to rest due to a lung disease. Many theories of her death have been approached. Some say she died at the age of 6 because the donor that she was cloned form was only six years old. However, the autopsy performed on Dolly shows that her lungs were filled with a cancer called J...

Diseases are always a hot topic in every branch of science. From the early times, when people or animals got sick, there was some scientist wanting to know why and how. The transfer of diseases from animals to humans is not anything new. At one point in history animals lived in very close quarters with their humans and that is what sparked many diseases in humans. The most known diseases like the bubonic plague or rabies are studied and researched by bacteriologist or epidemiologist. But what about the rare diseases that are not transferred through direct contact or a bite? There are diseases that be contracted by a misfolded protein. This is where the study of diseases at a molecular level comes in handy.   The study of prion diseases use to be something so rare, no one really thought it needed to be studied in depth. In 1730 the first prion disease or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE's) was discovered in sheep and goats. This prion disease is known as Scr...