Caitlyn's Corner

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...