We Are Not Alone

Bacteria outnumber the cells we have in our body 10 or 100 times to 1.

- Professor Chapman

Jurassic Park ain't happening anytime soon

From my molecular biology book...pretty cool stuff:

Their strategy is to isolate dinosaur DNA, but not directly from dinosaur remains. Instead they find Jurassic-period blood-sucking insects that had feasted on blood and had then become mired in tree sap, which had turned to amber, entombing and preserving the insects.

So they figure out that since blood as white blood cells with DNA they could amplify the DNA using PCR (so since DNA is double stranded and the strands are the same facing opposite directions, you can copy it easily if you know the first couple of base pairs) and then you just stick the DNA into an egg, like how they made Dolly the sheep.

While the science technology exists for this to happen, it probably won't because...

1. PCR can only can copy one 1/100,000 at a time so piecing 100,000 genes together kinda sucks.
2. even if technology got better for PCR to do the whole genome...DNA is pretty unstable and breaks really easily so finding a whole unbroken chromosome is pretty much impossible.
3. PCR amplifies all DNA so contaminate DNA from the mosquito might be replicated too making this weird dinosaur-mosquito thingy which would just be weird.

so tough luck on dinosaurs...... for now

Last Leper Colony in Europe

Romania, land of strange things....

Romania has changed beyond all recognition in the past decade, but there is one place where life goes on almost exactly as before - Europe's last leper colony at Tichilesti in the Danube delta.

Since 1991 residents have been free to leave the colony's shady grounds, but after spending most of their lives there, few of them have rushed to seize this opportunity.

At Tichilesti, set up more than a century ago, they get food, a place to sleep, clothes and medical attention, so it's hard to make the break.

Besides most of them are elderly and need special care.

Hidden among hills and lime trees, with fresh air and natural spring waters, Tichilesti seem more like a village than a hospital.

Although no longer infectious, the residents are scarred for life: hands with knots instead of fingers, no eyes - just two empty holes covered with black glasses - and no eyebrows or any other kind of facial hair.

But, unlike many old people, the lepers of Tichilesti don't complain about their lot. They are welcoming and cheerful, despite having lived through war, hunger, poverty and isolation.

The lepers at Tichilesti were always treated well by local villagers - it was often the staff who were the least comfortable with the patients.

Medical statistician Steluta Laric has worked there for over 20 years and she admits: "The first time I came here I didn't feel comfortable. The patients used to hold my hand to see my reaction."

She had a one-year-old baby and was afraid of passing the disease on to him.

Since the fall of Communism in 1989, the hospital's reputation and the patients' lives have improved.

What remains the same is the mutual support that the residents give each other. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1639335.stm

How to avoid being the lonely old crazy cat lady

One thing I love learning is the scientific reasoning behind myths. Everyone believes them but no one knows why they're true. Everyone knows the urban legend about being alone and getting a bunch of cats and becoming a crazy old lady. Well here's why it could be true....

Toxoplasma gondii is a bacteria that is common in humans. But only 1% of those infected are ever diagnosed. That's because your average immune system can handle it and it just forms a cyst somewhere out of the way. It can be dangerous around pregnant ladies and immunocompromised people (like if you have AIDS or a transplant). Problems can also arise if cysts form in the brain.

Ironically, the bacteria only undergo replication in the cat digestive system. That's another reason its not so harmful in humans: it can't grow there successfully. After it grows and reproduces in the cat digestive system it gets excreted with the rest of the stuff in the digestive system.

So imagine this scenario: you are an old lady (old = less effective immune system) with 7 cats. Maybe you don't clean out the litter box every day, so maybe a piece of cat crap gets stuck on a cat's paw. The cat walks on a counter leaving T. gondii behind. You eat the bacteria by accident with the sand which you made on the counter. The bacteria makes a cyst in your brain.

The icing on the cake is that T. gondii in the brain has been linked to schizophrenia and has significant behavioral changes in rats exposed to the bacteria.

MRI of AIDS patient with cyst

So there you have it. If you are old, don't get a bunch of cats cause you just might end up crazy.

Info from: Schaechter's Mechanisms of Microbial Disease and Survival of the Sickest and 10-1-07 UM lecture in Medical Microbiology